FAU-G review: An incomplete, lacklustre game that is no PUBG rival - India Today

FAU

After a lot of ‘halla’, multiple trailers and long wait, FAU-G or Fearless and United Guards is now available for download via Google Play Store. The game was announced days after PUBG ban and amid calls to become ‘aatmanirbhar’. It managed to draw eyeballs with the involvement of Bollywood star Akshay Kumar and even got millions of pre-registrations but is nothing more than a waste of an excellent opportunity.

Developed by Bengaluru-based nCore Games, the game shows early promise with its good graphics but soon fades out due to a lacklustre storyline, amateur action sequences and unwanted dialogues in the background. Oh, and did I mention the super annoying chants of ‘shakti, shakti’ in the background?

Well, as you would have guessed by now, we spent few hours playing FAU-G and here is our full review of the same.

FAU-G review: Story

First things first, FAU-G is not a battle royale game like PUBG or Call of Duty: Mobile so we won’t be doing a direct comparison of these but talking about the larger gaming experience and the overall gameplay it offers. You can some marks to nCore for keeping the game really simple. To begin, you just need to download it from Play Store, created an ID and complete the tutorial. None of this takes as much time as COD: Mobile and saves you from a lot of pain.

There are three different campaigns in the game – ‘Tales from The Galwan Valley’, ‘Team Deathmatch’ and ‘Free for All’. Out of these, only the first is available to play for now while the other two say ‘Coming Soon’. How soon? There is no word on that. The first campaign, which we played, is based on a checkpoint timer system wherein you have to fight the enemies to reach each one of them.

In this campaign, FAU-G follows the narrative where a soldier has been separated from his team in the Galwan Valley and now faces the task of relocating them while fighting enemies which are nothing but dummies that have been put in a pile to get beaten like most Bollywood movies.

FAU-G review: Gameplay

I must say when the first frame comes up and you look at the graphics, they thoroughly impress. The main character Captain Dhillon has been well designed and so are the surroundings. But, that is it. Little time has been spent on the AI enemies be it to design or equip them with some moves. They are probably the poorest you would come across which is a disappointment given that the developers took a lot of time to release the game.

These enemies remind you of stormtroopers from Star Wars with the only purpose of losing a fist fight and dying. They just refuse to offer any sort of competition even when your character is surrounded by at least four or five enemies. They are happy to take hits and this just makes the game boring beyond a point.

To make it worse, both Captain Dhillon and the enemies continue to talk random things during the battle. And, these are poorly written lines like “main apni team ko dhund hi lunga” and “kaiyron tum hamesha toh nahi bhaag sakte.” There are even instances when Dhillion says – “Itne saare ghuspaithiye” while fighting them. The timing is just off.

The controls are fairly simple. There is a navigation button on the left and two buttons on the right one each for attack and block. The character heals by sitting in front on campfire. You start fighting with fists but can grab weapons on the way by beating enemies. The other way is to buy them through the Store which also offers different skins for the main character. These can be bought using either Silver coins or Gold Coins.

This where monetization comes into play. These Gold coins can only be bought using real money, even though FAU-G allows you earn silver ones while in the game. The pack for Gold coins starts at Rs 19 for 30 coins.

The settings page allows you to change the graphics quality between ‘Very Low’ and ‘Ultra’. I hardly noticed any difference between Medium and Ultra Settings. There is also an option to adjust sensitivity and background volume.

FAU-G review: Review

For now, FAU-G is an incomplete and lacklustre game that has little to offer any smartphone user who is missing PUBG or was eagerly waiting for either of these games to launch. Yes, time has been spent to conceptualise a title for the Indian audience, but the execution lacks a punch. The game will be appreciated by amateur gamers who won’t have to do much to excel in it but even they may get bored within days.

Ideally, the developers should have taken more time and worked on finer details before dropping the game. And, they still have a chance to correct that with the other two modes that are yet to be introduced. FAU-G might continue to ride on the nationalist wave for the first few days but it’s half-baked gameplay has little chance to stand against Call of Duty: Mobile or even PUBG, whenever the latter returns.