Foul Play (PS4)

In Foul Play, all the game’s on stage, and all its characters actors playing a part. While other games have certainly depicted their action as part of a performance, Foul Play takes this concept and really embraces it, giving this co-op brawler a really charming identity.

 

In Foul Play, the action you participate in is actually a reproduction of the many daring adventures of a turn of the 20th century gentleman named Baron Dashforth, his globetrotting daemon-hunting recounted on stage with him in the lead role and plenty of actors in suits and costumes playing the parts of the enemies he encountered along the way. While Foul Play definitely stretches the limitations theater would have just so you can have more interesting visuals and enemies on your quest through diverse locations, they do at least endeavor to depict them as elaborate props that move in and out of the scene, Dashforth and his companion/chimney-sweep Scampwick never truly leaving the bounds of the stage despite the constant forward movement they are meant to be imitating. Even more fun is had when Foul Play gets a bit silly with its nature as a play. An extra hams up his ultimately unimportant death scene, one of your enemies forgets his line and needs quick instruction, and perhaps the best running gag is a stagehand who keeps ending up in the middle of the action as he messes up his job in some way. Luckily the game doesn’t overindulge in the same joke types so the stage-play nature never wears out its welcome, and with some already fun humor from Dashforth and Scampwick’s dialogue with each other or their many foes, Foul Play’s concept is quick to endear itself to a receptive player.

 

While the adventures portrayed on stage seem first and foremost to take you to all kinds of different places like the deserts of Egypt, a pirate ship, or to a haunted village, they all do connect to a grander plot as Dashforth finds the daemons being unleashed in these locations all have an unexpected connection to his past. It all manages to pay off quite wonderfully for the final chapter as well, not so much in story weight but in how it all ties to why Dashforth feels compelled to perform his past on stage. Thankfully, even if you don’t have a second player to perform the role as his companion Scampwick, the chimney-sweep will still appear for the talking scenes to ensure the jokes and exposition are still delivered properly no matter what mode you play in.

Being a stage play isn’t all set dressing though, as things get even more brilliant when you see how it impacts the beat ’em up gameplay. Foul Play is very much about beating whatever enemies appear on stage into submission, although since they’re actors they may try to exit stage left after filling their role. However, your life meter is an incredibly interesting concept. Rather than either player having a persistent health meter, your survival in Foul Play is dependent on the approval of the crowd. If the people don’t like what they’re seeing on stage, they’ll begin to boo you, and once you’ve completely lost them, the play will hastily wrap up and force a restart from a checkpoint. The only way to really lose their interest though is getting hit by your enemies, a failure coming about if they land too many consecutive hits before you can win back the audience. The audience mostly just wants to see you land plenty of hits in a row on your foes, so when you’re low on health, it’s actually advantageous to be in the thick of things, smacking enemies around in the hopes you’ll convert the crowd from booing to cheering. The audience approval is also part of the game’s scoring system, your rating out of five stars tied to how happy you made the audience by landing long combos on enemies, but even a high combo run can get invalidated if you get sloppy in avoiding your enemies.

 

While your foes are technically men in costumes, Foul Play still has quite a lot of diversity to be found in who you face, the players dressing up to match the many locations Dashforth found himself in on his daemon-hunting excursions. Save for when you’re still on one particular yarn, you’ll never really see any repeat enemies along the way, the theme of the stage ensuring that there is always visual variety to who you face, even if it’s fairly easy to recognize some are just reskins for the basic enemy type. However, there is still a bit of evolution in how these basic enemies fight. They begin simply enough, but when they take on the form of British soldiers they pack guns they can fire, the later generic enemies prove better at dodging and strike faster, and some even get access to special stun attacks if you leave them alone too long. The differences are small but not superficial, and there are other enemy types who crop up along the way as well, such as the desert flies who assist the mummies by buzzing around the air, flying enemies also getting reskinned along the adventure as they become more capable with more wild movements or even develop into their flamethrower cultist versions. They do sadly abandon some of the pretense of the play for these guys, because while we can maybe believe the wings on the suits do work, the mermen who float around the arena later in the game have no clear sign for how they’re doing it. More unique enemies do come along as well, such as squid men who have special grab attacks you can turn against them, although the bosses and minibosses are definitely where new attack types shine brightest, many having projectile attacks, moves that can cover the whole stage, and plenty of little enemies that can both harass you while you try to dodge the big attacks but also provide a safer way to heal than running towards a boss who will likely hit hard. Finally, most stages have some big bruiser enemies who take a lot more hits to defeat and tend to dish out the more dangerous attacks, striking wide areas or quickly in succession and easily able to turn the crowd away from you if you don’t counter their attacks.

