In a lot of ways, Fragpunk is much better than I expected it to be. One round the other day began with a wave of frantic team chat screams – standard, for a competitive shooter in the CS:GO mould – only this time the usual storm of verbal friendly fire came with a twist: “BIG HEAD MODE! BIG HEAD MODE! GIVE THEM BIG HEADS!!!!”
Fragpunk’s central gimmick is brilliant: a playful, inventive twist on an otherwise staid and serious subgenre that is really dozens and dozens of playful inventive twists all in one. Layered over the entirely by-the-numbers competitive FPS foundations of bomb planting, sightline guarding, smokescreen abilities, and maps with little labels on each part of them like “B Long”, is a chaotic system of card-based power-ups.
FragPunk – Official Extended Trailer Watch on YouTube
Okay, card-based power-ups are frightfully old news at this stage. In fairness, I thought that too at first, and came here fully prepared to write Fragpunk off as another one of those nearly-shooters, where a series of anonymously punky characters, backstories about some magic whatever, and a few neat and tidy added mechanics that are smart-ish in theory all come together to form a perfectly adequate new FPS – one that leaves the public consciousness as fast as it arrives. Not so! Or at least not so. Card-based mechanical twists are old news, yes. So are team shooters with an overcompensating neon colour palette. But Fragpunk’s are legit.