Ever since the ban of the popular mobile game PUBG announced, there was a surge in the game development market, a lot of companies tried to encash the situation, but no one was successful. But after months of teasing and hyping, homegrown action game FAU-G: Fearless and United Guards launched, and the developers really hoped to take on the loyalty fan bank of PUBG.
The game created waves when it first announced in September last year, the game rode that wave of nationalism and hype to garner over four million pre-registrations.
A Bangalore based studio, nCore Games, developed FauG and the game is backed by the Bollywood celebrity Akshay Kumar, who apparently had a lot of inputs about the game. The launch of the game was delayed from November to December, but it finally appeared in January 2021. Also, the game is just for Android users, for now, the iOS version is still not out. But has the game stood up to the expectations of the fans or not, Let’s See!
Game Lobby:
The game first starts with the narration of a story behind the game, the Galwan valley incident. You then land in the real game. The UI is very basic, and limited game mode selection. Then you go to the settings or the store, where you find the ranking system, but it is still not clear how this system works. Multiplayer mode is yet to go live and ranks will likely only come into effect after that.
In the store, there is also a purchase custom mode for the weapons. These can be purchased using tokens that need to be bought using real currency. Tokens can be purchased for Rs 19 to Rs 2999, and it’s mentioned that 20 percent of the proceeds will be contributed to the Bharat Ke Veer trust.
GamePlay:
The game does not have the multiplayer option (Yet!), the game only offers a single-player campaign that aims to educate the player on the perils faced by faujis in the Indian Army. The first mission in this is the Galwan Valley Clash. One that’s still fresh in the minds of countrymen. Set in the cold valleys of Ladakh and along the China border, the story starts with a cut-scene that shows the Chinese soldiers attacking the Indian border patrol and leaving all but one to fight the enemies and finding out what happened to the others.
The cut-scenes are nothing but a series of well-painted artworks with minimal animation, along with a baritone voice-over in Hindi narrating the story. The plot feels a bit too simplistic and aimed clearly at rousing nationalistic sentiments with the narrative and in-game monologues.
After a few minutes of the cut-scene (you can skip it), you are left to walk along the icy path towards Chinese camps where you encounter soldiers who will try to take you down. Your weapon at first is what you have with you at all times – your fists. This is the tutorial phase where you learn to use your fists in combat, and also wield some weapons. The combat feels realistic to the same extent that a Bollywood action film does. The enemies wait their turn to get beaten by you, and you use the same two-three combos for every attack. The last punch that you land happens in slo-mo as the enemy hits the ground.
Unlike modern action shooters, player health in FauG does not regenerate over time. Instead, you have to find a campfire and sit beside it to juice up the health bar. It’s quite a nifty touch that should be relatable to most Indians who face the severe cold in the winters. Health goes down when you are attacked by enemies.
For the first few levels, getting hurt will be difficult. The in-game AI is rather simple and Chinese soldiers line up to get punched by your bare fists, all the while sledding in English, with an Indian accent. But as the levels progress, enemies keep increasing in number and ferocity.
The levels are designed to be quite simple too. There’s not much to explore or pick up, save for melee weapons like a club or a spear. You will find camps with military equipment, generators, and the likes but these cannot be interacted with. The objectives show up with distances in the HUD and the path is well laid. There’s no option to crouch or jump. You only get a D-pad on one side while the other hand is used to rotate the camera. Movement too is not completely realistic. The player moves fast up or down but slows down when going sideways.
FauG First Impression:
Honestly, there is a lot that is missing in the game, many gamers and fans were expecting the Indian alternative of PUBG to be at par with the game. To make it at par with PUBG a lot of things were missing, like blood, instead of while hitting the AI bots simply show the amount of damage they took in the form of numbers. There is no health bar for opponents, which means that you have to hit them multiple times before you know they are dead. These might be good features for children, trying to learn about the incident.
There are no guns, maps, and challenges, however, about the chapters or modes the company will launch some more in the coming days. We will have to wait and see all the improvements, the company will bring to the game, but as of now, it is simply a game that you can play along with other mobile games, while you wait for PUBG Mobile to make a comeback.
Verdict:
For now, FauG is an incomplete game, in-fact calling it incomplete is a compliment. It does not honestly have half the material to qualify itself as the game it advertised itself to be. With just a day of the game launching, we have also faced a bunch of glitches, like the characters seem to be floating off the ground. Going towards the walls and edges shows a tear in the screen, and enemies dying too close to the walls often freezes and shakes.
While the work put into the characters and the environment shows future promise, it fails to excite at the moment. It can even be called a disappointment. FauG can definitely become an evolved game with updates and get rid of some of the obvious bugs in it as well. But at the moment, it is not recommended.