What if, whereas taking part in a aggressive shooter, you may pressure your opponents to fireplace their weapon each 5 seconds, even once they’re making an attempt to camp in a nook? What if you happen to may immediately teleport them again to their spawn once they take harm? What if you happen to may toss apart a weapon to show it right into a mini-turret?
Must know
What’s it: A Valorant-style shooter with jokers wild
Launch Date: March 6, 2025
Anticipate to Pay: Free to Play
Developer: Unhealthy Guitar Studio
Writer: Unhealthy Guitar Studio/NetEase
Reviewed on: Intel Core i7-13650HX, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060, 16GB RAM
Multiplayer: Sure
Steam Deck: Not verified (however playable)
Hyperlink: Official web site
Each match Fragpunk tosses out half a dozen gimmicks that would anchor total videogames with its unimaginable Shard Card system: The greater than 150 playing cards within the recreation provide a wide range of buffs, debuffs, and outlandish talents with the game-breaking energy of old-school cheat codes. It’s an adrenaline shot for a style typically obsessive about making a balanced expertise. As an alternative, Fragpunk is all about letting gamers break the principles to swing matches of their favor.
Whereas Fragpunk takes the essential system of Counter-Strike and Valorant, with every 5v5 Shard Conflict match consisting of defenders defending a bomb web site and attackers making an attempt to plant the bomb, matches are a lot shorter. Fast play is the primary to 4 spherical wins, and ranked is the primary to 6. This offers every match an urgency that pairs nicely with the unpredictable playing cards and barely sooner tempo: You don’t attain a degree the place you are seeing the identical card combos or rounds develop to be samey, like everybody saving cash to slow-push right into a bomb web site with Vandal rifles in Valorant or snipe down the central path in Dust2 in CS:GO.
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The newest huge recreation on Steam is Fragpunk, or as I prefer to name it, ‘kitchen-sink Counter-Strike’
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Greatest FPS 2024: STRAFTAT
As you kill members of the enemy crew, plant the bomb, defuse the bomb, land assists, and full rounds, you earn factors to spend on Shard Playing cards earlier than every spherical. These factors could be invested in three playing cards randomly provided up by the sport to unlock their talents. To advertise higher teamplay, there’s additionally an choice to let one participant handle your factors (or the entire crew’s factors) to craft the most effective technique with card combos. This can be a nice characteristic, particularly when gamers in my matches didn’t have voice chat. We may nonetheless coordinate a gameplan or enable a de facto crew captain to prepared the ground.
Shard Playing cards fluctuate broadly. Some are minor stat adjustments; others are so overpowered or unlock talents so absurd I couldn’t imagine they existed. One made me shout louder in voice chat to spice up my motion pace; one other let me lie down and nap to heal. There’s even a card that permits you to teleport to a unique dimension to shock enemies whenever you reappear. You’ll be able to explode a mini-nuke that kills everybody inside a restricted radius, even passing by partitions.
The creativity on show right here is leaps and bounds forward of another aggressive FPS, and there are so many playing cards. There are even goal playing cards that basically break the principles of the mode, like having the ability to plant the bomb anyplace on the map—or spawn 5 bombs for everybody on the crew to go charging in with. It is exhilarating as a participant to suss out an advantageous mixture within the second, and much more gratifying to be continuously shocked by what I can do within the recreation due to them.
Seller’s selection
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It’s simply so refreshing to play one thing so radical and unconventional in a style that’s typically stale. Regardless of the wild swings that each you and your opponents may cause, Fragpunk doesn’t ever really feel unbalanced. Whereas the enemy crew could have an enormous benefit due to the playing cards they select in a spherical, usually the subsequent spherical I might see one thing simply as potent for my crew, or we may save our factors and make investments huge within the subsequent spherical to utterly wipe them out in seconds with three energetic playing cards. It’s an efficient tug-of-war, with every crew taking turns having continuously rotating superpowers to assist them out.
Fragpunk additionally breaks from another conventions: Between rounds you may change your Lancer (aka hero) and weapons. There isn’t a cash; there are simply limits on the variety of rounds you may end with a LMG, assault rifle, pistol, and so forth. That is one other intelligent differentiator from Counter-Strike and Valorant, forcing gamers to interact with the cardboard system to tell their weapon decisions. For instance, some playing cards will increase the accuracy of a weapon sort or unlock charged pictures for a shotgun. Capitalizing on these perks, somewhat than falling again on a top-tier rifle, pushes you to profit from each spherical and makes weapon selection matter extra.
Every Lancer has a set of talents that pull from acquainted archetypes: the one that may spot enemies round corners, the one that may block sightlines, and so forth. However none of them are carbon copies of the characters in Valorant or different hero shooters, and so they typically provide talents from a number of of the archetypes to reinforce flexibility in the way you play them.
Spider has a entice that he can place on partitions that blinds enemies, however Corona can activate an analogous blinding impact that detonates after a couple of seconds, combining that along with his sprint, in order that when he dashes round corners, he blinds an enemy immediately. This pushes Corona right into a a lot sooner playstyle than Spider, despite the fact that they’ll each blind opponents. Whereas Spider fills a extra conventional Sentinel function such as you would see in Valorant, he additionally has a bomb that he can throw that sucks enemies in and teleports them immediately in entrance of him, giving him an initiator-style capability that may yoink an enemy out of canopy and let your crew push in.
