A review of the recently released ‘FAU-G: Fearless and United Guards’

The problems with FAUG are fundamental, even the AI is infantile and the only idea of difficulty here is a higher number of clones.

All jobs are hazardous.The job description for a game reviewer requires you, at times, to subject yourself to games like FAU-G and when that fateful day arrives, you hope to survive the experience. My experience with FAU-G from day one was a difficult one.

On launch day (Republic Day), the game refused to start no matter what I did. Sometimes I would make it to the opening cut-scene in Hindi and then it would crash. As I tried the game on different devices, the ability to start the game was more often a miss than a hit.

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As I patiently waited to play FAU-G updates arrived and despite the first round of fixes, my flagship Samsung just couldn’t run it. It was only after the second update that I could make it beyond the opening sequence. With a working game, I could finally review.

This game is no PubG mobile replacement; the two games’ experiences are not even in the same league. FAU-G is an action game with melee combat and a poor one at that, its premise builds on the Galwan confrontation, but its execution is shoddy.

The design is dated, the visuals at times unfinished and the interactions it offers players illogical. For a game centred on melee combat, it would be too much to expect elements of stealth or situation specific combat/sequences, the sequences here are, at times, on a repeat loop.

To illustrate the poor execution, let me offer you an example: at times, the lead character unleashes a series of quick jabs and punches at the enemy and despite it all, the game simply computes no damage for those blows. The problems with FAUG are fundamental, even the AI is infantile and the only idea of difficulty here is a higher number of clones.

The game’s soundtrack is a series of dialogues in Hindi that, at times, seem tired and rehearsed and gameplay involves moving from one series of enemies to another. There is simply no joy to be found here and putting myself through the campaign; I felt cheated.

For all the hype and promises that accompanied it at launch, FAU-G is a hot mess that one can simply do without. It seems like a game made in haste where corners have been cut at every stage.

This is simply not how games are made. I wonder if the money spent on getting Akshay Kumar to endorse/ promote them could have been spent on more developers over a longer development period to make something more worthwhile. If you haven’t played it yet, stay away. For those of you like me, I hope you can empathise with my pain.

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