Indian game developers, we need to talk. Don’t think that you need to challenge your foreign counterparts on their turf to make great games. If you enter the realms of another game developer hoping to beat them, you will probably fail but at the least you can match them. India doesn’t have as much exposure to game design as our foreign counterparts; so we need to study them, understand them and find out what makes them tick if we hope to stand a chance. Raji is the perfect example of copying a game design without understanding why it works. Isometric RPGs live on their exploration, levelling and combat systems. Raji failed across the board. As much as I don’t approve of Raji I will say that it was a learning experience because I feel that the dev team did try in earnest to make a game that they could be proud of.

There is a second type of Indian developer. The developers who are copying successful products. There are tons of these on the Google Play Store nowadays. Don’t get me wrong, one of my favourite games of all time (Unreal Tournament) is considered a rip off of a highly successful game (Quake). You can copy a game’s core and do much better but it feels that the Indian developers who are copying great games aren’t really in it to improve the game but rather cash in on the original’s success while hoping that the Indian patriotism will keep them afloat. 

Let’s figure out in which category nCore games lies with FAU-G… I’m sorry, I couldn’t say that with a straight face. We all know where this is going.

Story:

Pre-release the game was advertised as being a realistic depiction of our Indian troops fighting against the odds. The story follows Lieutenant Singh. A special operations group leader whose squad is ambushed and defeated… by rocks… are you fucking kidding me? The government has collected and spent huge amounts of money by overpaying contractors or building giant statues. I’m sure there is some money lying around for helmets and guns.

This is a game review and not political commentary? Fine! Back to the story: Lt Singh wakes up alone, on a quest to save his compatriots from the opposing force. On the way he finds lots of opposing goons bearing different melee weapons, captured allies and a ton of campfires.

The story is delivered via cutscenes and in-game voice acting. The cutscenes are well animated. I’m not joking about the graphic quality of the cutscenes, they look ripped straight out of a comic book. While pretty, they fall short by delivering an exceptionally poorly written and voice-acted story. 

Sound:

Shit! The sound is complete and utter shit! Next…

Hari, our editor-in-chief, says I can’t get away with just that much for the sound section so back to work for me.

The background music is annoying and repetitive. It’s a track of a few notes and bells. It’s exceptionally boring. The background music is bugged so there are times it will be dead silent, on second thought: I’m adding that as a pro rather than a con.

The voice acting is poor. The main characters deliver their lines in Hindi (there are no English dubs or subtitles except in cinematics, which alienates any of our foreign readers while killing international markets). Enemies shout their lines in English which they really shouldn’t. The enemy voices are shrill, high pitched and spoken so fast you would think they want to deliver a bible verse to the people on a passing train. There are also some serious voice normalization problems, you can hear the enemies just fine but you can’t hear Singh over them.

The special effects are generic. I’ve heard every sound effect before, from the equipping of items to the use of items (there isn’t much to do in this game). The only sound that is remotely correct is the sound of the bonfires which is within the realm of acceptable. 

Continuing on the special effects: The sounds of punches and kicks sound about right. FAU-G would get credit here if they had used more than one sound effect for each, the looping sound effects in combat get annoying quickly. The sound effects are also delayed, sometimes up to a second. As a result, you see the impact and hear the effect later. At this point: I’m wondering if a silent protest was taking place against nCore’s management.

Graphics:

The graphics are superb, they are amazing by all extents when you compare them against games from the 1990s. The world is grey and void of colour, it sets a grim mood which is correct. The models for in-game elements are really good-looking squares and they occasionally surprise you with hexagons. The character models are probably the best-looking in the game. It’s nice to see a company giving work to the blind and the graphics improve after self-inflicted trauma. The character models are probably the best-looking models in the game which isn’t saying much. 

The special effects are equally well done. Numbers pop out of enemies like popcorn out of a disgruntled vending machine. Some attacks have what I suspect is an attempt to show force but the blocky nature of the trail lines is just soo fascinating. The bonfire looks okay though… especially the twigs which I think are concrete beams that someone painted to look like wood. 

We will talk about the animation during gameplay, trust me on this.

