Chains of Fury: Vol. 1

For years it felt like we were stuck in this weird vortex where every first-person shooter was a clone of Call of Duty, Half-Life and Halo. However, thanks to the success of DOOM in 2016, game developers big and small realized that there’s a real market for fast-paced, old school twitchy shooters. Or “boomer shooters,” if you prefer. One of the most intriguing examples of this phenomenon is Chains of Fury from Cobble Games, an episodic first-person shooter that is takes elements from XIII, Lobo and Duke Nukem 3D. It’s a fun and stylish new action game that should scratch that old school itch. But is the whole thing undone by a spate of game-breaking bugs? That’s what we’re about to find out in this review of Chains of Fury: Vol. 1.

When Cobble Games announced Chains of Fury as a Kickstarter project back in 2021, they called it a “Metroidvania boomer shooter” inspired by “Hellboy and Lobo comics” with cel-shaded graphics pulled straight out of XIII and gameplay reminiscent to Duke Nukem 3D. Apparently, that was enough well-known names and influences to convince people to back the project, turning the intriguing game into a crowd-funding success story. Now all the developers needed to do was released the game in the third quarter of 2022, like they promised.

Obviously, that didn’t happen. Here we are, two years later, and we’re finally getting what is the first installment, appropriately dubbed “Vol. 1.” This includes the first eight stages, which are comprised of six linear levels and two large-scale boss fights. The Metroidvania elements have been cut in favor of making a more traditional first-person shooter, and some of the other promises made on Kickstarter have either been scrapped or delayed for a future installment. That’s disappointing, but at least the game is finally out, and that’s the important part.

For a game where the conceit is that you’re playing a comic book, there’s surprisingly little story or setup here. I’m not even sure the game tells us the hero’s name. The Steam page tells us that “he’s a hired gun” who is furious after a former client gets him thrown in prison. Out for revenge, the assassin must break out of prison and fight his way through underground caves and a volcano (for some reason) in order to find the man who stole his money and freedom.

Equipped with little more than a chain he can use as a grappling hook and a proficiency with pretty much any weapon he picks up, the hired gun fights endless waves of cops, robots, mutants, mushroom men and pigs dressed up as security guards. He’s pissed off, and it’s easy to understand why. He doesn’t just open doors, he literally kicks them straight into the next room, killing everything in its path. Just blood and guts flying everywhere. It’s glorious.

The truth is, I was completely won over by the game’s over-the-top brutality right from the start. Even if I didn’t know the assassin’s name, I knew that I liked seeing mutants and mushroom men burst into a fountain of gore every time he shot them. There’s a gleeful excess to everything in this game that will immediately remind you of the 1990s, and not just because the cel-shaded bad guys are all two-dimensional. With the throwback style, violent anti-hero and extreme gore, it’s easy to see why the Kickstarter succeeded.

The nice thing is that it doesn’t just look the part, but it also plays just like those classic games. This is fast-paced, with waves of enemies coming at you from all sides. It controls well and gives you a nice selection of weapons to choose from, including a shotgun, flame thrower, grenade launcher, crossbow and more. You’ll also be able to upgrade your hands, allowing you to punch through stronger doors and certain walls. There are also hidden passages that you can only open with certain weapons, as well as a whole bunch of secret areas filled with treasure. The developer has made a lot of smart decisions along the way, especially when it comes to the level designs and how you interact with the different stages.

When Chains of Fury works, it is an absolute blast. Fast and fun and everything I could want out of a throwback shooter. The problem this game has it that it doesn’t always work. In fact, I think it’s fair to call it broken. And not just in the typical ways, because this game is broken in ways you probably haven’t even considered. For one thing, the game refused to load with my anti-virus program turn on. I don’t know if it’s because the game loads into its own shell and that’s conflicting with my anti-virus scanner, but the game simply refused to load until I turned it off.

And even when the game finally loaded properly, you’re still in store for a dozen more bugs and glitches. I ran into the issue of the game loading up without any sound. I also found that my save file got corrupted when I was trying to get it to load again, so I had to play the first few stages all over again. And did I mention that the game has this bad problem of freezing at weird times. At first I thought it was because I killed too many enemies at once and my computer couldn’t keep up, but it also froze when nothing was happening, so I’m inclined to believe it’s the game’s problem.

Oh wait, we’re just getting started. Some bugs will leave you stranded. For example, if you open a gate before you manually save the game, you’ll reload to find that the gate is shut, with no way to open it again. One of the major issues Chains of Fury has is that the walls aren’t always as solid as they should be. It’s surprisingly easy to accidentally back up and fall right through the level. I can forgive this happening once or twice, but this happened dozens of times. I could spend the next ten minutes doing nothing more than cutting together a montage of me falling through the level, but you get the point.

One thing I noticed is that the frame rate takes a real dip in the game’s last act. I didn’t have a problem with the frame rate for most of the levels, but it really goes to hell in the final few stages. Also, either the final boss is the easiest enemy in the entire game or it’s glitched and gave me an easy win. I’m serious, I was genuinely floored when I beat the game. After the challenge of the previous boss, the big bad at the end puts up absolutely no fight. I’m still convinced that it was a glitch, because there’s no way it was designed to be that easy.

Even if Cobble Games is somehow able to resolve all of these issues through patches, that still won’t fix the samey level designs. I don’t know if it’s because this game is episodic, but Vol. 1 feels like four great levels stretched across eight stages. I also take issue with the way they are selling this game. “Stuck looking for an exit?” the game asks. The solution? “Just punch through walls and then shoot the suckers behind them.” This makes the levels sound like they are fully destructible. It suggests that you don’t need to follow the path, because make a new one by punching through the walls. But that’s not how it works. Yes, there are a few destructible walls here and there, but they are built right into the (mostly) linear path and are basically just a variation on a door. I get that there are a few shortcuts, but this is misleading and makes the game sound like Red Faction, a game where you really could tunnel through the environment.

These problems are especially frustrating because there’s a really fun core game hidden behind all of the technical problems. I beat the game and immediately wanted to play Vol. 2, because the fast-paced action is fun and it does a remarkably good job of capturing what made Duke Nukem 3D so iconic. This has a lot of the right ingredients, but its potential is being overshadowed by the bugs and the inherent problems associated with episodic games. Here’s hoping everything comes together for Chains of Fury: Vol. 2.