As someone who enjoyed Ion Fury and Ion Fury: Aftershock, I was really excited at the reveal of Phantom Fury. It captures the visuals of a late 90s/early 2000s FPS. Regardless of what I have to say about it later, it absolutely nailed its graphical style.
I played the Phantom Fury demo in anticipation and in the nicest way possible, I would be fucking embarrassed if I was the one to release a demo in that state. I was hoping that they would delay the game to iron out its glaring issues and a lot of people felt the same way, then they announced that the game would be released 6 months later. From there I went in with very low expectations.
Phantom Fury is a skinwalker taking the identity of Half-Life 1 and 2 alongside the early builds of Duke Nukem Forever. With its nostalgic visuals, it hides such a blatantly unfinished, buggy and half-assed game inside that's trying to lure you in based on its looks, vibes and its John Blade cameo, because kids these days totally know what SiN is and who this John Blade guy is when he only appears for 30 seconds. While I don't agree with people calling Phantom Fury the new generation Blood 2 (because I would gladly replay this over Blood 2 any day of the week), if people are making those comparisons, you've seriously fucked up.
Phantom Fury wants to be Half-life 1 and 2 so badly, its got all the set pieces like a jeep section, except the jeep is a Halo Warthog that controls like a drunken ice skater, with instances of cars shooting at you with rockets like in the Water Hazard chapter. Its got helicopter fights like in Surface Tension, except they don't work here because the AI is beyond stupid. You can replicate Half-Life's set pieces all you like, it's not a substitute for good level design. It's like the game is jangling keys at you trying to jog your nostalgia for a much better game while you play this slog. The levels range from desert region to tech-base and that's all there is to it. I get that the game is trying to invoke that feeling again, but it's 2024, we don't need all these physics-based puzzles in here like the technology for that stuff hasn't been around for 20 years. The level structure constantly goes through an identity crisis. Phantom Fury can't decide whether it wants to be a linear narrative experience, or a classic key hunt with excessive backtracking through the same looking hallways that you will get lost in because there is no sense of direction. Maybe instead of adding in all those quirky environmental interactions so you hopefully tug at people's nostalgia, you instead devoted that time into some better level design.
Onto the combat, it's so weightless like in the demo. Yeah they added in proper gibbing but nothing packs a punch, the automatic weapons feel like staplers and the shotguns feel like a gentle sneeze. The bowling bombs are so unreliable and bounced off enemies most of the time that I ended up never using them towards the end, the Motherflakker reloads too slowly for it to be useful as a crowd clearing weapon, the Ion Bow feels like a shell of its former self and instead of its very useful alt-fire, RMB is now for aiming down the sights like in Half-Life because why? Once again the Loverboy got the most use out of me, even if its lock on alt-fire feels slower, less snappy and has this annoying bug where it can lock on to props such as laptops. Seriously, how does this shit even make it into the final product? You can buy weapon mods for some of your guns. Yes, only a few weapons have purchasable mods. It's like they never finished the full weapon mod line-up. The weapons that do get mods though either have two or only one and it just feels unfinished. Am I supposed to believe that the standard shotgun was only gonna come with ONE weapon mod whereas that foam gun I never used came with two, and the fucking Ion Bow gets NO mods?
Enemies barely flinch or react to getting shot and when they die, they just ragdoll awkwardly. I'm not talking Painkiller ragdolls where enemies are sent flying across arenas in a satisfying way, I'm talking Source engine ragdolls that collapse onto themselves when you unfreeze them with the physics gun in Gmod. Enemies are on the spongey side and the game's way of making them difficult is to just send 20 of them bunched up in your direction, tanking your frame rate in the process. It also doesn't help that the AI is dumb as shit. Sometimes they take cover in the open, most of the time they get stuck on level geometry, and a frighteningly common occurrence were enemies just stand around doing nothing as if I'm not even there. I played this game on Hard and it felt so inconsistent. Sometimes the game would just freely give you health, armour and ammo for an hour for really basic fights, then it'll pull some insane resource conservation shit onto you during the tougher fights.
The story is laughably bad. Why is Shelly siding with the GDF again? They're acting like nothing happened in Aftershock. The Colonel just becomes a twist villain as he betrays you out of nowhere and after killing him, you have to fight ANOTHER FUCKING TWIST VILLAIN that comes way out of left-field and makes no sense. The game tries really hard to make you feel bad for Shelly, but it doesn't work when you hamfist her "tragic" past and trauma to the player and then she gets over it in a single anti-climatic cutscene.
I can't believe I paid $32 fucking Australian dollars for this unfocused, undercooked mess. I fucking gave Slipgate Ironworks and modern day 3D Realms my hard-earned money for this shit. I got Wrath: Aeon of Ruin and Graven from a cheap bundle and finished their early access campaigns ages ago and I'm terrified on what those games have become on their full releases when I eventually replay them.
I do not recommend Phantom Fury and to 3D Realms/Slipgate Ironworks, you guys gotta pull your shit together, because acting all pissy and childish towards reviewers in private who rightfully criticised your unfinished product that you gave out early copies for is not gonna fix this. Don't bite the hands that feed you.
