Phantom Fury

i gave this a shot, i really did. i typically don't play a game i don't enjoy, but this was like playing a bad movie. like, an actual bad movie, not an enjoyable bad movie. this is the longest review i will ever post. i hate played this and 100%'d it so you don't have to. some stuff might be repeated as i jotted this down in the overlay notes while playing. the good: - not many games try to capture the half life/sin vibe. - some guns feel alright - worth a play to laugh at how horribly unfinished and broken a product can be now onto the bad. i had more fun joting down these notes while playing than actually playing this: - black cutscenes - horrible aliasing at 4k, bad AA options - less than stellar performance with the attached specs. - get stuck on environment a bit too much. i had to reload from checkpoint multiple times. - achievements pop when they shouldn't and don't when they should. - there was an achieve to get a strike at some bowling lanes. all i did was throw a bowling bomb onto the lane and it exploded, no pins were hit. achieve popped. you see tons of stuff like this. - there's an achieve to get all weapons. you get this before the end of the game. then during the last part you find another two weapons. what. and they don't go in your inventory, you just pick them up and drop them. you right click to drop these weapons WHAT! no fps does this. - i have a VR setup and this game launches steamVR and shows the VR icon next to my name on the friends list lol. - multiple points i glitched myself out of bounds past a scripted event. - when you are in chicago, there are many european references that don't makes sense. billboards for "slavo" cars, a german musikclub, a poster that references a past communist government? what is even going on? lmao! - loverboy shows 6 shots, but fires 3 rounds per trigger pull. motherflakker shows 3 shot s, but fires 3 rounds with 1 trigger pull. - there's a minigame that is a simple arcade shooter. multiple attempts i experienced getting shot by enemies that weren't rendered. it's also tied to an achievement. was this even tested? - environment not interactable in a lot of spots it should be. there is a row of motorcycles parked outside of building at one point, and you can't use your bionic punch to knock them over. - inconsistent environment. on the train level, there are red canisters you can explode. one time you are forced to use a crane to fling a box into it, another time you can just shoot it. 0 consistency. - i got the gas canister on the train level and it didn't trigger the next objective, had to reload. - enemies slide around the floor and through objects while shooting you. - enemies shoot you through walls. - enemies/bosses will completely stop moving and just stand there like their script broke. happened on almost every boss fight. last boss just stood there. - enemies hit-scan you from across the universe. - enemies blow doors open with explosives, doors are still functional after. - the "oh here's the code you need" emails are lazy - bad level design with no save feature besides checkpoints is torture - some of the worst checkpoint design i've ever seen. sometimes you'll checkpoint right after an objective that took a long time to complete. other times you won't. checkpoints way after getting keycards, etc. horrible. laughable. - the checkpoints are so bad at the end of the game you can just keep running down the street and hitting each checkpoint. ignore the enemies that spawn out of thin air. - at one point it tries to force you to get an arm upgrade to open a door. you can just ignore it and open the door and it still acts like you upgraded your arm. - get shot through walls while enemies are hiding - the arm in general feels tacked on and not used well. - endless waves and gauntlets of dumb enemies. they are a bore to fight and basically moving damage sponges. - i didn't even bother upgrading anything. game was still easy on hard. - splash damage is weird. micro stringer, bowling bombs, plasma cannon. if there are mobs blocked at all by others, even a single pixel, they take 0 damage. what year is it? - not many secrets on levels, if any at all. - ion bow zoom stops working randomly. - take the upgrade for burst on the handgun and you lose single shot. not even a toggle fire mode bind. - there are non-interactable invincible enemies used as props in certain areas. this makes 0 sense. - shooting around corners is nearly impossible. invisible corners stick out a few feet. - needing to actually look a the lock on the door to use a key is just one example of annoying mechanics that add 0 to the game. - half of the weapons in the game can actually be completely missed, including one of the namesake weapons. whoever decided that shouldn't be let near the development of a video game. - most things feel like they have about 5 seconds of thought put into them. lots of generic here. they tried to do a few things their own way that didn't work out at all. - psychic giant boss fight is lame just like the rest, but this one just felt really lame. - what even is the "psychic giant's head" weapon? you never get ammo for it, and the one time i fired it pixel randomly flew to the ceiling. amazing. - some checkpoints on reload don't respawn the enemies. easy! - the last few levels are filled with wide opens spaces with nothing in them. - lots of physics puzzles are easily circumvented. 0 testing put into these. - wow - the research facility. a level design nightmare. there are batteries that power different floors. there is an elevator and a few other things that ARBITRARILY get power if you meet some other criteria. feels like whoever was working on this was just like 'whatever i'm over it' lool. - i was waiting for it! cliche helicopter on rooftop fight! - why is john blade in the game? was that throwing a bone for an unfinished slophouse mess? - ending cutscene the dialogue volume is all over the place. seems like there was a decent game here somewhere, but this is deserving of the complaints and criticism. this one needed more polish, if not another team working on it. they have a great IP and totally failed. anyone giving this a positive review must have the lowest expectations possible, basically no expectations. think i'll play some ion fury to forget about this.