Fury

"Shows promise, but not very welcoming for most gamers"

This review is for the online game Fury. The website for the game can be found at www.unleashthefury.com

Fury is a relatively new online game and can also be considered a pioneer of sorts. Most online games will attempt to blend both player versus environment (PvE) and player versus player (PvP) types of game play. However, the goal behind Fury is to leave out PvE completely and have a game composed entirely of PvP. The intent of the developers is to have a game that suits both casual and hardcore PvPers alike in a game that follows an “easy to learn, hard to master” idea. They want casual players to be able to simply log in and have fun, while hardcore players can delve into the depths of the game and play more strategically and competitively.

Story: NA/10
Like most fighting games, the story can really only be considered fluff. The difference between Fury and fighting games is that there is no story mode. With no real game play other than PvP, there really is no need for a story. Despite this, the developers still decided to give the game one. To summarize it, you play the role of a reincarnated warrior. Your task is to fight for essence, which can be considered a resource of sorts. Originally, there would be multiple areas (servers) in the game and your warrior would only inhabit one. This part of the story no longer exists due to the term used to describe the areas being protected by copyright. Basically, the story is not important in Fury.

Game play: 9/10
Fury can best be described as a first person shooter (FPS) with massively online multiplayer game (MMOG) elements included. It is essentially a fast paced PvP game. Characters can either fight in teams or in a free-for-all format, depending on the game type chosen. The game has four announced game types, free-for-all, capture the flag, team death match, and some form of fortress assault game type. The three major game types in Fury at the moment include Bloodbath (FFA), Elimination (TDM), and Vortex (CTF). The last game type, Fortress, was originally going to be in the game at released but was removed so the developers can implement it correctly. The developers are also planning on 1v1 and 2v2 types of combat.

Your character can only equip equipment and abilities. Equipment and abilities take up equip points. Your character has a maximum of 1000 equip points and this number cannot be changed. The types of abilities and equipment you can use are ranked in tiers of 1 to 10. 10, being the highest tier, generally has the most beneficial status effects but also the highest equip cost. While playing you must find the balance between tiers of abilities and equipment that suits you. Equipment also has different levels of rarity. There are about 7 tiers of rarity going from common to artifact. The rarest items of any given tier only differ in that the rarest have more and better modifications on them.

Unlike other games, you can play any class at any given time on your character. The game technically has classes, but there is nothing preventing you from using abilities of other classes to truly make your character unique. These classes are subcategories of the four schools in the game, which are Decay, Growth, Life, and Death. There are also four elements included in the game. These are Air, Water, Fire, and Nature. However, you can only utilize two different elements at any given time. On the left side of your Skill bar, you can hold Water and Fire charges. Air and Nature charges occupy the right side. Charges will be explained shortly.

The basics of the game are very simple. There are no auto-attacks or plain attacks. Every form of attack you use must be a skill. There are two basic attack abilities, charge generation and charge consumption. Charge generation abilities do as the name suggests; they generate charges. Charge generation abilities are generally weak and with instant cool down times. They generate charges of a certain element so that you can use them with charge consumption abilities. Charge consumption abilities are generally much more powerful than generation abilities and usually have longer cool downs. Some cool down periods may be a couple of seconds, but a few of the extremely powerful moves (deathblows) will have cool down periods of thirty seconds or even a minute. Your character can only hold charges from two elements simultaneously. Air and Nature are opposed, as are Water and Fire. This means that you cannot have both Water and Fire charges at the same time, and likewise for Air and Nature. Generating charges of the opposite element will consume the charges you already hold. For example, using a +2 Air generation skill while you have 10 Nature charges will remove 2 Nature charges.

There are also charge manipulation abilities, both ranged and melee. These abilities manipulate the charges of your opponents and are in the game for strategic purposes. If an opponent relies heavily on Fire charges, you can use an ability that will reverse the charges on your target to Water, and incapacitate him temporarily. There are also charge manipulation abilities that will “magnetize” all the charges on a target to a certain element. An opponent such as a healer who relies on Nature and Water to support his or her team can suddenly find himself with nothing but Fire charges. There are also abilities that can help counter the effect of charge manipulations and also some abilities that can make you unaffected by them for a short duration. Charge manipulation adds depth to the game since you must plan out ways of protecting yourself against enemy charge manipulation and also react quickly enough to not give enemies an advantage.