I played the Phantom Fury demo in anticipation and in the nicest way possible, I would be fucking embarrassed if I was the one to release a demo in that state. I was hoping that they would delay the game to iron out its glaring issues and a lot of people felt the same way, then they announced that the game would be released 6 months later. From there I went in with very low expectations.
Phantom Fury is a skinwalker taking the identity of Half-Life 1 and 2 alongside the early builds of Duke Nukem Forever. With its nostalgic visuals, it hides such a blatantly unfinished, buggy and half-assed game inside that's trying to lure you in based on its looks, vibes and its John Blade cameo, because kids these days totally know what SiN is and who this John Blade guy is when he only appears for 30 seconds. While I don't agree with people calling Phantom Fury the new generation Blood 2 (because I would gladly replay this over Blood 2 any day of the week), if people are making those comparisons, you've seriously fucked up.
Phantom Fury wants to be Half-life 1 and 2 so badly, its got all the set pieces like a jeep section, except the jeep is a Halo Warthog that controls like a drunken ice skater, with instances of cars shooting at you with rockets like in the Water Hazard chapter. Its got helicopter fights like in Surface Tension, except they don't work here because the AI is beyond stupid. You can replicate Half-Life's set pieces all you like, it's not a substitute for good level design. It's like the game is jangling keys at you trying to jog your nostalgia for a much better game while you play this slog. The levels range from desert region to tech-base and that's all there is to it. I get that the game is trying to invoke that feeling again, but it's 2024, we don't need all these physics-based puzzles in here like the technology for that stuff hasn't been around for 20 years. The level structure constantly goes through an identity crisis. Phantom Fury can't decide whether it wants to be a linear narrative experience, or a classic key hunt with excessive backtracking through the same looking hallways that you will get lost in because there is no sense of direction. Maybe instead of adding in all those quirky environmental interactions so you hopefully tug at people's nostalgia, you instead devoted that time into some better level design.
Onto the combat, it's so weightless like in the demo. Yeah they added in proper gibbing but nothing packs a punch, the automatic weapons feel like staplers and the shotguns feel like a gentle sneeze. The bowling bombs are so unreliable and bounced off enemies most of the time that I ended up never using them towards the end, the Motherflakker reloads too slowly for it to be useful as a crowd clearing weapon, the Ion Bow feels like a shell of its former self and instead of its very useful alt-fire, RMB is now for aiming down the sights like in Half-Life because why? Once again the Loverboy got the most use out of me, even if its lock on alt-fire feels slower, less snappy and has this annoying bug where it can lock on to props such as laptops. Seriously, how does this shit even make it into the final product? You can buy weapon mods for some of your guns. Yes, only a few weapons have purchasable mods. It's like they never finished the full weapon mod line-up. The weapons that do get mods though either have two or only one and it just feels unfinished. Am I supposed to believe that the standard shotgun was only gonna come with ONE weapon mod whereas that foam gun I never used came with two, and the fucking Ion Bow gets NO mods?
Enemies barely flinch or react to getting shot and when they die, they just ragdoll awkwardly. I'm not talking Painkiller ragdolls where enemies are sent flying across arenas in a satisfying way, I'm talking Source engine ragdolls that collapse onto themselves when you unfreeze them with the physics gun in Gmod. Enemies are on the spongey side and the game's way of making them difficult is to just send 20 of them bunched up in your direction, tanking your frame rate in the process. It also doesn't help that the AI is dumb as shit. Sometimes they take cover in the open, most of the time they get stuck on level geometry, and a frighteningly common occurrence were enemies just stand around doing nothing as if I'm not even there. I played this game on Hard and it felt so inconsistent. Sometimes the game would just freely give you health, armour and ammo for an hour for really basic fights, then it'll pull some insane resource conservation shit onto you during the tougher fights.
The story is laughably bad. Why is Shelly siding with the GDF again? They're acting like nothing happened in Aftershock. The Colonel just becomes a twist villain as he betrays you out of nowhere and after killing him, you have to fight ANOTHER FUCKING TWIST VILLAIN that comes way out of left-field and makes no sense. The game tries really hard to make you feel bad for Shelly, but it doesn't work when you hamfist her "tragic" past and trauma to the player and then she gets over it in a single anti-climatic cutscene.
I can't believe I paid $32 fucking Australian dollars for this unfocused, undercooked mess. I fucking gave Slipgate Ironworks and modern day 3D Realms my hard-earned money for this shit. I got Wrath: Aeon of Ruin and Graven from a cheap bundle and finished their early access campaigns ages ago and I'm terrified on what those games have become on their full releases when I eventually replay them.
I do not recommend Phantom Fury and to 3D Realms/Slipgate Ironworks, you guys gotta pull your shit together, because acting all pissy and childish towards reviewers in private who rightfully criticised your unfinished product that you gave out early copies for is not gonna fix this. Don't bite the hands that feed you.