Fragpunk has finally landed, marking another addition to the Hero Shooter genre, but that doesn’t make it any old Overwatch, Valorant, or Apex Legends copy. Instead, it breaks the mold of those that came before, and it’s genius.
Hero Shooter fatigue has shown up in recent years, as few new entries manage to break past the giants that define the genre. However, that might change with Fragpunk, the adventure that breaks both the mold, and the rules.
Essentially, Fragpunk places players into a fast-paced 5v5 battle, complete with the choice of 13 different Lancers and your own weapon type. All this happens inside a close-ranged map designed to keep the combat fast, deadly, and ever changing.
However, the real rulebreaker, literally, here, are Shard Cards, which completely flip the game on its head, so no battle is ever the same.
Rules are for chumps
Shard Cards serve as rule changers for both your team and the enemy’s. Through selecting these cards every round you can grant buffs to your team, nerfs to the enemy, or even alter the map’s landscape from a city street to a frozen wasteland.
Now place that into a combat scenario and your team has the capability to completely flip a match around. For example, you could be playing Shard Clash while losing to the team that always plants their bomb where you’re not expecting it.
So, you pull a Site Deletion card, forcing them to go to the only other site available, where you can destroy them without care.
The ability to change the rules of a game so quickly isn’t something we’ve seen before in other hero shooters, and it destroys one of the golden rules of the genre: keep things predictable.
Each gamemode, be it Search and Destroy, a simple battle royale, or a Team Deathmatch has its rules. You know you can rely on your weapon dealing specific damage, the enemy doing specific actions, and the objective always staying the same. Well, not in Fragpunk.
Now, that might sound unattractive to fans of Overwatch or Marvel Rivals, or even Apex, but it only serves to make the game so much more enjoyable due to its unpredictability and therefore, its versatility.
Every match is different, every duel is unique, and every battle is undeniably fun now that the rules are out of the way. As such, when you get to the fifth match of the same gamemode, you’re not repeating your plays or expecting the enemy to go down the same route.
Every round, each team pulls a card which mixes up how you approach the fight, whether that’s more offensive or defensive, and that’s exactly what the genre needs.
Stripped down fun
Interestingly, that unique feature is only heightened with the stripped down gameplay elsewhere in Fragpunk.
Sure, the 13 Lancers all have their own powerful abilities which contribute to that versatility mentioned before, as well as different strategies and playstyles, but the real beauty lies in simplicity, particularly when the guns come out and the fight truly begins.
Dexerto / Bad Guitar StudioFirst of all, there’s no sliding in Fragpunk (provided you avoid coming up against the one rule-breaking exception here, Axon). So the fear of being destroyed by an enemy skidding round a corner with their crosshair magically aimed at your head is gone. Then, you get to choose the weapon that fits you, rather than the one that comes with the hero.
Add that to the smaller-scale maps, and you have a style of gameplay that harks back to original hero shooter days, where there was a primary focus on choosing the right character for the job, keeping an ear out for the noises around you, and of course utilizing the landscape.
Fragpunk manages to blend the best parts of the genre with its unique style. It keeps the simplicity of a shooter while combining fun and loveable heroes with the rulebreaking cards feature that keeps the action fresh, and unlike anything we’ve seen before.
Rules are a vital aspect of any multiplayer game, but Fragpunk proves that rules are made to be broken.
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