Family Man

Genre: First-Person Action-RPG / Simulation

Players: 1

.

Review:

Family Man, released on PC in 2020 and ported to Xbox One and Nintendo Switch in 2022, is a First-Person Action-Adventure with Simulation elements where players take the role of an ordinary family man who not only loses his job, but finds himself being strong-armed by the mob. As a result, he must find a way to make the money to pay them back, while also keeping his family fed, happy, and in good health.

While Family Man initially seems to be set up like a smaller-scale Grand Theft Auto-style game, it’s actually more of a time and resource management Simulation. Players have a limited number of hours in the day, and by that day’s end they need to pay off what the mob is demanding for that day. Players can do so by running errands for various people in town, working at a job (legal or less-than-legal), or beating up trash cans and selling off the scrap they collect from inside. The clock is always ticking down, and in the meantime, your family will also be expecting you to put in time at home doing chores, filling the fridge with food and medicine, and tucking in the kid at night to tell them a bedtime story. Skimp on these family activities and you could lose the “family” part of Family Man.

Given the game’s strong themes of crime and gray morality, I honestly expected this game to provide players with a lot more options in terms of gameplay choices. I feel like this game should have given players a lot more opportunities to steal, or at least to raid the wallets of street thugs who pick fights with you only for you to beat them down. Heck, there’s a bank in town with an ATM out front, and apparently you can’t even attempt to bust it down to get at the money inside. Oh, don’t expect to be “jacking” cars willy-nilly, either.

Look, I don’t mean to hold this game up to the standards of the likes of Grand Theft Auto or Skyrim, but given that it makes such a big deal out of the importance of choice, I can’t help but feel somewhat stifled by the lack of said choice.

The presentation isn’t doing the game any favors either. Family Man uses Minecraft-style “voxel” graphics, making this game look like countless other Minecraft knockoffs that have come and gone over the years. And yet, despite this, there’s still noticeable slowdown and pop-in. This is all backed by a light piano soundtrack that I suppose works for the game, but the completely mute characters sadly do not – without even so much as a text scroll noise, the game’s dialogue seems like it’s being treated as an afterthought, which is a shame because that dialogue is actually fairly well-written.

Family Man still has the benefit of being a fairly unique game, and it has its strong elements, such as its good writing. However, I feel like this game could have benefitted from more time in development, both to polish up the presentation, and to truly deliver the freedom of choice that the game wants to emphasize.

tl;dr – Family Man is a First-Person Action-Adventure with Simulation elements where players take the role of an ordinary family man being strongarmed by the mob, who must find a way to pay them back while also taking care of his family. This results in gameplay that’s a lot like a resource management Simulation, and while there are clever moments here, this game never provides players with the freedom needed to live up to the level of importance this game places on choice.

Grade: C+

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Ben, Andy Miller, Exlene, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Ilya Zverev, Jared Wark, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}