The Cycle: Frontier is a first-person shooter that has had a bumpy development. Originally titled The Cyclethe game was an umpteenth battle royale that went under the radar of an already saturated genre. The German studio YAGER has therefore changed its recipe to bring its title into the genre looter shooterwhose popularity is booming thanks to the excellent Escape from Tarkov.
Free and more accessible than the latter, The Cycle: Frontier takes place on both the planet Fortuna III and the space station Prospect Station. Players embody “prospectors”, a kind of adventurers who descend to the surface of Fortuna III to recover precious resources at the risk of their lives. This planet once inhabited by humans is now a field of ruins on which the local, hostile fauna has taken over.
Three major factions
The economy of Prospect Station, where our personal quarters are located, is dominated (for now) by three major factions: Korolev, Osiris, and the ICA. These basically have us doing their dirty work on Fortuna III. Each contract earns K-Marks, the basic currency on the station, as well as faction points, which give access to better equipment. We also receive scripts, which allow us to improve our neighborhoods.
The gameplay loop is simple, yet addictive. We first accept a contract (a quest). We then land on Fortuna III, solo or as a team, with the equipment we deem necessary to accomplish our mission ― and that we are ready to lose in case of failure. Said mission is accomplished, whether it is to recover precious resources, to deposit an object in a specific place or to kill certain specimens of the local fauna. Along the way, we loot anything we find worthy of interest and kill other players who stand in our way.
When we are ready to leave Fortuna III, we go to one of the extraction sites where a ship comes to pick us up. In the event of a successful extraction, we keep everything we looted during our incursion. If, on the contrary, you are killed during the adventure, you lose everything you had looted and brought beforehand. Rinse and repeat.
The handling of weapons
As of this writing, players can explore two maps, one of which has a more dangerous environment than the other. Their design is one of the highlights of the game. Each is made up of open spaces dotted with plenty of points of interest where the action is most likely to happen. Fortuna III is both a living planet, filled with lush vegetation, a world full of riches and a huge playground where tension keeps us constantly in suspense.
The handling of weapons, central in a shooter, is quite good. The weapons are well-designed, varied, and the shots are punchy, aided by a thunderous sound design. All is not perfect, however, since The Cycle suffers from a balancing problem. Equipment, including weapons and armor, is divided into several tiers of rarities. This system makes matchups with better equipped players extremely difficult to win, even with equal skill. And difficult becomes downright impossible for a solo player who crosses paths with a well-equipped duo or trio. It is better then to retreat and hope to pass unnoticed.