The game takes the form of a standard shooter with typical FPS gamemodes such as team deathmatch and king of the hill. Players start out with a limited arsenal of weapons, and must unlock the rest of the game's massive full collection by gradually leveling up from playing matches (or by using credits to unlock desired weapons early, which can be acquired by ranking up and dismantling skins, or purchasing them with Robux.) Additionally, players can also acquire cases and keys (also through credits but can drop randomly as well when winning matches) to unlock the aforementioned skins to personalize their weapons.
Phantom Forces' success can be largely attributed to its custom physics and combat engine, which is meant to simulate the feel and gunplay of console/desktop shooters such as Battlefield and Call of Duty, and does so remarkably well. It also boasts a very intricate weapons customization system to fine-tune any one of the game's guns into the ultimate killing machine.
You can play the game here.
Tropes:
- All-or-Nothing Reloads: Played straight for the most part, but exaggerated with the Dragunov-SVU, in which the previous magazine is smashed into the aether by the new mag, yet has no bearing on ammunition if the animation is cancelled.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- Dealing over 50 or more damage to an opponent counts as killing them if someone else finishes them off for the purpose of unlocks. However, the experience rewarded will roughly correspond to the proportion of total damage inflicted by the player, and with no bonuses for headshots, wallbangs (hitting someone through a wall), or multiple hits.
- All cosmetic crates will boost the rates of rarer qualities the longer the player goes without them, resetting if a Very Rare or Legendary item is acquired.
- Some ammo types and attachments that radically change the way a gun operates or feels will cause said guns to be reported in the killfeed under different names, making it more obvious if an enemy is using them to gain the upper hand.
- Using a flashlight sacrifices much more useful stat modifiers on a weapon (unless you're using a Ballistics Tracker), which would've been a problem in the Cataclysm event where every single map takes place at night or in pitch-black fog. As a result, four new attachments were introduced specifically to address this problem: an absurdly powerful flashlight that replaces the sight (useful for Chainsaw Grip and hip-firing users), a proper night vision scope with variable zoom (though this comes at the cost of the night vision being realistic and the crosshairs jerking back when firing), a clone of the Angled Grip shaped like a potato with an added flashlight, and a unique futuristic sight called the Hera CQR that also has a flashlight.
- April Fools' Day: Rather than truly pranking the playerbase, StyLiS prefers to simply relax and make the game sillier for a few days around this time, usually by introducing wacky maps or replacing the sound effects with things like the Demoman yelling "kaboom" or squeaky shoes.
- Artistic License – Gun Safety: The Canadian Independence Day update introduced a trio of ammo types that absolutely should not be attempted in Real Life due to explosion and/or shrapnel hazards, but function perfectly fine in-game due to Rule of Fun:
- .50 caliber rifles (the BFG-50, the Hecate II, and the M107) get the Dust Shot and .17 Wildcat, which modifies the cartridges by force to have shotgun pellets and .17 caliber bullets inserted in them respectively. This is an easy way to risk a rather violent malfunction for the user in reality.
- The Beowulf ECR gets the ECR 5.56 Conversion, which places 30 5.56 rounds into the magazine, normally meant to only carry ten .50 Beowulf bullets per magazine. Because of the differences in dimensions, this creates the possibility of the casing rupturing, an easy starter of Disaster Dominoes.
- In the case of the above ammo types, the game lampshades the player's willingness to go through this by flat-out asking why would they do this.
- In addition to the above, the player character, implied to have some degree of military training, is perfectly fine with using the ZIP 22 pistol, despite the fact that one of its greatest flaws is having to stick your hand in front of the barrel to reload it.
- All guns chambered in 5.56 NATO can also take .223 Remington; though this is considered an iffy-at-best move in reality, the game treats it as a simple side-grade to the gun's performance stats (less damage, but a large boost to stability and accuracy) in all cases.
- Bland-Name Product: Played with. All guns and attachments are referred to by their real-world names if they exist (with the exception of the Ballistics Tracker), but their identifying marks are replaced with StyLiS's logo.