Even when talents are functionally much like what I’ve seen earlier than, the best way they mix with the others in a Lancer’s equipment makes them really feel like new and thrilling iterations.
It provides the sport’s Lancers much less construction as they don’t fall into courses, however permits for extra flexibility inside matches. On the fly you may change to a rusher like Axon or Corona if in case you have a crew that performs sluggish in the back of a map, or use a Shard Card that reinforces motion pace and permits you to load all of your ammo into one journal, overwhelming a crew by pushing rapidly. You are able to do this for one spherical, after which utterly alter your Lancers and weapons based mostly on the shard playing cards you get in the course of the subsequent spherical. This capability to continuously remake our technique each jiffy result in some thrilling matches. There’s an additional stage to find out how to outsmart your opponents right here in comparison with the rivals—in contrast to in Counter-Strike, persistently executing the identical playbook repeatedly will not minimize it.
I’d contemplate the gunplay, sound design, and motion to be pretty much as good as another shooter obtainable right now, with a particular mix of the exact goal wanted in Valorant and CS and the sooner motion present in Apex Legends. Weapons have kick, however aren’t ridiculously troublesome to manage. You AR’s recoil isn’t going to out of the blue turn out to be more durable to handle the longer you hearth. However you may’t simply blast round a nook and spray an SMG as a result of the unfold shall be atrocious. All the things is animated and offered like an animator’s sketchbook: I really like the little animated aptitude results whenever you land headshots, and the sport’s maps, Lancer designs, and menus are coursing with colour and dripping with character. All of it helps Fragpunk really feel cohesively and confidently its personal factor.
The extra forgiving gunplay than lots of its rivals accommodating the sooner tempo and selection that Shard Playing cards introduce. It permits you an opportunity to struggle again if you happen to’re shocked by a capability or technique, however you may nonetheless run and gun like Name of Obligation. Fragpunk’s quick, however motion pace has sadly been pulled again considerably because the beta, and I do really feel that must be reversed a minimum of partially. This was performed to keep away from bounce pictures round corners and different loopy motion tech that the beta’s finest gamers had been working rampant with. Now the sport leans a bit an excessive amount of in the direction of the motion pace of its rivals, diluting one component of its unhinged identification.
Gachapunk
Like Netease’s different latest shooter, Marvel Rivals, Fragpunk is all concerning the conveniences: a full replay system, informal modes if you need one thing much less aggressive, and one of many higher weapon skins and customization programs I’ve ever seen. You’ll be able to manually place stickers, weapon charms, and kill counters wherever you want on a weapon with an intuitive menu.
That is marred by an excessively advanced and gacha-esque microtransaction and unlock system that is an actual drag. With random ornament and sticker packs that you simply unlock whereas taking part in (or by shopping for), you should utilize duplicate stickers and gadgets to “stage up” and improve them to the next rarity sticker. So, 10 unusual stickers will get you one uncommon sticker. An awesome assault of currencies, limited-time customization gadgets, battle passes, different event-specific currencies, and gacha pulls are thrown in my face each time I boot up the sport. I’ve to do a part-time job each time I wish to full a problem, redeem rewards, or unlock one thing, making it by a multitude of menus earlier than I can get again to charging at enemies and blocking bullets with a super-powered katana.
Whereas Fragpunk does a good job of providing you with alternatives to earn all the things by play, like so many free-to-play video games it is an unnecessarily complicated melting pot of programs and currencies. I’d somewhat simply purchase what I would like than must gamble for a melee weapon or a pores and skin. I wouldn’t say the microtransactions are egregious—taking a look at you Name of Obligation—however it all may have been streamlined considerably.
Regardless of the standard reside service junk, Fragpunk is without doubt one of the most inventive and refreshing aggressive shooters in years. Its philosophy of shifting away from restrictive programs and an eternally stage taking part in discipline to let gamers experiment round-by-round with characters, Shard Playing cards, and methods has created one of many strongest identities for a recreation on this house proper now. It doesn’t take any shortcuts or drop its creativity, contemporary concepts, or twists anyplace.
The extra I’ve performed Fragpunk, the extra positive I’ve turn out to be that it will be in my rotation for months if not years to return. It looks like a rallying cry for builders to create a brand new wave of shooters that don’t copy the competitors’s work and as an alternative break the principles. That is the way you get Counter-Strike, and never simply one other Counter-Strike wannabe.
The Verdict
83
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Fragpunk
Fragpunk’s daring determination to interrupt virtually each rule within the e book results in a fascinating shooter.
Echo Apsey
Contributor
Echo is an skilled freelance author with greater than six years masking video games for a wide range of web sites, together with Rolling Stone, IGN, NME, and extra. Beforehand, they led the guides part of The Loadout in 2023 after becoming a member of as a author in 2021. They convey an experience in shooters, multiplayer video games, and aggressive on-line experiences like Name of Obligation, Valorant, and Fragpunk, in addition to giant expansive RPGs like Stalker 2 and Path of Exile 2.
