FragPunk is a breath of fresh air—but only if you can find your way to a match

FragPunk is a chaotic five-vs-five shooter that feels new despite following a similar format as multiple big games. However, outside of the mayhem created by the Shard Cards that completely change every round, you can also expect to lose your mind in the game’s menus.

There are a lot of menus in FragPunk, to say the least, and the general layout may leave you confused for the first couple of hours. Tabs upon tabs of screens, all in the game’s vibrant art style, is what you can expect regardless of whether you’re looking to customize your weapon or find which challenge to do next.

“Yeah the UI is so bad, like I don’t understand how anyone looked at the vomit and nested menus and approved it,” one player wrote on Reddit. “The UI itself is nice imo but it’s just so confusing to know where to find things, and also what certain things are. What is a bag? what are all these different events and shit?”

The main problem, I believe, is that things aren’t as intuitive, like having all the customization under the Arsenal tab, which I initially thought was just for weapons. The previously mentioned Bag is actually your inventory of consumables like sticker packs you can get from codes and is also under Arsenal. It’s not a big deal, and you get used to it, but it could’ve been avoided.

Many features you’d expect to be accessible anywhere in the game are available only in the Lobby tab. The battle pass, party/social settings, events, and challenges, alongside multiple icons at the bottom right with additional features you probably have never heard of, are all on the same page. The event section, in particular, gave me a migraine as it has five tabs with multiple things overlapping with other sections. One of the event tabs features the latest arrivals in the store, but there’s a section for that on the main screen.

At the same time, I feel like some of the main tabs at the top are unnecessary. The Shard Cards and the Leaderboard tabs don’t feel as important to warrant their place and could’ve been replaced with the battle pass or events while reducing clutter in the Lobby tab.

Once you figure the menus out, though, the game becomes incredibly fun and a breath of fresh air the FPS genre needs. From a variety of playable Lancers to a new take on a “buy phase” and a one-vs-one duel in the final round, all make the game a high-octane experience like nothing else.