My complex Review📜

[grihajedy]

Score - 6/10
The fact that I like Half-life, and admire the original Ion Fury, didn`t guarantee pleasure from Phantom Fury (a sequel, but from other devs), I received only 12 hours of unbearable boredom, the game simply has nothing to surprise, there’s nothing to show that you haven’t already seen, although the game has some interesting beginnings, as well as excellent work with the Unity engine, only in terms of visual.. You know it`s like sequels to suddenly successful films from major studios, when the publisher decided that you can build an entire franchise on this, “Phantom Fury” feels like such an aimless studio product, although what sky-high profits are they counting on for a specific boomer-shooter, which stood out mainly for its technical work with the “Build engine” of the 1990s and 2D art design?
It’s difficult to classically describe the gameplay of the game, because they were trying to create a reference/copy from literally every more or less recognized shooter, the list of things I thought about could be endless.. so I would spoil your only pleasure, if you suddenly decide play it for yourself (and what kind of epic nostalgic music is constantly playing, you would know, as if you should just flow from every moment of the game - no),
But still corу gameplay is a rather interesting mix, enemies constantly run across, like in Half-life, different types can “lively” fight with each other in arenas (and btw shoot each other in the back - it can be very useful, but I don’t know if it’s intended that way), mechanically in terms of gunplay - this is also, approximately HL, but rather the second part, but at first everything happens in the surroundings of endless sci-fi corridors ala "Black Mesa", but the pace of the character is slower, run by pressing shift not holding, Shelley "Bombshell" higher and heavier, just like in the recent “RoboCop” 2023, so the heads of enemies in our sight are much smaller and seem more frisky, and in hand-to-hand combat we take out any enemy with 1 click with an endless and short recharge of our robotic arm, 2nd ability shield from the same hand,
There is stealth from sniper towers, which explode only by throwing a grenade, here "manhacks" (and not only it) suddenly fly out of the ventilation, and sometimes run into their own trap mines, the turrets must be destroyed by following the wire that leads to the shield, but you can do it head-on, they hung with different types of ammo throughout the whole game,
There is object physics, but it’s default, and doesn’t allow you to “play”; you’ll often fly up somewhere due to run boost because of it, and you can also abuse the system by building a mountain of folders and climbing somewhere without solving the necessary puzzle, in HL2 2004 there were no such ill-conceived moments, the only justification for the presence of physics in the PF game is the enemies ability to throwing of objects blocking their path.. there is also a funny moment about the player`s ability to open any trash can or office drawer, as if the prop assets were copied from the engine, but not once out of 100 pieces didn`t have anything inside - that’s the “charm” of template engines, although I’m not against modern colorful effects and dismemberment,
At the same time, the second game that the Phantom Maiden most resembles is Halo, which is logical, in 2001 it received almost 100-point ratings on Metacritic. The Halo is visible in half of the platformer's mountain levels of the game, where they often allow you to drive an SUV from 3rd person, and, of course, turrets can be removed from racks (btw, at the beginning where you don`t have this ability yet there is a cool backtracking moment when we pass through the same turret several times, and there are exactly as many cartridges in the clip as there are enemies), and well, there’s also a reference to the parasitic “Flow”, unlike Half-Life moments, this cannot be called a direct imitation, everything is in the form of mixes, vibes, and your conjectures, but I’m sure that the developers looked at “Halo” (but lacking shield enemies to complete the picture),
By the way, despite the fact that the game is mostly linear, the “arena-shooterness” is imparted by the destructions of barriers, which does not allow you to sit in one place, as it could be done in almost any shooter, although the bosses-helicopters (yes, yes, the most ordinary helicops straight from the first hl which are repeated several times) done quite the opposite - standing behind a wall and shooting at a pixel is easy way to win.. damn, and also this bait from a trawler about piloting, this is another mini-game, that is, essentially just a rail shooting scvene - we only control the sight, the rest of the side entertainment is just as basic, I don’t see any point in mentioning it, the plot is the same, there are only 10-second cutscenes with a couple of lines from animated characters for some reason (for what?), and the finger/hand of the main character, which she always points to someone,
Why did they also connect this with the universe of the “Sin” games with such a conversation (well, there’s just a remake from 3D Realms coming, you know), adding another unnecessary pistol to the already overloaded arsenal, in general, weapons in Fanta are more or less fine, have 2 types of shooting, which open in a simple upgrading, but these are far from those awesome designs from Ion Fury - it doesn’t look the same in 3D, our electric baton is now used less often and charges very small shields, not generators, but although another key feature - bowling grenades came in handy here much more often,
You can also endlessly criticize game for technical flaws, I have already assumed that the game is purely a publishing request (considering what serious financial losses 3D Realms is currently experiencing), the game was postponed from 2023, the final location didn`t even have time to be tested, there are lanterns hanging in the air, and invisible walls are in the wrong places, enemies always don’t see you, and if they do, they can freeze trying to shoot through the barrier, or they can fall into ledges, the turret can kill itself by shooting into its own debris, and the helicopter-boss can fly into space from your shotgun shot, in the story cutscene it may be unclear where to go, there is a very unintuitively made weapon-tool-saw, which can help in backtracking and requires searching for batteries and charging stations,

The Slipgates hardly expected to create a masterpiece for all time, but they weren’t even given time to come up with a overall creative vision for the game; it turned out to be just another boomer shooter with a couple of good arenas, the buyers of which were angry fans of the diamond original, a game-phenomenon, the repetition of which will most likely be impossible, although the idea itself of technically repeating each eara of the great shooters is not bad, I would like to see the final Ion Fury 2 in the graphics of the Playstation 3 generation, but now, alas.

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[grihajedy]

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