Phantom Squad Review

I love tactical shooters. Over the past two decades, I’ve probably spent more time wielding a virtual firearm than most soldiers spend carrying a real one. I’m not exactly sure why I enjoy the genre so much, but there aren’t many games in it that I haven’t tried. There’s almost none that I don’t like, regardless of their age or gameplay quirks. However, for better or worse, I’ll never bother to re-install Phantom Squad after playing it for this review. Although it isn’t objectively terrible, it lacks the refinement and replayability of its many competitors. It’s Door Kickers without a mission generator, Ready or Not without a realistic depiction of violence, and Metal Gear Solid without Hideo Kojima’s eccentricities. It’s a bog-standard top-down shooter that requires just enough thinking to technically put it in to the same genre as This Is The Police, and nothing more.

In case it wasn’t obvious, it’s hard to describe Phantom Squad without comparing it to other titles. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, mind, as plenty of games are essentially amalgamations of their predecessors. The problem with Phantom Squad is that the titles it clearly took inspiration from are objectively better. The title attempts to blend a few different genres together. It takes the premise of SWAT, the visuals of Suit for Hire, the narrative of a generic action/spy thriller, and the gameplay of both Hotline Miami and Door Kickers 2, and turns them into a game that’s less than the sum of its parts. In all of its 11 missions, you start by selecting what equipment you think will work best. Then you drop into a locale filled with terrorists and hostages and strategically take out the former, while saving the latter. All of that is done from a top-down perspective in real time where you control a singular character who can die from three enemy hits, and can be played either solo or with up to three other friends.

‍Phantom Squad is a decent game, strictly speaking. All of its gameplay systems work as they should, it's visually decent, and there aren’t any game-breaking bugs to contend with. There’s also plenty of variety to its missions, which include everything from a nightclub hostage rescue to a drug lab raid in the jungle, and a lot of different weapons to toy around with. It’s a decent tactical shooter that’s pretty enjoyable to play. However, there’s absolutely nothing unique about it. It exists in a genre full of truly excellent games, almost all of which have some sort of claim to fame besides being perfectly mediocre. Phantom Squad is punishingly difficult, for example, but so is the aforementioned Hotline Miami, which also has interesting visuals. There’s a variety of cool equipment in Phantom Squad, however that’s more-or-less a staple of the genre. Using stealth to take out terrorists is fun in Phantom Squad, and it’s also fun in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, which has a properly bizarre plot.

‍Phantom Squad’s only unique element is that you can play it with your friends, which is a double-edged sword for the title. If you have a couple of mates, it’s fun to plan out simple hostage rescues and secret enemy base takeovers. Co-op requires you to coordinate your shots, bring along gear that synergises with what your teammates pack, and not accidentally murder the people you’re chatting with on Discord. If you’re a loner, however, Phantom Squad doesn’t offer any way to play with randoms. There’s no server browser or quick match function in the title, and instead, you can only invite your Steam friends to your lobby. You can technically complete all of its missions solo, but doing so is tedious to say the least. You can’t control any friendly AI units, nor can you turn the gameplay difficulty down. Instead, if you’re playing alone, you’re forced to develop and perfect a strategy by dying and consequently restarting your run countless times. There are seldom few checkpoints scattered across its encounters, too, so more often than not, you’ll be doing that by walking through the same corridors until you can see and shoot in them with your eyes closed.

There are a lot of games on the market that can, and do, get away with that insanely annoying mechanic. However, those games are simply better than Phantom Squad. They have interesting gameplay elements, or a fun narrative, or a cool soundtrack. Phantom Squad doesn’t. It’s a functionally fine video game that lacks any elements that will make you want to play it after you’ve seen its credits roll. If you have a group of virtual battle buddies, it’s a much more enjoyable experience than if you’re the sort of person who locks a recon squad in Hell Let Loose. That’s not saying much, though. Fans of top-down shooters can pick up Suit for Hire on sale, anyone who loved SWAT 4 back in the day should really play Ready or Not (and schedule a colonoscopy) , and if you’re simply desperate for more realistic-ish virtual shooting, Battlefield 6 is releasing in a few months. You can also play Phantom Squad, but you’re better off buying a bottle of bourbon and booting up your go-to tactical shooter of choice.