Title: Phantom Fury
Developer: Slipgate Ironworks
Publisher: 3D Realms
Release Date: April 23, 2024
Reviewed On: PC
Price: TBA
Until now, boomer shooters have largely explored the genre’s explosive 1990s: fast, explosive, and with a sharp emphasis on either an arcade-y rush or exploration. Phantom Fury is one of the first major releases to jump ahead to the early 2000s and echo the mechanically complex shooters that defined the era: Half-Life, Deus Ex, and Halo.
Phantom Fury is a sequel to Ion Fury, one of the more impressive classically styled boomer shooters. However, Ion Fury was developed by Voidpoint, a team of Build Engine modders assembled to make a game promoting the title that would become Phantom Fury, while Phantom Fury in turn was developed by 3D Realms’ in-house development team Slipgate Ironworks. This is technically the original game, while Ion Fury is a spin-off.
What does the original Fury game have to offer?
Analysis
Genre
Phantom Fury broadly fits under the umbrella of a boomer shooter—though I’ve heard and like the term “half-like” to differentiate games inspired by 2000s shooters from games inspired by shooters of the previous decade. But what genre is it exactly? How does it play? The released games it takes the most inspiration from—Half-Life, Deus Ex, and Halo—are all wildly different.
Is Phantom Fury an immersive sim like Deus Ex? No. While it copies the way that Deus Ex would highlight virtually every object around you, as well as also tasking you to track things like power to their emergent source, the most you can do is pick up physics objects. You can stack boxes, but that will not help you progress in unexpected ways (and one time where my goal was to reach a higher floor, the boxes simply took me to an invisible wall and I needed to go around and do it the intended way). Phantom Fury presents a linear approximation of early immersive sim gameplay that breaks down if you attempt to interact with objects in creative ways. Levels that task you will exploring a living space are still linear, despite appearances. Apart from some minor weapon upgrades, there are no RPG or similar immersive elements.
Is Phantom Fury a physics shooter like Half-Life? A little, but physics puzzles are largely scripted. One puzzle tasks you to reach a ledge by operating a crane surrounded by crushed cars. The right solutions are to hold a car aloft and jump on it to cross, or to lower the crane to run across it. Attempting to stack cars to jump up will usually have you run into an invisible wall. While you can mantle, you can only mantle on select surfaces and objects the developers allow: even identical versions of the object elsewhere cannot be mantled onto (objects you can mantle on are scratched, but it is a nearly invisible effect). Phantom Fury shares Half-Life’s focus on more “realistic” movement: rather than grenade jumping, you move slowly, and there is a focus on cover and crouching. Many levels and sequences feel like remixes on concepts from Half-Life, and this is not always a bad thing: at its best, the game feels like classic Valve levels with the unerring focus and flow. Only a slide is faster than Gordon Freeman’s pace.
Is Phantom Fury a cinematic arena shooter like Halo? More than any other released game, Phantom Fury is along the same line as Halo. Corridors and arenas with aggressive enemies out in force, in-engine cutscenes in a similar style, enemy damage and the friction of combat, long driving sequences is a Humvee-like vehicle. This makes the choice to feature Half-Life style movement rather odd.
Gameplay
Like Half-Life and Halo, you are placed in a fairly linear level—but that level is part of one largely unbroken campaign which can be played consecutively. Like those games, you will face a enemies made up of a roster of military opposition and various flavors of undead mutant things.
I recently praised Star Wars: Dark Forces for its creative weapons. Apart from the intentionally basic blaster pistol and standard issue Stormtrooper assault rifle, the weapons were weird and created unusual gameplay niches. The closest thing to a sniper rifle fired an AOE blast that could land on any surface, and a machine-shotgun could either track enemies or offered an unusual patterns of shot decay to manage. These unique aspects changed your relationship to your weapons, and forced you to think about how to best use them.
Most of the weapons in Phantom Fury are creative, but don’t change your strategy once you’ve learned the rhythms of reloading. The basic shotgun is a double-barrel affair which is loaded by a magazine which snaps two more shots in each time you expend both barrels. Shoot, shoot, pause—shoot, shoot, pause—shoot, shoot, pause. If you get the rhythm wrong, you’re in a world of pain. This is the shooting at its most interesting, and a few of the guns follow this pattern: Harrison’s signature Loverboy revolver and her electrifryer, for example.
But too many of the weapons are not only standard issue, but thoughtless. The assault rifle is just an assault rifle. The missile launcher is just a missile launcher. The basic pistol is just the pistol from Half-Life, incredibly powerful and fast, which basically removes the need to be creative with the Loverboy’s limitations and benefits (six rounds, slow reload, but can get snappy instant headshots if you’re good at tagging enemies). These weapons overshadow the more interesting weapons, featuring better range and better damage.
