Without a shadow of a doubt, boomer shooters have become an entirely distinct genre, and we are allowing developers to construct their own worlds with the old-style first-person shooters. Nobody complains, and everyone’s happy, it is a win-win situation for everyone, funnily enough, for me too. Growing up with hits like Duke Nukem 3D, Half-Life, and Quake, I always had a soft spot for vintage first-person shooters who just cared about the gameplay and put the details in the background. Well, Half-Life cannot be considered one of those games as it was rather novel in the history of FPS games, at least at that time.

Integrating an interactive story into a first-person shooter used to be rather unusual, as 2.5D engines like Doom and Build couldn’t provide much environmental storytelling. Everything changed once creators shifted their attention from 2D sprite work to 3D polygons. I usually hate to say this, but history repeated itself with Phantom Fury, the sequel to 3D Realm’s Ion Fury. The main character, Shelly, has returned and found herself in a different situation after getting her arm replaced with a bionic one at a secret facility.

Shelly wakes up at the clinic where her arm gets replaced and the colonel is there to assist us. The first ever thing you notice is the graphics and how it is retro-fied more than anything. The quality screams of today, but the textures softly tell me it is the summer of 1998 when great games were being released right after another. Although implementing cutscenes to an old-style FPS is against its nature, Phantom Fury does it shortly without interrupting its flow.

Looking closely at the texture quality, everything is turned into a pixelated mesh, which is one of the selling points of Phantom Fury. The debut game was built on the actual BuildEngine to give you a proper feel, this time around, Phantom Fury has been made with the help of Unreal Engine. I’d rather expect it to be built with Source Engine instead because the title is heavily influenced by the game I previously mentioned.

This influence does not only stop with graphical resemblances, the setting, gameplay, and story aspects make it quite apparent that Phantom Fury had drawn key parts from the 1997 classic, Half-Life. During my first playthrough of Phantom Fury, I started connecting the dots where elements of Half-Life would casually be thrown in front of me, such as scared scientists running around, leaving the underground facility would bring me to a hidden entrance into a desert in New Mexico. Shelly is highly wanted by government officials and unearthly creatures would also roam aimlessly.

Now that I think about it, Phantom Fury adds more on top of the stereotypical gameplay aspects of the Half-Life. Shelly can find outposts that GDF has sent over, with the Nanite parts she finds around the map, she can use the outposts to upgrade her iron fist or her arsenal. These come in handy during the peak of the combat like tasers to stun enemies or being able to dual wield the SMGs.

Talking about arsenal, most of the weapons we got used to seeing in the Ion Fury have made a return, except for the shotgun, which got quite a buff in Phantom Fury. When I first found the shotgun in a security locker, I was also anticipating that it would have the same treatment as the Half-Life shotgun. 8 slugs, slow reload, and alt-fire that does huge damage. But nope, 12 slugs and pumps between two shots instead. I cannot help but notice that shotgun on its own is quite powerful as you can also snipe your enemies from quite a far too.

Meanwhile, the regular 9mm pistol and Loverboy were satisfying to use, the workhorse, that I mean the shotgun, has a god-like presence, which I couldn’t get used to. The design and sounds of it were quite off too, but no worries, you get another surprise in the later levels that I do not want to spoil if you really want to use a pump-action gun with quite a big punch.

Since Phantom Fury has brought the series into a 3D world, there are more details to be found and interacted with. Almost every item that is on the desks, hung onto the walls, or on the ground can be picked up and interacted with, of course the existence of this mechanic can also lead to environmental puzzles to solve too; such as building a crate stack to get over an obstacle or jumping on safe ground to not touch the electrocuted water beneath.

That brings me to the level design of Phantom Fury. I will be brutally honest, it is a complete mixed bag of thoughts. On one side, I adore the care that was put into detailing every single bit of the available map. Secrets and extra items are always within reach and it takes some thinking to get to them. After all, exploration is rewarded, however, the layouts of the levels themselves can be a bit tricky to get over, as they have no clear indication about where you should be heading next.

Let me touch upon a simple yet intriguing topic, I know I’ll be deriving a different matter but this one was always in my head during my gameplay. One small thing about Shelly that they kept from Ion Fury is his addiction to drinking beverages and eating fast food. In Ion Fury, finding stacks of colas or sodas would get her minuscule amounts of health- cracking open and drinking sound effects included, in Phantom Fury, this is the same with Shelly finding soda dispensers and casually drinking them all. She has a bottomless stomach when it comes to eating and drinking for sure.