- Blown Across the Room: Can happen when a massive amount of damage impacts against a player at once. How far the body flies back depends on the total damage of the final hit. Usually, regular weapons cause the victim to drop on the spot, while shotguns and snipers frequently play this trope straight. A headshot with the NTW-20 outfitted with 20x110mm shellsnote will send bodies flying into the air, akin to regular Roblox ragdoll physics.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: Credits can be used to purchase purely cosmetic skins, but can also be used to unlock modifications and guns without getting the kills or XP required first. Additionally, all melee weapons with a gold lock in the loadout screen need to be unboxed from a cosmetic crate at a 1% minimum chance, which can only reliably be reached through credit purchases.
- Difficult, but Awesome:
- The ZIP 22 is a laughably weak pistol on paper, and the game even makes note of its Real Life status as a
Creator Killer for the company that made it. However, it boasts an extraordinarily high headshot multiplier that boosts its 15-12 base damage to 42-34, enabling it to go from seven-to-nine-shot-kills to three-shot-kills, provided the player has good aim - meaning that only those with stellar accuracy can properly use it. Additionally, at 1337 kills, a 50-round drum is unlocked for the gun, eliminating its main downside of having a poor ammo economy. - The later-added GB-22 takes it even further, with only slightly better damage than the ZIP and a single shot magazine, but a x10 headshot multiplier that allows it to kill with one headshot at any range; and it can take attachments to boost its muzzle velocity to the highest of all secondaries, making it an excellent Sniper Pistol in skilled hands.
- The Gyrojet Carbine and Mark I have an unusual firing pattern: rather than lose damage over time, their shots gain damage over time. This enables their bullets to inflict a One-Hit KO without a headshot past a certain range, but at the cost of atrocious muzzle velocity caused by their dependence on rocket propellant and low base damage at close range. This requires the user to identify the sweet spot where the bullets will instantly kill without being subjected to too much drop or travel time, and keep the distance between them and their targets within that exact ring. However, anyone able to do this will be able to pick off the opposing team with impunity.
- The Danel NTW-20 is a massive sniper rifle, the highest ranked gun available to unlock, and requires a surface to rest its bipod upon just to aim down its sights (you can't move while aiming, either), not to mention a tiny magazine, inability to equip a suppressor, a pitifully slow equip and movement speed, and the fact that in terms of killing potential, most other .50 Caliber snipers (not to mention regular snipers, with good aim) will outperform it in most situations. However, there is a feeling of exhilaration when one pulls its trigger for the first time. This weapon is powerful, with a muzzle flash taking up the entire screen, complete with thick, lingering smoke and an ear-splitting BOOM to go with it - calling it an Anti-Materiél sniper at this point is a massive understatement, for this rifle was originally built to penetrate tanks. The awesome part is continuing to perform well and even top scoring with the thing - the NTW in-game is intended to be a gimmick weapon, trading almost everything imaginable for its raw power and damage, but in spite of all that, in spite of severely handicapping yourself while up against other snipers, you still managed to perform on par or even beyond the performance of your enemies, all the while still feeling like a complete badass (which is hard to be said for the other gimmicky weapons) as you carry and handle this massive cannon around the battlefield.
- The ZIP 22 is a laughably weak pistol on paper, and the game even makes note of its Real Life status as a
- Discard and Draw:
- Several snipers will gain ammo types at exchange their stopping power for raw speed or vice versa at several thousand kills.
- The Gyrojet Mark I can use an alternate type of rocket that eliminates its central flaws with range and muzzle velocity, but kneecaps its damage to prevent instantly killing to the torso unlike its default configuration.
- Every Bullet is a Tracer: Unless tracerless rounds are installed, and even then, they're not perfectly invisible.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: The console may occasionally slip that all of the soldiers in the game are microchipped when discussing how the Ballistics Tracker works (it tracks the GPS on each chip and highlights them), only to Double Take.
- Gun Porn: The game has over 140 firearms, all beautifully modelled with a touch of realism while retaining Roblox’s art style. With the huge amount of attachments available, one can create different versions of each weapon as well, some are able to become a completely different weapon through a conversion.