Foul Play does make countering pretty easy though thanks to the parry system. When lightning bolts appear above an enemy’s head, a simple press of circle will make Dashforth or Scampwick parry or guard their attack, opening them up to quick follow-ups while they’re stunned or in a vulnerable state. You can rapidly attack them, throw them, or slam them to the ground, with parries helping you continue combos even when you’re surrounded. However, the parry system isn’t perfect. Sometimes the parry will instead guard when a stronger attack is coming in, but other times it feels like the lightning bolt indicator is inaccurate, the player still taking damage even after they try to parry. It is potentially a timing issue, although the move descriptions can sometimes be long and cumbersome due to their need to embody the gentlemanly angle the game often goes for. Surprisingly, the game features quite a lot of side lore to read on your own time to learn about daemonology and the foes you faced, all written in that same loquacious style. Parries are reliable most of the time, and you can always dodge our jump out of trouble if a specific enemy counter is giving you trouble. Besides the parry you have a basic and strong attack that can be chained together in a few ways, such as launching an enemy in the air to be juggled, but your actions are pretty simple beat ’em up attacks at their heart, the player unlocking a few new skills as they level up but nothing that really pulls away from a simplicity only somewhat enhanced through the parries and opportunities to juggle.

 

Luckily, some of the simplicity in attacks and the disguised enemy variation isn’t felt too much, especially since every stage in Foul Play tasks the player with more than just beating baddies to get to the end of the level. Every act of the five different plays performed save for the boss finales includes challenges, the player able to get some incredibly helpful charms they can equip if they complete all the challenges in a single act. These challenges consist of things like getting a certain highest max combo, completing a sub section of a level in a set amount of time, and performing special skills or actions enough times, and with these secondary goals on top of completion to spice up a level, Foul Play manages to ensure it doesn’t get dull even when its throwing similar waves of enemies at you. However, the need to do all the challenges in a stage to get the charm does weigh down the experience some, since it will likely require replaying the stage after learning its layout to do some of them. The rewards are things like the audience not being so harsh on you when you’re hit or having combos be easier to rack up, but designing it to be an incentive to replay the game mostly means a first run through involves few cases of actually unlocking a charm. Playing in single-player or co-op can also make certain challenges easier or harder. While a persistent need to get a high combo is pretty neutral across either mode in its difficulty, designated areas of the stage called combo challenges are harder in co-op since you’re both defeating enemies, making the high combo numbers harder to hit. However, having Scampwick along makes timed challenges and ones where you need to protect innocent extras much easier. Fewer enemies will appear if you’re just Dashforth though, and while these waves can be a bit slow on your own, the challenges at least allow you to make more of them then mashing the attack button to move on. Charms might have been better off as rewards for completing a certain amount of challenges total instead of all of them in specific stages, and it is a shame the boss levels don’t have them, a certain thoughtful edge to your approach lost when you are free to just hammer away on a foe with only a five star rating as a possible reward.

THE VERDICT: Foul Play may at first seem like a simple brawler that will inevitably be more enjoyable in co-op, but the commitment to the idea of it all being a stage play really helps to make the experience more unique and exciting. Having your health be the audience’s reaction to your performance encourages healing by way of doing flashy combos, and the challenges, while perhaps skewed too much to allow you to enjoy their rewards outside of repeat playthroughs, still give you more to do than simply beat up baddies. Enemy and area diversity with a dash of humor on top ensures Foul Play is endearing enough to remain fun despite the combat feeling repetitive at times.

 

And so, I give Foul Play for PlayStation 4…

A GOOD rating. The incredibly creative presentation and constantly fresh humor can almost push Foul Play over the line into greatness, but brawlers always struggle to demand more than just hammering the attack button to win, and Foul Play didn’t cultivate its variance enough to get there. The challenges are a great way to ask the player to be more mindful of how they act and encourages them to spice up their combos, but the difficulty in earning charms makes it feel futile at times and others more dependent on either being alone or in co-op to really pull them off well. The growing competency of your enemies and their new attacks do keep things fresh in their own way though, and while solo play waves can feel a touch slow, the game usually breaks things up well by putting humorous scenes between new waves so the player isn’t worn down too much. The parry system allows you to really build up rewardingly high combos without making things a cakewalk due to timing and positioning being emphasized, even if it does seem a little iffy against bigger enemies and bosses. The simplest way to improve Foul Play would have been having more leniency in challenge rewards or making more of them stage wide so they are constant considerations during battle, but there are still plenty of boss battles and unique enemy attacks to keep the regular play fun for a normal run through the game.

 

Foul Play gets incredibly far on its commitment to its concept, its diversity in enemies and setting, its brand of humor, and the mechanics that play into pleasing the audience, all of these aspects helping this brawler be more than just the basics, but if it had pushed its simplistic combat a bit further, it would have been worthy of even greater applause.