Forspoken review: PS5 and PC fantasy isn't exactly magical

radiotimes.com:

On paper, the new PS5/PC game Forspoken sounds like quite a fun idea. The protagonist, Frey, is a modern New Yorker that gets 'vooshed' through a portal to the mystical land of Athia. The game drops a reference nice and early to Alice in Wonderland, and we wouldn't be surprised if The Wizard of Oz was another inspiration for Forspoken story's set-up.

Frey, voiced by Ella Balinska (who you might remember from the Charlie's Angels reboot or the Resident Evil Netflix series), is a streetwise orphan who is trying and failing to keep out of trouble with criminal gangs. She just wants to escape her humdrum life, but Athia is a lot more than she bargained for, as is the mystical cuff that she is bonded with early in the plot.

This piece of 'sassy bling' is voiced by Jonathan Cake (Rebecca, Empire, Desperate Housewives) and it imbues Frey with magical powers right near the start of your adventure. She was already a bigger parkour expert than Michael and Dwight from The Office, and now she can dish out magical attacks as well as travelling at superhuman speed through the open-world of Athia.

As we said up top, it's a fun little idea to kick off a game with, but we wouldn't say that Forspoken nails much of what it's going for. We don't hate that set-up, but we don't love what it leads to either. The game has a visually-impressive open world, for example, but it regularly pulls you out of it for stilted cut scenes and forced conversations that you can't even look around during. It's very stop-and-start, especially in the crucial opening hours.

The game also has a strong array of magical attacks that come in very handy during combat, but the control scheme dictates that you basically have to spam L2 and R2 in every battle — whilst