The idea seemed pretty good on paper, a person-versus-person action titled totally devoted to an online experience. Factor in the decidedly sword and sorcery era of action and goodness me, we have ourselves the making of an underground action hit. But then the final product came out and everything we had hoped Fury would be, wasn't.

I think the good folks at Auran studios bit off more then they could chew. Fury is a game that should have been kept a bit more simple than its end product. And initially it is. The game is pretty much devoid of any sort of quest or background story; oh sure, there is the ominous voice-over in the beginning of the game, but if you are here to slay dragons and rescue towns from oppression, then I am sorry to say you barked up the wrong tree. Instead, Fury involves you creating a character from one of the type sets. From there, you roam the lobby speaking with NPCs who can help you with weapons and armor and any number of the 16 skills that can be assigned. Now, right there, is where you should be concerned, I'll say it again 16 skills. Now if this isn't clicking with you, you must understand that the game is a furious (get it, Fury) exercise in real-time combat. You join into any one of the open rooms and go at it tooth and nail in a non-stop battle royale. Now I'll say it again 16 skills, sixteen skills is way too many abilities to use when you are trying to fight, jump run, dodge and kill. In other words, the game provided too many skills considering several of them are just variances on the same theme, One skill makes your attacks 11% more effective while another makes it 15% more effective (not really the actual numbers, but you get what I mean). The developers made it too darn specific when they needed to keep it to say, six or seven skills.

"Swan Lake, WWE style!"

To add to this mess, Fury suffers from another major gameplay setback; too much information on the screen at any given time. If you are running around fighting your enemies, you are inundated with information. Icons at the top of the screen, a legend at the bottom, up-to-date information occurring in the middle of the screen, text boxes on the right and bottom and information above the heads of your quarry. It is way too much for any action player to absorb much less use if you are trying to do battle. There is an option to take all of that away, but in doing so, you do lose the critical info you need to see during play. It's a catch 22; on one hand you lose 40% visiblity of the screen, on the other hand you aren't alerted when something important happens during a match.

In Fury, you can play three different styles of action. There is a straight up deathmatch mode, a team-based deathmatch mode (best of 3 series) and a capture the flag mode. Since this game is an online game in the truest sense, you would think that there is tons of online action occurring at any given time. Well, that's simply not the case. Since you must wait for the appropriate amount of people this can be frustrating. Of course, as you roam the enormous staging area, you can group up with people to help avoid such problems, but more often than not, you are waiting. Not what you want in your all-out, online action title. Winning a battle allows you a convuluted way to cash in on your spoils. NPCs are available in the lobby to buy and sell the equipment you happen to acquire after battles. The game has an essence style of leveling up to improve your statistics. It's nothing new aside from name - you have seen and done this sort of thing in better titles.

 
 "Fury, the feel-good family game of the season... ehhhh no."

Now being a game reviewer requires me to have a fairly beefy system to play these fancy new games I get every so often. Fury, has some issues. The game box proudly claims it is based off of the Unreal 3 engine and that should make some players quite happy considering the recent games that have experienced success on this very engine (Bioshock anyone, anyone). But whatever love that started in making this game quickly turned to disdain. The game has multiple clipping issues even with the setting dialed down as low as they could go, and I shouldn't have to do that with a monster graphics card. There is random lock-ups and the occasional mute and frozen NPC (when it shouldn't). The point is that the actual in-game graphics and action are very low quality. I even had games where I arrived DOA before I could even play, what's up with that? The lighting effects and textures managed to get the job done when things were rolling along correctly, but - and I can honestly say this - the game simply does not belong in the current crop of games being released.

The same could be said about the sound effects. Very ineffectual and thin sounding. No meat and potatos in this title, just a synthesizer soundtrack recorded in someone's basement and voice over's that make you laugh unintentionally.

Now, in case I haven't made it clear you use both melee weapons and spell casting in your combat, along with some hand-to-hand combat. I initially had thought that maybe this title would be the anti-Shadowrun game, with more adept abilities and smooth action. In retrospect, this title is no where as good as Shadowrun, and I didn't think Shadowrun was all that great. While in the action, it helps to use the lock-on feature to get a better chance of actually hitting your opponent, but with all of the crud scattered around the different arenas, the lock-on feature becomes a hinderance as it gets you caught up in the objects and walls of the arena.

Gameplay: 4.8
The game wants to be an all-out action extravaganza, when in reality the end product is full of technical issues and poor gameplay.

Graphics: 5.0
Admittedly there is a couple of cool visuals in there, but the lag and freeze ups along with the uninspired character models drop this game down, way down.

Sound: 4.2
The voice overs, as few as they are, stink. An ominous tone that really doesn't make anything ominous. Thin sounding explosions and thinly veiled sound effects don't bring anything to the table.

Difficulty: Medium/Hard
This title is difficult merely because the technical shortcomings and lack of competition online really unfairly make it harder then it should be. It should be easy to go online and battle - it isn't.

Concept: 5.0
Again, the similarities to Shadowrun are there, it's just the gameplay, graphics, online shortcomings and overall experience fail to ellicit any real praise.  

Multiplayer: 4.7
A very uneven and poor online experience. Players who have been playing already are not real keen on newcomers; that is, if you can actually find a game that is free of lag and other online issues. Thankfully there is no fee to pay online.

Overall: 4.6
Wow, I had such high hopes for this title, sadly it fails on literally every front.