Phantom Fury review

Phantom Fury aims to offer Duke Nukem action and Half-Life challenges. But sadly, this Bombshell is a disappointing and frequently uninteresting dud.

The retro FPS, commonly referred to as the ‘boomer shooter’, can provide a lot of straightforward satisfaction. Routinely, the genre provides players with an arsenal of outrageous weapons and an ample supply of enemy fodder that can be reduced into pulpy giblets. And while that concept occasionally materializes in Slipgate Ironworks’ Phantom Fury, it’s habitually buried beneath a pile of regretful design decisions. Throughout the campaign, I was daydreaming about better boomer shooters.

For better or worse, Danish-based developers go light on the storytelling. The game’s introduction reveals protagonist Shelly “Bombshell” Harrison waking from a coma, unsure of where she is. A commanding officer explains that the Global Defense Force has been infiltrated, and she needs to get to the Demon Core before the bad guys do. And that’s all very reasonable. We all want to get to the shooting, too.

Bionically Armed and Slightly Dangerous

While there’s no excess exposition, Phantom Fury doesn’t do much with the lead character either. She’s not as comically crass as genre mates Duke Nukem or Lo Wang, relying on signature weapons like the triple-barreled Loverboy revolver and the use of bowling bombs to help define her character. But this is her third outing, following 2016’s Bombshell and 2019’s Ion Fury. Harrison’s central trait is light confidence as she delivers generic one-liners like, “Almost broke a sweat”. Clearly, the writers didn’t, since Bombshell’s quips are lifeless duds.

But the lack of personality is the least of Fury’s worries. One of the most problematic elements is the game’s pacing, which relentlessly fluctuates between gunning down enemies and moving to the next section of a stage. Combat isn’t appalling, but it’s hardly engaging, either. From impractical bits of environmental cover to enemies who tend to either shuffle about or make a beeline for you, firefights are more messy than tactical.

Cool Weapons but Middling Firefights

Sure, some of the guns in Phantom Fury’s arsenal can offer some entertaining alt-fire modes. Pistol ammo is thankfully plentiful, so a burst-shot is a no-brainer. Meanwhile, the ability to stun opponents with your shotgun’s muzzle flash can be a lifesaver. But enemies are often too resilient, removing some of the ferocity from your firearms and trusty tazing nightstick. At present, your alt-fire mode doesn’t consistently work with some of your weapons, which is just one of the numerous glitches you’ll encounter. Yes, more than a few times, the game arbitrarily prompted aggravation. Phantom Fury, indeed.

But shootouts represent only a fraction of your overall playtime. Regretfully, Fury has a fixation on old-school environmental puzzling, where you’ll need a password or color-coded key to access the next area. Finding the solution for the former involves reading through documents on the various computers scattered around the environment, which is about as fun as reading a terms and conditions agreement.

Bombshells, Boredom, and Working Bathrooms

Sure, there’s a bit of expositional detail, but there’s also reading a lot of reading missives off simulated monochromatic monitors. When Phantom Fury sends you scouring for an object to open a secured gate, it’s only marginally better. Often, you’ll end up noticing how poor the game’s visual highlighting is as you search for objects that blend into the background a bit too well. There’s one instance where androids fall into incinerator-looking pits. Not long after, Fury expects players to jump into a similarly coded hole.

Luckily, few of the puzzles will truly test your cognitive abilities, especially if you lived through the era of early 21st-century action titles. It’s largely busy work that feels unfulfilling. The concept of giving the protagonist a powerful, robotic arm too often feels at odds with Fury’s elementary escape rooms. But simple puzzles aren’t the only throwback to late ‘90s-era FPS. Curiously, the game is brimming with interactive objects that range from toilets, faucets, and sinks – all the way to mortar rounds.

Similarly, you can pick up and throw things around. But beyond a few stacking puzzles to create a makeshift stairway, the function feels underutilized. Perhaps toying with environmental objects was a fascinating FPS activity at one time, but it’s lost all of its novelty in 2024. And that’s the overarching feeling of Phantom Fury. Everything in the game has been accomplished by far more interesting games that are at least a decade old.

Phantom Fury was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.