Puzzles are largely simple: despite the Deus Ex and Half-Life inspiration, the most you often have to do is find a password on a PC or a mechanical device needed to operate a machine. These items are almost always found mere feet away from their goal, making them more a momentary pause for hunting rather than a genuine puzzle or twist that sends you in a new direction.
While the game is mostly constrained to grey corridors and bases, the game is beautiful when it opens up to nature.
Narrative
Phantom Fury features a remarkable amount of lore and recorded dialogue to garnish an unclear story (it’s particularly unclear how this fits into the wilder cyberpunk world Harrison inhabited in Ion Fury). Shelly “Bombshell” Harrison awakens in a lab, with a mysterious mechanical arm, and must fight her way to freedom—and to protect her grandfather’s secrets. It’s a shame the story is a non-starter, because Valerie Arem’s performance as Harrison is a show-stealer.
Flaws
The enemy A.I. is very dumb, except for the moments it isn’t. There are moments when the stars align, and the combination of enemy cover, flanking, and barks recreate the magic of F.E.A.R. But only for moments. The levels are not built for their A.I., and the enemies mostly bum rush you in massive groups or stand alongside you in a shooting gallery row. You rarely have the chance to think about how to approach a fight, or the need to make a real tactical decision: all of the enemies are rushing at your face, and sometimes, annoyingly, spawning behind you.
This is made worse by the way enemies spawn a huge distance from where you are meant to fight them. There are often areas that we could call a “designated fight zone,” with the props and space the enemies need to (ideally) engage in a satisfying, interesting fight. You will usually reach their spawn zone before they reach the intended fight. But if you don’t, they will also continue past the designated fight zone to where you happen to be. It’s very easy to have most firefights before or after the place clearly meant for a fight. During one battle defending a lab, it took nearly two minutes for enemies to reach me. I cannot imagine why enemies spawn so far away, if not in the intended area itself.
Truly satisfying fights are rare. You may find fun clicking at the things that appear on screen, but there’s no true depth. This is made worse by the enemies’ refusal to stagger when under fire. Unless you use one of the recharging abilities you can unlock for some guns—a taser, a startling bright flashlight, etc.—enemies will not actually stagger. Even if you trigger a stagger animation, they will continue to fire and those shots will bend away from the gun to hit you. The only reliable damage stagger which prevents enemies from dealing damage is the SMG’s fire damage over time.
Frustratingly, I think that while the game displays shots coming toward you, everything is hit-scan on a hair-trigger, and avoiding being shot is impossible. If this is not the case, and enemies are not hit-scan, something is simply broken.
Because of the above, most outdoor battles are fought at extreme long range. Enemies will target you from an incredible distance, and you have no choice but to engage at range because approaching will kill you. The game is not designed to support long range combat in most situations, and you will struggle against enemies with the few weapons—mostly the pistol—which allows you to take them on from down the road.
The game lacks hard saves, which is a problem in a game as unstable as this. Checkpoints are generous, however. The game also lacks a map; this is largely fine for initial totally linear areas, but as soon as the game begins to open up a map is needed. You have to be all but standing on top of an item before the game will allow you to interact with it, making it very easy to miss essential items.
Performance
Enemies fall into physics props. Enemies disappear, or glitch through walls. Enemy A.I. turns off and they stare at you. Physics props will fling you across the map, possibly to your death. If an enemy starts melee attacking you while you’re using a turret, you will be trapped there until you die. Secondary fire sometimes won’t activate. If you’re dual wielding, the second gun can disappear. Bosses and physics objects can softlock the player.
I did not personally experience this, but many people have reported that weapon upgrades stop working and disappear. This can apparently be fixed if you hit the M key.
I experienced multiple hard crashes, including a crash that made any game I launched through Steam subsequently hard crash (fixed with a restart). I have not experienced that before.
Final Score
Before anything else, Phantom Fury is beset by bugs and curious technical issues: hard crashes, softlocks, immersion-wrecking oddities, small frustrations that pile up. If those were fixed, the game would score an entire point higher.
Phantom Fury‘s core problem is that it does not explore or iterate on its good ideas. The physics puzzles are never significantly expanded upon. Computers are only used for jokes or switches. Enemies rush toward you instead of engaging in the clearly intended F.E.A.R.-style fights. Almost every mechanic remains surface level, and remains identical to when you first encountered it.
Many of these issues can be fixed with the game largely staying as is. Many of these issues cannot. I hope the game does receive polish, because there is a perfectly enjoyable game buried under many of these problems.
Ion Fury may have significant flaws, but it is one of the better shooters of this era. It’s a shame that Phantom Fury is not.
Featured Image: 3D Realms
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