Fragpunk

Chinese gaming monolith Netease doesn't invent the wheel, it steals it. When the blueprint for the ultra-successful Marvel Rivals was drawn up, the intentions were clear from the start. Take the best parts of Overwatch and make a game out of it. Zero originality, zero original thinking - which, as in the case of Forza Motorsport (shameless Gran Turismo plagiarism initially), Diddy Kong Racing (Mario Kart) and Bayonetta (Devil May Cry), would prove to be exactly the right idea. With the newly released free shooter Fragpunk, Netease (via the Bad Guitar Games studio) has done it again. The basic plan is as simple as it is clever. Steal the Hero aspect, the game mechanics, the layout and parts of the overall design from Valorant, combine it all with Hearthstone - Voila! Fragpunk in a nutshell. But is it any good?

The short answer is; Yes! Fragpunk isn't quite as successful as Marvel Rivals but it's still an enjoyable action game. For starters, Bad Guitar has focused on the right things regarding overall playability and how the weapons feel. There's a bit of Apex Legends here, a bit of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and a hefty dose of Valorant. I enjoy the running pace, I like the feel of just about every weapon and there's a more satisfying feeling to both squeezing the trigger and hitting with your bullets here than in, say, Apex Legends. The developers have obviously looked for inspiration in the right places (as I said) and built gunplay that is dripping with precision and accuracy which is nice to see, not least considering how gooey and arbitrary it feels to play Call of Duty today, with the huge differences between time-to-kill and time-to-die that currently exist.

In Fragpunk, the heroes are called 'Lancers' and in the character gallery we find a whole bunch of really freaky types as well as more standard Valorant plagiarism. There's a kid here who runs around with what looks like a Guitar Hero guitar that shoots lightning, and a floating mage with a manbun that can climb walls. For my part, there are plenty of characters here worth trying out that feel quirky if not super original and the variety between character design and special attacks and how to use them to be effective on the battlefield is very good. Fragpunk is also not particularly balanced, which in some unfathomable way has only turned out to be a good thing. Axon is the sharpest character in the game by quite a margin, and Broker is a close second if you ask me, and I don't really mind. Rather, I feel that the lack of balance between different Lancers creates a chaos in the games that feels old-fashioned and out of touch. Which I like. It's a bit like Marvel Rivals, where Moon Knight and Spider-Man have dominated the lobbies since the beginning, and don't make the game worse for it.

As for the card game aspect of Fragpunk, I am also impressed and pleased. I'm certainly not a player who settles down with Gwent, Balatro or Hearthstone if I have a moment to spare and was thus sceptical beforehand that Fragpunk would be a game for me. But it is, I like it and I like the original touch that the cards and the cards' abilities offer. The developers at Bad Guitar have, as in the case of the character balance, allowed themselves to go pretty wild with the abilities in the game's Shard Cards and it is much appreciated. One card makes enemies' heads huge and thus super easy to hit while another allows you to lay eggs which give you more health. There is also a card that allows you to spontaneously throw honeydew melons at the opposing team, who then slip (!) on the melon and can get hit in the head by your team's sniper. In a similar vein, there are 100+ more "serious" cards and abilities.

The design is good, too. There are elements of Apex here too, elements of Fortnite, elements of Valorant but also lots of originality and I'm a sucker for the ultra-coloured, cartoony stuff that the developers here offer. The character design is successful and everything from the garish contrasting colours to the rasterised car effects when someone is shot I consider very successful. If Sony's multi-million dollar fiasco Concord had looked like this and had this pace of play, it would most likely have survived, if I'm going to rub the cue ball.

So... What's bad then? The menus need to be reworked as they're bloody difficult to navigate around and lack clarity. Considering that there are 169 different Shard Cards, it feels like there is a lack of tactical and strategic depth in Fragpunk's team game setup, which Bad Guitar would need to work on. I've encountered some glitches with the netcode as well that would need to be tweaked but overall I've enjoyed this colourful action bagatelle. Because I think that's how this game should be seen. As a fun trifle and a departure from more serious alternatives in the genre. With Marvel Rivals and Fragpunk, Netease has found its own track that is easy to enjoy, at least for me.