Phantom Fury Steam Charts & Stats

Its good enough to warrant a positive. Really, everything is good with a couple exceptions. Negatives: Feels like some things didnt get tested enough. The helicopter boss fight doesnt really work. The physics need to be locked on the objects during that fight. I died so many times from just being buried in the junk you have to hide behind and then getting blasted while Im trying to dig my way out, one box or barrel at a time. The other negative is the biggest one and is super consistent through the game. The level design is good, but player direction is some of the worst Ive ever seen. It will give you a simple objective, but then expect you to find your way to an object with little to no context. Half the objectives in the game, I found purely by accident. Maybe it should be called The Lost and Furious. If the combat wasnt so good, I would have deleted it before getting more than a couple maps in.

Great boomer shooter. Problem is that alot of time finding how to proceed is very difficult as there is no markers like in modern games and even then, the way forward is through a small vent on a big map that you had to go three times around to find it as a maybe potential way forward. This happens more often than i would care to admit.

Play Ion Fury, not this. Hard mode is just enemy health sponges, every gun feels weak AF.

Normally when I write a review for game I at least play it to completion first and let it stew for a few days so I can articulate my thoughts properly. However, I can't with this game. The devs clearly wanted to deliver an experience akin to that of Duke Nukem Forever 2001's trailer, while taking inspiration from immersive sims like Deus Ex and shooters like Half-Life, but failed so spectacularly that it's fascinating. I'm only here right now because I encountered a bug that just undid 30 minutes of progress and soft locked me out of completing a level. It sucks, because there is actually quite a bit to like about this game - it has a good skeleton and is fun - but it's so bogged down by utterly bafflingly terrible design decisions and a general sense of being totally unfinished. It's unclear if this dichotomy of vision to practice is due to the layoffs Slipgate Ironworks and 3D Realms took prior to the game's release, or if it's due to the former's not-so-stellar reputation of creating mediocre shooters, but the game is just not good. Let's start with the positives though. My complaints from the demo were mostly addressed; enemies no longer tank shots without any kind of feedback to getting hit. They stagger and flinch when getting hit. Couple that with the general punchiness of all the weapons, the blood and gore, and the movement and you have a very fun foundation for the gunplay. That's the game's biggest strong point. There's a lot of good ideas and set pieces thrown in to add a bit of spice to the run and gun combat but unfortunately everything around these elements that really sour the entire experience. What wasn't addressed from the demo is the map cohesion. Every level does an absolutely horrendous job at guiding the player leading to many instances of aimlessly wandering around wondering what the hell you're supposed to do and where to go next. There is no minimap to guide you. There's complete and utter inconsistencies to the navigation too. Sometimes there's an overabundance of invisible walls. Other times, there are no invisible walls which lets you completely bypass scripted sequences just by abusing the bad level design and movement options. Sometimes Bombshell can climb onto things, sometimes she cannot. Sometimes doors that are used for navigating the player are used on areas that aren't accessible leading to even further confusion. This goes for the puzzles and rules too. For example, in one of the first areas there's two train cars blocking your way. One is a tanker, the other is an open cargo train. Bombshell can't punch open the clearly busted door in the train, yet she can somehow punch the entire tanker forward. In another area, she can't jump through an office window because the room has blinds. Yes, blinds, as in plastic sunshades. It seems like the developers really wanted to focus on making the environments look like people work/live in them, but it's completely to the sacrifice of any fun and momentum the levels could have had. And even then, that's not true, there's just stupid things that make no sense like how there's just a generic padlock that is locking the vent door INSIDE THE VENT. Or another instance when I got the key for a door but it wouldn't open, because I had to interact with the cylinder lock on the door even though it all looks like the same f'n model. The game also features interactivity with the environment by letting you examine props, pick up objects, etc but more than 90% of the things you can interact with either have no sounds, don't break, and don't react with the environment effectively making their inclusion and labeling them on your HUD completely pointless. There's even scripted sequences that are just devoid of sound for some reason. Physics objects, like stacking boxes, are insanely buggy. Sometimes you need to stack boxes for a secret or to progress, and stacking them is a complete toss up on whether they'll break, go flying, or hurt you because the engine can't seem to handle it and it clips into you. Slowly rolling barrels can actually hurt you. Pallets on the floor will send you careening forward into the nearest wall. Once I stepped on an overturned traffic cone and got shot into the air. Outside of the mutant enemies that pick up these objects and throw it at you, there is no reason to have physics props littered all over the map. Enemy ragdolls will go flying if you kill them from their spawners too quickly. The music is also mind-numbing. It seems like they had only enough time to create one song per level, so the entire level plays this same bombastic tune even during the downtime. Seldomly there are music ramp ups during sequences, but they're so few and far between with all the generic music that it really begs the question of why there's music playing at all times to begin with. It just further adds to the general sense of being an incomplete game. The enemy AI in this game is also completely stupid. Enemies will sometimes forget they're trying to kill you and turn their backs, stop firing, run past you, etc. In one chapter, there was a few heavy gun placements scattered around the map. I legit saw mutants that could have easily flanked around the sandbags and dog on me instead run purposely in front of the gun and resort to throwing objects which couldn't hit me. This is all on the highest difficulty. What made me ultimately come yap was the underground facility level. After completing a sequence to launch a rocket, I had to backtrack and jump down the hole from the launch pad. However, I didn't realize only a quarter of the room below had flooring, so I plummeted to my death. Upon a reload save, I got brought back to the launch pad but the blast doors were closed and the rocket was there again. I was completely softlocked. Loading an earlier save didn't fix it either. Instead I saw the NPC scientist I guided earlier make his way back to the room I originally found him in, stand in front of the glass, and proceed to act like he was stuck like when I initially found him. It's just... what the f**k man? I got this game for $10, so I don't feel totally ripped off, but do not under any circumstances pay the $25 asking price for this. It is bad. Funny bad, frustrating bad at times, but still really, really bad.