Phantom Fury Critic Reviews

Though I have reservations, Phantom Fury is still a great shooter with much to offer. Some players will certainly be able to circumvent the areas that I complained about in their own playthroughs. Still, even if you experience the same pace-fighting confusion I did, the game is worth playing and will certainly win back your goodwill with some of its more action-packed and exciting moments.

Phantom Fury is a delightfully old-school FPS with a modern edge. This challenging title will test your resolve and your puzzle-solving abilities. Moreover, it demands that you explore every nook and cranny. If you want a retro game that will test your skills, then this one must be played.

Phantom Fury feels like stepping back in time to the late 90s in an explosion of pixilated carnage that only occasionally stumbles due to its unwavering reliance on old-school sensibilities.

Shelly "Bombshell" Harrison is back again to show the charm of retro action that continues to the present day. Dynamic FPS will not be lost among current competitors in the genre.

Phantom Fury is quite easily one of the most refined boomer shooters in the market today.

Phantom Fury is a classic FPS that manages to engage and entertain. It is a simple but well-finished evolution of its predecessor, to whom it owes a lot and which can still be an excellent yardstick in the panorama of boomer shooters. The new production, while not shining for originality, knows how to be a remarkable follow-up.

Phantom Fury is a good first-person shooter for anyone who loved the genre during its classic period and wants the same combination of speed and violence, with a few modern concepts sprinkled on top. Shelly is a decent heroine, the B movie writing mostly works, and most combat arenas are well-balanced on Normal. The development team needs to make opponents a little smarter in patches and I really don’t understand why Bombshell can interact with so many objects in the world that aren’t useful in any way. Phantom Fury is a boomer shooter with solid mechanics that struggles to communicate a clear identity.

Phantom Fury is an engaging FPS, taking cues from early 3D shooters, such as Half-Life and SiN. For the most part it is well executed, having solid gunplay, a staggering arsenal of weapons and great level variety. It could have been an amazing experience if it wasn't for some pesky issues, primarily of a technical nature.

A noble attempt at doing something more with the boomer shooter genre, Phantom Fury misses the mark a little when it comes to execution but still offers a good time for players that have a soft spot for late-90s shooters.

Despite being a game with exceptional ideas developed by a talented team, the reality is grim: Phantom Fury debuts with fundamental design flaws amidst the crossfire of survival, Embracer Group, and layoffs during development. Unfortunately, it is a rushed game, plagued by constant errors and a hastily constructed third act.

If you like to march through corridors, blow through your enemies, and maybe get a few one-liners in along the way? Phantom Fury is going to be a good time. It’s a legacy throwback that has done its homework, and while it didn’t delight me it also never made me want to throw the dang thing in the garbage. It’s some good lightweight fun. Let’s just hope that this time around the title avoids becoming the main character of controversy, hmm?

I will now put Phantom Fury on the shelf for a few months to return later this summer, when Slipgate Ironworks will hopefully have had time to balance the experience and improve the feel of the relatively substantial arsenal of weapons that the game presents. Because there is undeniably a lot to be impressed, amazed and entertained by here, even if it is in a relatively unpolished form at the time of writing.

Phantom Fury is a decent boomer shooter, albeit one that emphasizes environmental interactivity over an arcade-inspired killing spree in which everything is a weapon. The few moments of cinematic silliness are par for the course in the boomer shooter genre, but they’re not enough to make this any less of a slog.

Phantom Fury is not bad, but it's a forgettable experience. It would be an iper boomer shooter, but fall short of its ambitions.

Phantom Fury refers to itself as a road movie and claims to be inspired by games like Half-Life. You should ignore these flowery descriptions, if you are hoping to get any fun out of this retro shooter. This game offers an interactive world with plenty of shootouts and a bunch of puzzles. However, technical issues, weak sound design and weaker weapon impacts, as well as uninteresting storytelling get in the way of enjoying this title. Its 12 to 15 hours of play time make this game feel too long. Elements such as pass codes hidden in terminals or blocked passages, which you need to clear up with a swivelling crane, repeat and lose their novelty, as does the small selection of enemies. It’s still entertaining in short sessions, but it doesn’t offer enough variety for anything more than that.

Phantom Fury is an unapologetic boomer-shooter that can definitely talk the talk, but fails to walk the same walk that its inspirations did some 25 years ago. Countless technical problems, obscure level design, and a sad excuse for a story unfortunately make what could have been a good game a middling one.

Shelly Harrison sets out on a cross-country action-FPS trek to find the lost artifact of the Demon Core. Intense firefights are interspersed with slower exploratory segments, making it more a late-90s FPS throwback than prequel game Ion Fury's Build Engine adventure.

But regardless of what caused the project to get derailed, it still means that Phantom Fury is a disappointing result. It’s a mash of ‘00s FPS cliches without reprieve. I spent most of its runtime wishing it was over. Or, at least, wishing it was what it promised to be. Its overall blandness has done the impossible and made me appreciate Duke Nukem Forever just a little bit more.

Nostalgic feeling is no longer enough.

Like any respectable first-person shooter, Phantom Fury provides some imaginative weaponry. Outside of the middling firefights, the rest of the game is a chore built around bad design decisions. From hunts for colored-colored gate keys to scanning faux emails for passwords, most of Fury is either tiresome or tedious.