“From Green Lava Studios, Fenix Furia is an inspired, frenetically-paced, challenging, and aggressively addicting 2D action platformer that will keep one’s palms sweaty, thumbs fatigued, and wits sharp. Gamers take on the role of Fenix, whose village is decimated by a huge explosion, leaving only two survivors – Fenix and Oktarus, a mysterious figure who manages to elude Fenix’s best efforts at capture.
Fenix Furia instantly throws gamers into hundreds of lightning-paced levels that test their ability to jump and dash their way through a maze of dangerous obstacles, all in an effort to track down the shadowy Oktarus and collect each level’s cookie! Offering pixel-perfect mechanics, gamers will nonetheless struggle mightily to achieve the best rankings in the best time with the fewest deaths to rub in their friends’ faces. Loads of different enemies, slick retro-inspired music, fantastic environments, and the need to master lots of varying platforming tactics lay in wait…are you up for the challenge?”
– The official Fenix Furia website (http://www.fenixrage.com/)
– More than meets the eye –
At a first glance Fenix Furia looks like a relatively simple game and whilst you may be right to a certain extent, it’ll only take a few minutes of playing to see it offers a lot more than initially meets the eye.
Contrary to what you may believe from seeing gameplay alone, there is a story here that’s conveyed to you through short but sweet cutscenes. Whilst a game like Fenix Furia doesn’t really need a story, it was certainly a welcome addition and kept me entertained between worlds.
The gameplay itself is straight-forward – you just have to reach the exit which is a bright blue box with the game’s villain lurking over it. This gives you the feeling of you being part of a chase, which further adds to the story.
– It’s challenging but not frustrating –
The game starts you off with some very easy levels just to get you into the swing of things before quickly upping the difficulty.
For the most part, levels are relatively short with the expected time of completion typically being within the seconds. However, with how challenging some of these levels can get these seconds can quickly turn into minutes. You are expected to navigate your way around the many twists and turns all whilst avoiding the countless hazards that get in your way.
The further you progress through the game the more perilous each level becomes – each hazard is a one hit kill too so you’ll have to be careful not to hit any or go outside of the screen otherwise it’s back to the start of the level for you. You’ll want to get used to dying because you’ll be doing it a lot during the game’s more challenging levels.
You will quickly get used to the whole idea of starting things over if you mess up though, and instead of becoming frustrated you’ll just feel more determined to beat the level. Each level offers you just the right amount of difficulty and you’ll never think any are unbeatable – even if it feels like it after the after constantly dying over and over…
– Controls feel quick and very responsive –
Fenix Furia doesn’t limit how many jumps or dashes you can perform in succession like other titles in this genre have before. Instead you are able to continuously jump or dash, which makes it feel like you are essentially flying when you jump repeatedly. This makes the gameplay feel very reminiscent of Flappy Bird in that respect – in a good way though!
The controls are fast and responsive and I never had an issue where I thought it didn’t register what I was pressing. These kind of controls are essential to nail in a game like this, where you have to navigate through tight situations and each movement and reaction you make needs to be spot on, so Fenix Furia deserves to be commended for its fluid and responsive controls.
– Surprising amount of content –
Usually games within this genre are fairly short and won’t take you too long to complete, though Fenix Furia bucks the trend with its nine worlds that each feature twenty levels – there’s even twenty bonus levels to play through.
As I mentioned earlier, the levels are designed to be very short but the overall challenging gameplay helps to increase the length of the game and if you manage to beat it you will certainly feel like you have accomplished something. You can even increase the longevity of the game by going after all the collectible cookies, beating the bonus levels and even trying to achieve the best time on each level.
Fenix Furia offers you a great amount of content and doesn’t follow the same path that other games in the genre have by giving you only a handful of levels but making them very hard. Instead, it gives you quantity with a fantastic amount of quality to compliment it.
– The music isn’t so great –
When it comes to games like this it’s a necessity to have some great music playing in the background since there are barely any sounds in-game. Unfortunately, Fenix Furia has very short tracks that sound quite generic and repetitive – they can really start to annoy you as you hear the same thing over and over as you attempt to complete each level. Even when the music does change it all sounds quite similar which isn’t great seeing as the difficulty of the game can often leave you stuck in the same place for a long time.
– It gets a little repetitive –
After a long time with the game I found it started to feel a little repetitive. It was never repetitive to the point where I was bored, but seeing as the game is quite long and offers you a lot to complete I think that more variation was needed to keep it constantly feeling fresh and exciting.
Some levels feel similar to previous ones and that leaves you feeling quite frustrated – I personally felt like I just wanted to get some of them out of the way or skip them completely. I often found myself wanting to get to the next world just so I could see some more variation apart from just the shape of the levels being different.
It’s not really a huge gripe, but the lack of variation did leave me slightly disinterested from time to time.
Fenix Furia is a fun game that you can just pick up and play within an instant. It doesn’t require you to do much thinking due to its simplistic, exciting gameplay, but it certainly doesn’t let you relax either. It offers you a challenge that will sometimes have you cursing, but you never feel frustrated and completing levels always feels rewarding. It offers a nice change to the genre with its infinite jump and dash mechanics and its large quantity of levels too.
The bland and forgettable music paired up with the lack of variety in the levels can make the game feel tedious at times, but it shouldn’t put off people that want to play the game because there’s plenty of enjoyment to be found with Fenix Furia.
Developer: Green Lava Studios (www.greenlavastudios.com)
Publisher: Reverb Triple XP (www.reverbinc.com)
Release Date: 08/06/2016
Format(s): Xbox One (Reviewed), Playstation 4
This review was written by guest reviewer Shaun from YouTube channel Respawn – You can check out his YouTube channel through this link.
