Grumpy Old Men – but not the good one
In Forever Ago, players will fill the shoes of Alfred, who at seventy is struggling with the loss of his wife, Audrey just a few weeks prior. Before his wife passed she left Alfred a list of things to do, a bucket list basically that would see him return to places that helped shape their relationship. Narratively, I think Third Shift did an ok job but Forever Ago has some issues that really kept me from enjoying it.
For the story, the game is divided into nine chapters and follows a bit of a formula. To its credit, Forever Ago doesn’t overstay its welcome, players can finish it in roughly 3 or 4 hours. The story follows Alfred and Audrey’s 50-year long relationship, from youth to the present. The player will be able to experience various stages of their lives together which begins to create a contrast as Alfred returns to these locations from their past to see how they have been changed and transformed. Players aren’t able to change any of the outcomes, only experience what came before.
MSRP: $19.99
Platforms: XBOX (reviewed), PlayStation, Switch, PC
Price I’d Pay: $14.99
This is where I start to have some issues though, as Alfred returns to locations that he visited with Aubrey years before he of course finds them profoundly changed. But instead of commenting on progress and how things are better, Alfred complains; a lot. He complains about young people, about places changing, at one point in a diner from his memory he goes off on the server because they don’t have a muffin on the menu that he had 40 years before. It’s presented in a way that we are supposed to empathize with him but I felt bad for the employee; it’s been 40 years sir, of course there have been some changes. I mean that should be what he got from the journey, seeing how things grow and change just like his evolving relationship with Audrey, but the writers chose to make Alfred a grumpy old man.
Sure, this is going to show how Alfred changes and grows over the course of his road trip. The issue with that growth is that its full of cliches that we have seen time and time again with this sort of ‘make the grumpy old man good’ type of media offerings. Alfred meets a young mechanic who helps him repair his camper and teaches him a life lesson, there is even a dog that of course he doesn’t want anything to do with but who wins over the curmudgeon in the end. None of this is bad, its just felt overly formulaic for me, I was able to figure out the plot really quickly.
The other issue I have with Forever Ago is its lack of gameplay. This is the same beef I had with this year’s other indie adventure game, Mixtape. Alfred walks slowly or slightly less slow, he can examine objects and keeps a diary of all the things he sees. Alfred also has a camera that allows him to take pictures of vistas in the environment and he can make a few choices that do nothing to change the arc of the journey. There is one minigame late in the experience, no real puzzles or anything to solve, no enemies to defeat. Even the ending will just have players walking forward. By the end, I saw no real reason why this couldn’t have just been a TV movie of the week or something but there is a severe lack of gameplay in this video game.
Forever Ago feels like it was made for fans of Mixtape, someone who likes their video games surface level at best with minimal interaction. This felt more like a walking simulator with cutscenes as I moved from location to location and revisited places important to Alfred. The lack of any real gameplay mechanics bummed me out as a fan of adventure titles like Wolf Among Us, Walking Dead and the like. The developer clearly has something to say about loss, love and the roads not taken but the narrative could have hit harder if it wasn’t so predictable in its approach.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.