I've been following the development of this game on and off for a few years and feared that it would end up as yet another shitty survival battle royale thing with terrible netcode and a dying playerbase.
Since the game released a few months ago and got its first major content update just the other month, I decided to buy it and I am very pleasantly surprised. This might be the only game of its type that I see myself playing for a long time. I've got a modest 12 hours in it so far, but I believe I've seen enough to outline some major differences it has over similar games and maybe convince some of you guys to give it a shot, given that its quite a unique experience. I'm not going to claim to be an expert at this game but with a K:D of >2 I'd like to think that some of my time in Fistful of Frags paid off.
Plus its on a fat, 40% off steam sale now.
From the top, this game is about hunting monsters and others players in a Weird West setting - maps are 1kmx1km in size and 12 players and 1-2 boss monsters (as well as wide variety of trash mobs with various attributes, traps, interactive objects, etc etc) randomly distributed throughout 16 locations. While superficially this makes the game sound like a battle royale game in the vein of PUBG or a survival game in the vein of DayZ or Tarkov, the game really sets itself apart in a variety of ways, and is IMO by far the best designed one of the bunch.
1. The game feels like a proper Crytek FPS - it plays smoothly, has a responsive and streamlined control scheme, and I am yet to experience any weird desync issues, it runs very well on my machine, and the feedback for both melee and ranged combat is very good. This is in stark contrast to games like PUBG and especially Dayz and Tarkov that can barely run for 5 seconds without shitting themselves. There is also no clunky inventory or looting interface either (all of the equipment you buy/find is accessed through pressing keys 1-10). There is a notable absence of survival mechanics, crafting, construction, or indeed much looting - you buy all the gear you need outside of the round and enter it stocked up, and generally speaking the only guns you pick up will be those dropped by enemy players.
2.
Both game modes have an objective besides survival and collecting gear - players are incentivized to move through the map collecting clues so as to narrow down the boss' location, defeat them, and escape the map with their soul for mad cash and xp. During every stage of this other players can foil you, which can resolve in situations like having someone stalk you to the boss lair, watch you defeat it, before swooping in to kill you and run off with the boss soul. As a result of this objective-based gameplay, gunfights break out organically around points of interest that contain clues, extraction points, and the aforementioned boss lairs - the phenomenon of running through empty players for a good 20 minutes before getting shot in the head and suddenly dying is basically nonexistent here.
3. Tying into above point, the
relatively compact map and player size cuts out on meaningless wandering, but moreover it also also contains some of the best locations in the genre.
Crytek designed each map as an interactive combat sandbox akin to their previous games, meaning each location has a plethora of entry points and firing locations; the map is full of interactive objects like traps that can be set up to turn the aforementioned compounds into fortresses, lamps that can be turned on/dimmed/shot at to create a fiery explosion, sound traps in the form of broken glass, kennels full of starving dogs, and even lamed horses littering the fields, and even generators that can be turned on to activate strong flood lights at night at the expense of muffling nearby footsteps; various types of zombie infest the entire map to make stealth and traversal engaging even without nearby players, from your standard chaff that lazily follows you to packs of hounds that can chase down a sprinting player to easy-to-avoid yet difficult to put down "Meatheads" that effectively deny a small area with their very presence.
All of this combined means that
the player is constantly faced with important decisions - should you go straight to the nearest location containing a clue that can lead you to the boss, or should you hit a resupply point to top up on ammo instead? Upon finding the boss lair, should you try to kill the boss quickly and escape before anyone else gets there, or should you camp the location and let someone else do the dirty work for you? Should you hole up in the nearest compound to take down the players chasing you or just keep moving? How will you distract the enemy holed up in a compound so that they don't shoot you to bits on entry? (Last match faced me with the last question. Upon seeing through the cracks in the walls that the movement was mostly contained by the second floor, I threw fire bombs at the windows and snuck in through the first floor, the raging fire having both obscured their sight and muffled the sounds of my steps.)
4. The game takes place in a rarely (if ever?) explored setting of a Weird Western, demon-infested Louisiana in the year 1895. The majority of the arsenal consists of single-action revolvers, lever or bolt action rifles, break-action shotguns, and the like.
The result is skill-based gunplay with high-damage, low rate of fire weapons - if you've played Fistful of Frags, its a bit like that game but much more lethal. The fact that missing a shot almost always leaves you exposed for a second, if not more, means that often setting up the shot by getting the enemy exactly where you want them tactically is as important as your precision. This is on top of the game's disturbing aesthetic and G O D L I K E sound design (experienced players will be able to precisely track enemy movements based cracks of far-off gunfire, the agitation of animals in the distance,
even the flight patterns of fucking crows).
In my 12 hours I've committed daring assaults against players holed up fortresses that were locked up tighter than Fort Knox, chased fleeing players through hundreds of meters of Bayou, lured a pack of monsters into a pair of unsuspecting players, ambushed two rival groups of players and put them all down, and escaped the map as I was tracked by at least two different groups converging on my location from different directions.
There is way more I can write but at this point we are reaching shill-tier spergery so for the benefit of all I will stop. However, if some sucker was actually persuaded to give this game a shot, and needs a duo partner for US East/West servers, shoot me a PM
and I will make your filthiest dreams come true
Yeah that's the reason for all the sperging - I just want someone to p-play with me UwU