Gameplay:

The movement in FAU-G feels lost. It controls like what should be a mobile shooter i.e. you move fast forward and slowly when strafing left and right but FAU-G isn’t a shooter, it’s a brawler. In the case of a brawler, it should be fast movement in every direction with the character turning in that direction so that they can clear the ground as quickly as possible. As a result of this boring control system, it becomes a slog to get to the next fight which is all there is to do since there aren’t any side quests or hidden items to find in the extremely linear levels.

When you implement a mechanic, you need to know that you will be compared to the best available version of your concept. FAU-G made the mistake of going against a badass: Rocksteady’s Batman Arkham games. Like Batman there are only 2 buttons other than movement: hit and block. When in one-on-one combat you don’t even need to remember the block button exists, you can keep tapping the attack button. Block is useless even if multiple enemies are coming at you because you still lose health when hit. The only tactic you have in FAU-G is hit and run. Take a pot-shot and get away before someone else tries to hit you, this tactic also rarely works since the movement is so slow in combat that a good kick will hit you even after a second or two of walking away. I’m not going to talk about the weapons since they don’t change anything except for increasing damage dealt by a little while missing more often.

Let’s get back to the animation and the reason that it is showing up under gameplay. The animation as a whole is slow and chunky. That would be acceptable in movement but when in combat each attack has an animation loop that cannot be aborted. Multiple enemies can’t hit you at the same time(combo attacks) but 2 of them can hit at once to make it feel like they are smarter than they are. There is a delay after an animation for some reason. This sum of time (animation loop plus delay) adds to the clunk and multiplies the frustration. The frustration goes through the roof since there are probably only 5 attacks you are constantly staring at.

Next up is the camera. While moving around it does the normal over the shoulder thing which is fine. The emergence of enemies panics the poor thing making it erratic, it runs all over the place and winces quite badly whenever Singh gets hit. It wants to do its job so it gets as close as it can but it also has a fear of walls, in this confused state it keeps running to and from the combat rapidly making itself and the player feel quite sick. This is also the reason we don’t have a gameplay video: when I went to edit the video I started feeling uneasy just from watching it. Enjoy the screenshots!

Not done yet, just want to list the features I found:

• Audio cuts out occasionally
• Fighting too close to a wall freaks the camera out
• The camera shake on hit is way too high
• Enemies get bored and walk away if you go back a bit
• Weapons can only damage one enemy at a time so they go through the others if enemies are packed together
• Weapons dropped near the edge of paths (water, visible wall, invisible wall etc.) cannot be picked up
• Weapons dropped at a slightly raised/lowered height to where the combat finishes can sometimes not be picked up
• Bonfire has to be sat on from a specific point even though there are seats all around it
• Level timer doesn’t reset on death
• Graphics are the same irrespective of option picked. They might be changing but they look bad to me on any settings

Conclusion:

From the Google Play Store Page: “(FAU-G) pays tribute to the heroes of our nation’s armed forces”, no it doesn’t. If this is a tribute, we need to be a lot better to the brave men and women who are protecting us from foreign powers. I don’t think this game can be saved by patches; it needs a ground-up rework which I doubt it will get. There are multiplayer modes marked as “Coming Soon” but they will be dead on arrival if they use the same core.

nCore, this should never have been the game to make. I get it, you saw the PUBG ban and dollar signs popped up in your eyes. The premise could have been kept but the game should have been on a smaller scale. I’m sure your supporters will say it is a good game for a first time Indian dev but it isn’t. You knew your limits and your budget; you knew what you were capable of. Something nice and simple like a side-scrolling shooter with better sound and simple 2D graphics would have given you a jumping point, you might even have had multiplayer ready on launch.  A smaller scale but better-polished game would have kept your name out of the mud that it is being dragged through because of FAU-G. As it stands: if you ever get to releasing your multiplayer mode, I fear that you might need to pay people to play your game (à la Hyperscape). This game could have been a 3 maybe even a 4 but thanks to the bugs your score is below.

Pros	Cons
Comic Cutscenes	Just About everything else
Background Music occasionally fails	Whatever else is there

Recommended Purchase price: -$10 or -₹750 

Final Score: 2/10