Ferocious Review – Dinosaur Island

While most shooters coming out in this day and age tend to either focus on multiplayer, or they try to aim for some hyper-specific niche, like going all-in on realism, for instance. Developer OMYOG, however, decided to go in a vastly different direction with its outing – Ferocious. Rather than honing in on one specific idea, Ferocious instead feels more like a return to the kinds of shooters we used to see quite often during the PS3/Xbox 360 and PS4/Xbox One console generations. The kind where, while there are plenty of enemies to fight and a world to explore, it is ultimately still a power fantasy.

"Rather than the typical wildlife you might expect, the entire place is filled with animals from prehistory, from dinosaurs to large insects and gigantic crustaceans."

Ferocious kicks things off with a simple premise that we’ve seen plenty of times before, especially in something like the Far Cry series. You, along with your brother, find yourselves shipwrecked on a strange island, and the two of you are the only survivors. While this island looks like it could be any one of the thousands of uninhabited islands in the world, it is in fact one that time has seemingly forgotten.

Rather than the typical wildlife you might expect, the entire place is filled with animals from prehistory, from dinosaurs to large insects and gigantic crustaceans. And to make matters worse, in the chaos of your shipwreck, you got separated from your brother and he has been captured by another group of humans that seems to have their own agenda with the island. Armed with little more than sticks, scraps of cloth and bones you find near the shore, it is now up to you to find and rescue your brother and figure out a way off this island.

That’s about the extent of how complex the story of Ferocious really gets. There isn’t really much to it here aside from “go there and kill some people who might know where your brother is”. Things do open a fair bit after a few hours, and we do get more characters, but we never really end up getting answers to some burning questions, like why this island still has dinosaurs on it, what’s up with the ancient seemingly-human ruins all over the place, and why is a well-equipped private military company setting up bases all over the place.

"Ferocious calls itself a “survival shooter”, but don’t let that label fool you."

While the core story might not be much, it offers enough motivation to get you going and discovering what makes Ferocious truly special – a combination of its core systems and general jank that ultimately leads to some surprisingly satisfying gameplay. Ferocious calls itself a “survival shooter”, but don’t let that label fool you. You aren’t going to be building your own shelter or foraging for food. Rather, the “survival” aspect largely comes down to its crafting system. Throughout your time on the mysterious island, you’ll find plenty of flora to forage and fauna to kill and skin. Using these, you get to craft most of the things you will need in your quest to save your brother, from healing bandages to throwing spears, pouches to carry extra ammo, and even an entire holster that lets you carry multiple weapons.

This crafting system also serves as the core progression system in Ferocious. There aren’t any skill trees to climb; rather, just about every major boost in power comes from your crafting abilities, like giving you more effective health by allowing you to craft and equip more and more armour made out of monster chitin, or simply giving you more destructive capabilities by letting you carry more bullets, grenades and spears. Just about every one of these aspects tie into the core action-packed gameplay.

And the action definitely feels like it was where most of the attention during the game’s development went. As you start taking on the human foes, you’ll start getting your hands on a variety of weapons, all drawing from the real world, from pistols to shotguns and rifles. While levels are laid out in a way as to let you figure out your own approach, however, OMYOG has made it clear through gameplay decisions that stealth isn’t really the main style of gameplay here; rather, you are encouraged to maybe take out one or two enemies in a camp out through melee before then going in guns-blazing..

"OMYOG has made it clear through gameplay decisions that stealth isn’t really the main style of gameplay here"

Taking a break from the action, there are also the rare moments where you get to explore the world and solve some puzzles. These never really get more complex than “find the right button to open the gate”, and even if the possibilities for more complicated puzzles open up when you get a device that lets you control some of the smaller dinosaurs. However, even then, the puzzles end up being getting the dinosaur into the right hole in the wall to get to the right door-opening switch. As an aside, the same dino controlling device also lets you sic the tiny dinosaurs on enemies, but it often tends to feel less satisfying than just picking up your favourite gun instead.

When it comes to the action, only the humans feel like interesting enemies to take on. Sure, the dinosaurs and other creatures are great, especially in how they look, but they don’t really have much going on in terms of their AI. All non-human enemies will do little more than just charge straight at you at full speed, giving you plenty of chances to just side-step and shoot them in the back. And this is also how many of the fights are designed in general; an early example involves taking on a monstrously-large crab, and your tactical options basically boil down to kiting it in a circle around the arena while you chuck grenades at it.

Human enemies, on the other hand, tend to try and employ some tactics once they feel like they’re under attack. They’ll take cover, they’ll try to use flanking maneuvers, and they’ll even start lobbing a grenade or two at you to try and get you out of cover. This, along with the fact that they tend to be much better equipped to deal with your general strategy thanks to their weapons, means that they are often a lot more interesting to fight. This is doubly true for the mechas you sometimes have to take on, which serve as rare mini-bosses for the larger human bases in the game. Fights in general can feel quite dynamic, thanks to the fact that guns have the tendency to shred through weak wooden cover, so you are constantly encouraged to be on the move.

"Fights in general can feel quite dynamic, thanks to the fact that guns have the tendency to shred through weak wooden cover, so you are constantly encouraged to be on the move."

Even the human enemies aren’t without their own problems, however. They often suffer from short-term memory loss and forget your position quite quickly if they haven’t seen you in 20 seconds, and they can also find themselves getting stuck on some level geometry, leaving them to be essentially sitting ducks. In the rare instances where you get to take on humans and dinosaurs at the same time, the AI for both of them tends to break apart thanks to them being confused about how to prioritise, even if you haven’t directly started engaging with them. This also means that we can sometimes see dinosaurs and humans in the same zone chilling and minding their own business until you get spotted.

A similar juxtaposition of quality and jank can also be seen in the visuals of Ferocious. It is a downright gorgeous game, and it’s well aware of this fact. It will gladly provide you with gorgeous vistas so that you have something pretty to look at while you’re running around. However, elements of the visuals also have the tendency of suffering from pop-in. And make no mistake, the PC used to review the game is well over the recommended specs – an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, 32 GB of DDR5-6000 RAM, and a Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU. Despite this, there were also occasional dips in the frame rate, especially when you loaded into a new zone. These dips didn’t last for too long, but they did contribute quite a bit in making the gameplay feel choppier than it should have.

Generally speaking, Ferocious is an ambitious title for a smaller studio; it looks downright gorgeous, and the gameplay tends to be fun most of the time. However, the few bits of jank in visuals sometimes popping in, the occasional frame drops, and enemies essentially losing their AI definitely indicate that the title could have used some more time to get polished. Despite this, however, it is difficult to deny just how much fun Ferocious can often be. When it’s firing on all cylinders, the game feels like an absolute power fantasy depending on how well you’ve equipped yourself, and the scale of the enemy forces. Thankfully, since all it really needs is a bit of polish, future updates will definitely end up making Ferocious a much better game than it is now.

This game was reviewed on PC.