Scorching on the heels of the worldwide success of Marvel Rivals and with different in style live-service video games like Naraka: Bladepoint and As soon as Human underneath its belt, NetEase has turned its consideration to the hero shooter style with FragPunk. New inside improvement crew Unhealthy Guitar Studio is made up of younger, hardcore FPS followers, and after becoming a member of them for a one-hour play session the place we tried a brand new character and map revealed solely on this preview, the crew’s eye for element is obvious to see.
FragPunk’s primary recreation mode is the 5v5 Shard Conflict mode. On its floor, this mode resembles your typical Overwatch-like hero shooter skirmish, nevertheless it additionally pulls from a wide range of influences to combine up the gameplay. The rounds on this mode are nearer to the bomb-defusal aims of Counter Strike, with one crew planting bombs at specified places and the opposite defending, with comparatively small arenas that hold rounds tight and centered.
As with all hero shooter, gamers can select from a collection of characters – named Lancers – who every have a collection of distinctive abilities, which means lots to study when it comes to particular person character preferences and crew make-up. For our session, we tried the newly unveiled character Chum, a stone robotic who’s accompanied by a mechanical pet angler fish named Chomper. Along with utilizing the sport’s arsenal of satisfying weapons, Chum can toss projectiles just like sticky mines and smoke grenades, in addition to sending Chomper out as assist. Chomper can observe and chew enemies for a number of low-damage assaults, basically like a strolling turret, or might be modified with pet treats that make it explode on contact or path a thick smokescreen in its wake, including a number of strategic layers that felt enjoyable to combine up.
And being manufactured from stone, Chum can be a robust defence character, making him an excellent all-round possibility for newcomers.
Many different Lancer talents will not be solely offensive however defensive or tactical – partitions for canopy, traps, pace boosts, abilities that spotlight enemies on the map, and so forth. We tried a number of Lancers, and located a diversified impact on gameplay. Utilizing Nitro, along with her directly-controllable four-legged drone and gun turrets, we have been capable of rack up a number of assists; whereas Axon was one other favorite due to his extra aggressive collection of abilities, together with projectile bombs and a cool guitar-gun. Within the Lancer choice display screen, you may watch a brief video clip for every means that will help you rapidly grasp what they do.
However what actually units FragPunk aside is its Shard Playing cards system. Firstly of every spherical, every crew is randomly assigned a set of three playing cards, which they’ll swap out and in, every of which modifications the foundations of the spherical on your whole crew. Some are easy stat proportion boosts or buffs, whereas others do issues like growing the scale of your enemies’ heads, reducing your personal or equipping helmets, affecting the problem of headshots for that spherical. Others nonetheless are far more uncommon, and utterly change the gameplay.
For instance, one Shard Card gave our crew a form of proximity detector in order that we obtained an aural and visible sign each time an enemy was close by, whereas one other slowly regenerated our well being gauge, each of which gave us a welcome benefit. Some playing cards have an effect on the setting, comparable to shrouding the map in fog that provides stress as enemies are tougher to identify. Others have lively results – press the Z key to swap well being bars with an enemy, or to swap gear with them, or to leap right into a parallel world the place you may basically run unseen to a brand new location after which pop again into the battle to ambush your foes.
It’s loads to soak up. You solely have round 30 seconds to finalise your hand for every spherical, and at first every of the 150+ playing cards shall be new to you. “We intentionally made the rule for every card so simple as potential in order that they are often fast to grasp,” Artistic Director Xin Chang instructed us. “We additionally made the outline textual content for every card as quick as potential, and used visible design to make its results extra apparent.”
After just a few rounds, the Shard Playing cards system started to make sense, and actually paid off when it comes to making every spherical really feel completely different. We have been compelled to have interaction otherwise with each spherical, rethinking methods and responding not solely to our crew’s present hand but in addition the enemy crew’s.
Apparently, the ruleset-shuffling Shard Playing cards have been impressed not solely by different videogames, but in addition by sports activities. The event crew’s constructing has a big gymnasium with amenities for actions comparable to basketball, desk tennis and badminton, its partitions adorned with pictures of the builders in competitors.
Chang defined, “I play soccer and basketball, so I like video games with a two-team system. I additionally watch quite a lot of NBA, and so they typically make modifications to the foundations to maintain the game fascinating. Based mostly on that concept, I additionally needed to have a system of tweaking the foundations in our recreation.”