In some boomer shooters, the character would be silent except for their painful groans. The idea sort of shifted when 3D Realms moved Duke Nukem to a 2.5D world and turned into a first-person shooter. Duke would casually respond to some of the actions he takes, such as clear disgust, anger, or an over-the-top pun. Shelly is also the same, with her one-liners, but I don’t think it can be as glorious as “I’ve got balls of steel.” Nothing can top that.

Phantom Fury is a game where you can just have your brain on auto-pilot when it comes to plowing through enemies and obstacles, but once you get stumped on what should be your next move, you run around completely clueless until you realize the solution was right there in front of you. Some of the obstacles require finding keys or levers to continue traversing through the map, keys are easy to stop and use as they are always color-coded, but it can be rather confusing when it is an entirely different item.

Valves or silver keys have little icons on the bottom of your screen, which do not represent the actual item itself. Unfortunately, despite being a first-person shooter veteran, I had to search for a valve to open up a door, only to realize I already had it in my inventory two minutes later. Maybe Slipgate Ironworks could improve on letting the players know about the items they are currently carrying.

One of the other similarities in Phantom Fury was the inclusion of code numbers. It might not be obvious at first, but this is a nod to another well-known mechanic that was popularized in Doom 3. Checking logs on PDAs or voice mails would give access codes to certain supply lockers or room access. Same with Phantom Fury, in order to bring down an airstrike or open up a door- or even unlock doors, you need to find computers to interact with.

Checking the logs of previous entries or emails sent between two people usually reveals useful information or some silly story-telling about the daily life of the users of the computer. Again, this is a good reference to Doom 3, where characters were shown as living beings with their intentions to brag, compliment, or talk through the means of communication. Phantom Fury has no shortage of gags and references to other media too, so people will 

Mentioning similar mechanics, casually I am reminded of how enemies work in Phantom Fury. Most of the opposing forces you’ll come across are foot soldiers or mutated zombies, and they take quite a lot of bullets before going down. The starter pistol, which has good damage output and accuracy, could be lethal if you play the cards right. That is if you are playing those old FPS games I mentioned, like Half-Life or Doom 3. In Phantom Fury, however, the enemies tend to be bullet sponges and directly shooting them in the head does not outright kill them.

Yes, their hats or helmets fly off, but it is completely irritating to land a good few headshots on a moving target and have them keep running about despite their heavy injuries. It becomes worse when you get yourself acquainted with the other first-person shooter games and know a bullet to the head should do the trick, but nope, muscle memory plays tricks on you and the enemy you shot in the head is still alive.

Compared to Ion Fury, combat seems to be more advanced, as you need to take cover and use the newly added crouch-slide mechanic. Although the developers give you more freedom to move in Phantom Fury, the enemy AI happens to lack some path-finding- or is confused about when to engage in a fight in Shelly. I know this will sound very odd, but seeing enemies just running around and not shooting at Shelly reminded me of the Opposing Force in Half-Life, where their run animation and enemy AI were questionable at best. Honestly have no idea whether this was intentional or not, if it is, then it is quite an obscure reference to Half-Life.

I want to like some of the aspects of Phantom Fury, but the more I take a look at what was important, the less I feel confident about its presentation. Right out of the gate, when Shelly gets out of her operation bed, we are asked to use our new bionic arm and its devastating power to punch through a wall. There is nothing wrong with showcasing what our new abilities can do, but then giving us long-range weapons to handle combat makes the fist quite redundant, except for the times when you gotta move interactable objects with the said fist.

What I am saying is, that we are given a one-hit-kill mechanic but there are barely any circumstances in which you would use the said mechanic due to the natural behavior of guns being more powerful at range. Sure, the game reminds me that it exists with puzzles and obstacles that require the usage of the iron fist, but then I completely forget its existence once guns start to favor me more in a combat situation. It could have been improved by one simple change, and that is giving the player ammo or health back upon using the iron fist.

Doom (2016) was able to handle one-time melee mechanics with refillable bars once the player was completely dry in terms of their ammunition. A chainsaw would reward them with a free-kill and give ammo to keep going on. Shame that it is a bit of a missed opportunity in Phantom Fury. Nevertheless, this is one of the only small and subtle changes that could make the game a bit more balanced.

Although Phantom Fury is lacking in some places, the overall presentation and gameplay feel right about home. With its high-quality delivery of gameplay, you can see that the developers have thought of every single detail while creating a better sequel, and Phantom Fury easily manages to be one of the better boomer shooter titles to grab the attention of many, well, boomers who love first-person shooter games. If you have liked Ion Fury and its charm, Phantom Fury will surely deliver the same experience but with its advanced technology such as voice acting and 3D graphics! (Wow, I sure do love advanced technology!)

Atilla Turan (@burningarrow)
Editor, NoobFeed