- Hitscan: Fully subverted; all guns have travel time and are affected by gravity; the speed at which bullets travel can be changed with certain modifications. It's for this reason that at 1500 kills for any weapon, the Ballistics Tracker is unlocked, which tells the player where to aim for a headshot even accounting for gravity (but not travel time) while looking down the sights.
- Hollywood Silencer: Downplayed. In terms of auditory feedback and detection, silencers in this game are indeed fairly quiet to the point of reducing even the ear-splitting Dragunov series to mere "fwips" and might be inaudible at the distance most guns are used when flanking players. However, they will still set off the radars of opponents who are too close to the player, and the Muffler, which is a jury-rigged silencer, has no effect on radars, only muffling the gun's noise to deter players who don't check their radar (though it also has the benefit of stopping louder weapons, usually snipers, from making such a ruckus.)
- MacGyvering: The Ballistics Tracker, which places dots telling the player where to shoot for headshots, is made from a regular iPhone without any modifications, and yet it somehow manages to work.
- Improbable Weapon User: The game's melee arsenal has regular bladed and blunt-force weaponry, including fictional examples, but also has everything from the Frying Pan of Doom to a keyboard to the Jade Key from Ready Player One, all of which have the potential to instantly kill unsuspecting players.
- Lampshade Hanging: As mentioned in Artistic License – Gun Safety above, the game's various Flavor Texts will question the player if they select a modification or weapon whose use might be risky in Real Life. Aside from the ammo examples, the M231 is a weapon meant only for use plugged into a vehicle turret, but..."...you're going to use it anyway, Boss?"
- Lightning Bruiser: Part of the reason the BFG-50 is disproportionately far more powerful than the later .50 BMG unlocks despite it only holding one bullet at a time is because it readies and aims much faster than them.
- One-Hit Polykill: The game discourages packing together as all bullet types in the game will pierce through players, potentially allowing sniper rounds and shotgun blasts to rip through entire crowds with one trigger pull. It is always recommended for any group of teammates advancing together to spread out slightly to prevent this from occurring.
- Series Mascot: A Cat Girl named Anti, introduced in the unnamed sight customization update. She appears as the basis of three Joke Item sights, but later physically debuts as a zombie in the Cataclysm event. Anti would later return in her regular appearance, managing the skin cases stockpiled in the gun store depicted in the main menu.
- Short Range Shot Gun: Averted. Shotguns, especially the KS-23, can land solid kills at upwards of around 60 studs (roughly 50.4 feet according to modern Roblox measurements.) This isn't taking into account slugs and the Stevens-DB's burst fire, which can kill at twice that, at minimum.
- Shout-Out: Many, being a Roblox game with a huge community.
- One of the Ghosts' logos in the updated version of Bazaar has a certain distinct eye-shaped symbol with a wisp as the iris.
- The Z-Saber, Buster Sword, and lightsaber are all melee unlocks in the game.
- The Cataclysm event introduces several items from Minecraft as melee weapons, namely the sword, pickaxe, and trident. Their increased lethality in this game is chalked up to them being forged from tanzanite instead of diamonds.
- For Valve games, the Frying Pan and Entrencher melees belong to Team Fortress 2, the Pipe Bomb Left 4 Dead, and the Crowbar Half-Life as per their flavour texts.
- Doom's Crucible Blade appears as the "Noobslayer", with the appropriate flavour text. So does the "Boom Stock" attachment for the Sawed-Off.
- Thor's hammer appears with the appropriate name "Mjölnir."
- The WA-2000's flavour text references the opening sequence of The Living Daylights.
- The Machete and Kommando melees are very prominent "knives" from the Battlefield series - the Machete's flavour text references Dima, the original wielder of the Machete in Battlefield 3.
- The USAS-12's flavour text has an offhand comment about "frag rounds", referencing the infamous combo from Battlefield 3.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Most guns can unlock a night vision sight, and it works pretty well at letting the user see in pitch-black maps. However, it's not a modern piece of NVG, so attempting to use it in regular lighting will overload the sensors and pretty much blind the user while looking down the sights.
