A Game Every Week #2 - Fistful of Frags

A Game Every Week is a new series where I will take a look at a game every week. I'll try to find games that aren't that well known. This won't be an full review, just a general overview and my experience playing the game.If you want me to take a look at a game, put it in the comments below.

Fistful of Frags is a free multiplayer FPS game that has actually been around for a long time. It started out as a mod for Half Life 2, and eventually became a separate game. When someone say "FPS", people immediately think of the Call of Duty/Battlefield games. But Fistful of Frags is quite a bit different and IMO, better than them.

The scenery and setting of Fistful of Frags is basically the American Wild West. The maps are all old American towns, and the game has a unique feel to it because of this. With that said, the game is based on Half Life 2, which is quite old. And it shows in the maps and the general graphic design. So don't expect eye-popping realism. But at the same time, I'd say that the main thing about this game is the gameplay. If you want graphics, try something else. The graphics here are not terrible, but they won't win any awards either.

Even today, so many years after launch, this game has a lot of servers, which shows how much it's loved by its community. There are a lot of game modes, similar to Deathmatchs and Team Deathmatches, and a few unique ones too. I mostly played the Team Shootout(which is basically a team deathmatch).

At the start of each match, you get to choose a team. You also get to choose your own weapons. In the weapons sections, there are 3 parts - your primary and secondary weapon, and which hand you want to be a good shot with. This is how the weapons loadout screen looks like:

Now there's a lot of stuff here, so I'll start with the Primary Weapons:

Most of the primary weapons here are as I said, from the Wild West. I particularly liked the Volcanic Pistol and the Smith Carbine, as both have a pretty large magazine capacity. While these weapons look like any other weapon, these actually lead to a very unique type of gameplay, and I'd say the weapons are the defining feature of this game. They make the game stand out.

The one thing that is really different in this game, is that magazine capacities aren't always very large, and recoil is a real thing to worry about. Also, your accuracy goes down the drain when you move.

So unlike other shooters, you can't run around spraying bullets. You actually have to think about the optimum time to reload. Some of the weapons can take several seconds to reload!. Also,most games will have basically zero recoil. That's ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE in this game. In fact, the recoil in this game will destroy your kill-to-death ratio. At least in the servers I played in, K-to-D ratios of 1:8 were pretty normal. Of course, there were the top 5 people who played like Gods, but everyone else was slumming around. And then there's the fact that your accuracy is basically 0 when moving. So in general , you cannot just run around and shoot. You actually have to stop to shoot. But obviously, you can't stop for a long time, else you'll get shot!

All of these things create a real sense of tension, a sense of uncertainty that is very thrilling. You actually have to think on your feet. You actually have to move slowly. Look for enemies around you. You actually have to think about whether you want to reload after every shot, or whether you want to reload the entire magazine once it's empty. Sometimes, you're going out in an open field, so you have to reload before you venture out.

At the start of every game, you select your loadout, and then you carry this loadout every time you spawn. But on the map, there are a lot of chests that contain a lot of other weapons. You can have all sorts of weapons, from axes:

to arrows:

In my experience, I killed the most amount of people when I had a pistol like the Volcanic in one hand, and a sawed shotgun in the other(Yes, you can dual-wield a few weapons). The shotgun only has 2 rounds before reload, so you use it only to finish of someone. You use the pistol for everything else. it actually worked pretty well. When you see someone, give them a few shots with the pistol, then finish them off with the shotgun.

If you want to be a sniper, obviously, you have to use things like the bow or the carbine, which has an iron site. But there aren't a lot of spots in the map to hide and snipe people and obviously, no silencers, so sniping from a single site for a long time isn't practical.

Secondary weapons

If you see the loadout screen, you'll see that the secondary weapons aren't really normal weapons. They are thing like throwable knives and guns, and whiskey!

How would you use Whiskey, you might ask?

Well, because Whiskey is how you gain health in this game.

This game doesn't have regenerative health. You drink whiskey to gain health. Of course, it makes you tipsy, so you actually have to think about whether you need the whiskey.

Again, this is one of those things that creates the tension. You actually have to think about whether you want the extra health at the cost of low accuracy.

There are other things as well, like dynamite. I found it particularly effective to throw some dynamite in to a room before going in.

Overall Gameplay Experience

The whole weapons loadout, along with the maps, makes this game a very suspenseful, a very tense game to play. And by the way, you can very much be killed when you're opening chests, and doing other stuff. There is no respite from that once the game begins. So you have to think about the weapons you have before venturing out in a part of the game. Are my weapons suitable for long/short range? Is my health enough for me to survive a few shots should someone find me? Although tbh, that is one thing I found that could be improved. The weapons do too much damage. Most weapons are one-shot kill for headshots, 2 shot kill for body shots. Coupled with the non-regenerative health, this makes it pretty difficult, and at times frustrating.

I found that the best strategy was to hang out with people who complement your weapon loadout. So if you have a short-range pistol, team up with someone who has a carbine. That way you don't have to worry about people from far away, or on top of houses, taking you out, and your buddy doesn't have to worry about close quarters battle. In the beginning, I had a lot of difficulty aiming for even close distance shots, but I got much better with practice. For a server of 24 people, my best was 9th, which isn't too bad for someone who sucks at FPS games.

Overall, it's a very enjoyable, very addicting game. I spent hours playing it without any boredom or a lot of frustration. And when you consider the price - Free, it becomes a no-brainer to recommend this. If you love multiplayer FPS, but want something different, something that brings the tension and the strategy back, I totally recommend this game.

Thanks for reading this post. I hadn't really played the game a lot in the last post of A Game Every Week, but this time I've played a lot. I hope it reflects in the quality of the post.

If you found this post to be helpful, or interesting, please resteem it so other people can see it as well.

Sources

Screenshots all mine
Footer animation by @malos10