Foul Play Critic Reviews

Foul Play runs under the premise of being an action filled theater play, so you'll have to keep your audience entertained at all times. The level and character design helps maintain this illusion, and even though you'll see the actor's faces beneath the monster's costumes, the cheering of the crowd will be enough motivation to don your monocle and kick some demonic butt.

While a little bit simple in terms of art, Foul Play is a polished little Final Fight style title that was really a blast to play.

Foul Play is a fantastic looking, beautifully written brawler with a great gimmick that goes much deeper than simply putting an audience in the foreground and renaming the health meter.

Foul Play takes the brawler genre and twists it for the stage, adding flair with the Mood-O-Meter and a range of quaint characters.

Visual shortcomings and questionable first impressions aside, Foul Play is a cheery, bright-eyed, delightful roaming beat-em-up that, through superior, fluid and engrossing combat mechanics, has arguably swiped the crown of Beat-’em-up King right off of Castle Crashers' head.

Though Foul Play can become repetitive and the story would have been bettered by voice-acting, its stylized gameplay is entertaining, memorable, and conceptually well-designed for a 1200 MSP title. Its ability to juggle all of its concepts into a cohesive beat-'em-up that lasts at least full weekend is to the credit of the indie developer Mediatonic. I take my hat off, good sir.

One of the best beat ’em ups/brawlers we’ve played in a good while, and the spectacular daemon beatings you’ll be handing out makes Foul Play well worth the price of admission.

Regardless of whether you choose to partner up or go it alone, Foul Play is a grand ole adventure. Easy to pick up and fun to master, the combat alone would make this a worthwhile venture, but adding in the game’s theater aesthetic and unique visual style makes this an easy recommendation.

The fighting can get a tad samey, however, which holds it back from the true spiffinginity.

Brawlers aren't always known for affecting storytelling and world building, but Foul Play's offbeat approach and goofy characters won me over.

Foul Play offers a special twist to the beat ‘em up-genre by adding a Rock Band-ish system. The Theatre theme is well implemented, and that makes the game immensely fun and cutesy. The audiences responses actually make you try while fighting, but it does start to get a bit repetitive an hour or so in.

Foul Play is absolutely charming and a good co-op game. However the length is too short and the game itself is too easy.

While the theatrical design is quite charming it is not as elaborated as in the Puppeteer or Black Knight Sword, while the side scrolling brawler feels generic at times and lacks the esprit of games like Castle Crashers.

A charming co-op friendly adventure for fans of games like Castle Crashers. Foul Play might not be a master piece, but is still worth your hard-earned money.

Foul Play won't tempt you to heave tomatoes at its cast, but you won't find yourself crying out for an encore, either.

It's simple and quite repetitive, but the story and how much fun it has to give us makes it worth our time if we're looking for a game based on smashing buttons.

Quite simplistic and a little bit boring, Foul Play is a second-choice in comparison to Castle Crashers and Scott Pilgrim VS The World. Its nice setting and peculiar visual style may be enough reasons for giving it a try, yet do not expect an outstanding brawler. Also, not supporting four players is a very bad choice.

It's hardly foul, but good ideas and charming animations aren't enough to save Foul Play from repetition.

The idea of having a beat 'em up in a theater stage with the audience's reaction acting as the life bar is original, but sadly the execution is not that brilliant.

Even at a handful of minutes, the levels seem over-long.