There are also other types of abilities. Many classes have access to various buffs. The majority of buffs are “set and forget” types of abilities that last for three minutes, although some are designed to only be temporary. They have a wide variety of effects such as boosting stats or healing you over time. There are also various abilities designed to remove buffs. There are also holds, stuns, deathblows, and a few other types of abilities.

The paragraphs prior to this explain the types of abilities and preparation you may have to undergo before you begin PvP. The battles themselves are different. Since they are fast paced, you will have to react quickly and choose appropriate abilities in order to succeed. When playing with pick up groups, the matchmaking system should pair you against groups of equal skill level, so the PvP should increase in difficulty as you progress. In bloodbath, the objective is to gain and hold blood tokens, which drop when a character is defeated. Essentially, you must kill the most and die the least in order to win. In Elimination, you and the rest of your team fights against an opposing team. The first to kill all opponents is the victor. In Vortex, you must capture four vortex crystals to win. You can accomplish this in two ways. You can kill the Perkon, the crystal carrier that respawns shortly after a crystal is either captured or disappears, or you can steal crystals from the enemy base. After the battle you win essence, which is used for faction (schools) donations and to unlock abilities. You can also roll for loot offered as a reward.

Some minor annoyances with game play include some terrain issues. On some maps you may get stuck in objects that you shouldn't get stuck in. On one of the icy maps, you can become trapped in a few plates of ice on the map if you run into them a certain way. This wouldn't be that big of a deal if it didn't delay your character for a couple seconds or end up causing your death.

Graphics: 6/10
You may have seen some screenshots or videos of this game and wonder why a game with such beautiful graphics can be rated so low. Fury's engine is optimized rather poorly, although it was improved during the beta. A computer that most people would be consider to be a high end system cannot play this game in the high render engine. Although a high end system should be surpass the recommended specs, it will not run Fury well. The graphics problems on high render can make the game play unbearable.

Other than causing performance issues, the graphics are beautiful. The environment is very pleasing to look at, especially in areas with interesting environments (snow, jungles). The characters are ugly, however. Despite an amazing amount of detail going into the armor, the character it covers retains the same appearance it would have on the lowest settings in the low render engine. Not a major annoyance unless you spend hours staring at your character's face in your online games. Ability animations are also nice. From small whirlpools of wind and leaves forming and a huge explosion of flames in AoE attacks, or your sword becoming electrically charged after an electrical attack, the animations are fun to watch. Unless the animations mean you are getting killed.

Although the graphics of this game are by no means poor, they affect game play in ways that they shouldn't. It's not that outdated cards can't render the graphics well, just that cards that should cut through any game on the market other than Crysis on absolute max settings are struggling with Fury with even around medium settings in the high render engine.

Sound: 4/10
There is something terribly wrong when disabling sound while using a high end machine can increase performance by up to thirty frames per second. However, this isn't the only problem with sound. Even without disabling it for performance issues, you may find yourself wanting to disable it because of how annoying it can be. The sound in Fury drops out intermittently during game play. The actual sounds of the game are mediocre at best. The music and sound effects are what you expect them to be. Air attacks have an electric buzz, swords clank off metal armor, ect.

Replay Value: 10/10
For an avid PvPer and someone who opposes the idea of having to go through PvE in order to break into PvP, this would be the perfect game to play. You can play both casually and competitively. You also have the option of joining or creating a clan, like most games. This could potentially bring more people together with the same objective, such as having fun or being the best clan in the game.

Finally, I'd recommend the reader to not buy the game at the moment unless PvP is your life in other MMOGs. If you're just a casual PvPer, the game will still be fun if you bought it, but the flaws in it will make you hate it at times. I would just monitor the forums just to see recent complaints about elements of the game such as graphics or sound, and then buy it once the problem is resolved. Fury will be a fun game for both hardcore and casual PvPers, but at the moment the flaws will likely turn the casuals away from the game.

Overall Score: 7.25/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/31/07

Game Release: Fury (US, 10/16/07)