I have been meaning to beat this game for a long while now, seeing as it's a source horror akin to cry of fear, but with an interesting ww2 theme to it.

I did, finally, beat it. Took me about 3 hours for the run.

What do I have to say? I'm conflicted.

On one hand, it is a clear a lot of work went into this project, the level design and atmosphere are honestly really good. The weapons and inventory system are very similar to cry of fear as well. Things do work once you figure them out and the lore is told in notes that are fairly interesting.

But then on the flip side, this game is really, really hard to have fun in.

For one, you will need a guide to beat it. There's no way around it, the progression and "Objectives" are baffingly hidden and you could bumble for days before you actually find what you are meant to do. At one point my progress stalled for lack of trying a circular saw on a random floor grate, for instance.

The fact you need a guide to progress could be forgiven though, if the game was actually fun to play. Cry of fear runs the line on this very very carefully, the game is often miserable but is never disgustingly unfair to you. The forgotten ones on the other hand makes every combat encounter utterly miserable. Every enemy is a meatsack that will take over 50% of your clip to kill unless you somehow hit their spastic heads with the majority of your shots. Every enemy will absolutely DESTROY YOU if it gets into melee distance, I will try to explain the cycle.

Step 1-Mag dump a twitchy, extremely fast enemy to kill it. You now have less than half a magazine left.

Step 2-Don't reload because like CoF you will lose the rest of the ammo in the clip.

Step 3-Encounter another enemy. Spam more carefully to try and use headshots to make it so your mag being low isn't fatal.

Step 4-For some reason or another, they get close enough to you to hit you. Oh no. Every enemy in the game attacks with such speed and viciousness that you have about 2 seconds from full health to survive this. Each enemy attacks multiple times per second AND EVERY HIT WILL THROW YOUR VISION OFF INTO SOME CORNER.

Step 5- While you are admiring the corner of the room and being stabbed 421,234,523 times, try to find time to either kite away (Which won't happen because being damaged ALSO SLOWS YOU TO A CRAWL FOR LIKE 10 SECONDS) OR Attempt to melee them while your camera spastically juts to corners of your screen from the 204,512,512th stab you've taken.

Step 6- If you melee'd them without missing, congrats! You have 1.2 seconds to make something of this. Either BOOK IT BACKW- Oh wait, slow as hell because you were hit. Consume your only medkit (You can only carry one at a time) to get your speed back and BOOK IT, or switch weapons and shoot them with your pistol

Step 7- If you somehow survived, I have an enormous amount of respect for you.

I am being humorous in this description, but it is painfully accurate. Every encounter is just utterly nauseating and a matter of silly kiting. The game doesn't check which "Door" you enter a room from before enemies are spawned in it, so you can often enter a room and while the creepy "Fade from black to light" effect is still blinding you, and get stabbed to death BEFORE YOU CAN EVEN SEE by enemies that were placed thinking you'd explore from the other direction first.

There are other complaints, the game uses very few half life 2 assets, but uses JUST ENOUGH OF THEM That it feels like a mod rather than its own game. With 95% Of the game being made with its own assets, it's sad that certain parts (Like your character's head and some assorted corpses) Were taken from half life 2, those things really are the only tokens that make you realize this is a mod and not a game of its own. But really, it's the combat, the utter misery of it and the fact that every gun feels equally pathetic in the face of every enemy you face (Which is a shame because the guns are actually modeled, animated, and generally designed well! Some even have sniper scopes that work without an overlay, which is cool for a game like this.

Cool concept, decent level, lore, and weapon design, paltry game-play and cheap jumpscares make this a sad thumbs down from me. It just needs a little change and a little more love and it could be something legitimately interesting, but for most people it will just be a miserable slog for the sake of completion.