Sports activities additionally influenced the crew’s strategy to FragPunk’s maps. Degree Designer An Yuan added, “In stage design, we divide the map into areas which might be good for assault or defence phases, in order that the participant has to maintain transferring. It’s form of like basketball, the place you have got completely different spatial design across the courtroom that fits the completely different roles of the gamers. We utilized that idea in our recreation, and likewise within the Shard Playing cards, which may flip a superb hiding place into a nasty one.”
FragPunk additionally incorporates a Duel mode. When a match ends in a tie, it modifications to a one-on-one showdown, slightly bit just like the mano a mano face-offs in Name of Obligation: Warzone’s Gulag, however impressed by soccer’s penalty shootouts. Every participant takes their flip within the queue for a sequence of quick and sharp winner-stays-on rounds in small however vertically layered arenas. With all our teammates spectating throughout our flip, we completely felt the stress, making for a enjoyable and completely different tie-breaker mini-game. It’s so cool, the devs even added it as a separate standalone mode referred to as Duel Grasp.
Every map has interactive gimmicks that gamers can use strategically to realize the higher hand. First, we tried the newly unveiled map Dongtian. That is the Hangzhou, China-based dev crew’s stab at an Asian-flavoured map, and its two bomb websites might be rotated by gamers for tactical benefit. When the change in the course of the map is activated by a participant, the core cowl on the bomb website rotates, altering methods for each the offensive and defensive groups.
“We wish to use these rotating partitions to change the sting between the assault crew and the defence crew,” defined Yuan. “So we encourage gamers to battle for that core space to keep up their edge or get the sting for themselves.”
Different maps have their very own gimmicks – BlackMarket’s manually managed bridge permits gamers to alter the map’s format and even pull the bottom from underneath their opponents’ ft; Akhet has an underground river that enables sneaky gamers to maneuver straight from the center space to a bomb website; and Tundra has magic portals that immediately zap gamers between gates to outmanoeuvre the opposite crew. It was enjoyable to discover these maps, and clearly gamers who take the time to study them correctly will acquire a bonus.
Dongtian is the house setting for the Lancer Kismet. Narrative Director Wenhe Fu defined, “The sport has a multiverse idea, which permits us to have every character come from fairly a unique universe. We’ll take a while in future phases to introduce these background particulars to gamers.”
Constructed right into a mountain and dotted with historic wood temple buildings, mystical statues and wizened timber with gracefully warped trunks, Dongtian’s Jap aesthetic brings a wise visible twist to FragPunks’ vibrant world.
Artwork Director Yiming Li instructed us, “We needed to mix historic buildings that seem like they may come from China with near-future science and know-how parts, in addition to some spiritual parts. Whereas every map can have its personal distinctive cultural options, we wish all of them to suit into the sport’s general sci-fi feeling. It’s like in Star Wars: Every of the civilisations are very completely different, however when they’re seen as an entire, in addition they exist underneath a harmonious sci-fi setting.”
And that brings us to FragPunk’s visuals. It is a actually beautiful recreation. The punk-influenced and sci-fi-tinged fluorescent aesthetic is wealthy and interesting, and its kill animations are punctuated by dazzling bursts of color. Its maps are extraordinarily readable, and participant characters pop, making it straightforward to observe the motion. Even its menus are fairly to take a look at, with the flashy presentation you’d count on from a Persona recreation or Avenue Fighter 6, with daring layouts accented by graffiti scribbles. It actually stands out within the hero shooter area.
FragPunk shall be free to play, with a small collection of Lancers accessible firstly in order that gamers can study them steadily, unlocking extra as they undergo in-game forex accrued by play or paid microtransactions. Different optionally available purchases shall be strictly beauty. We’ll have to attend till launch to see how the service aspect pans out – different NetEase video games like Marvel Rivals and Naraka: Bladepoint have seen complaints about pricing, however that apart they’ve managed to maintain gamers glad, so hopefully that’s a superb signal.
Along with the Shard Conflict and Duel modes we tried, FragPunk will function a mixture of modes at or after launch which might be focused at each hardcore and informal gamers, together with one the place all gamers are compelled to make use of the identical Lancer, or melee weapons solely, and so forth. The event crew is outwardly largely made up of pro-level gamers, nevertheless it’s clear they’ve additionally taken steps to make the sport accessible to newbies and even streamers and their viewers.
