Ion Fury

I can't really say anything that hasn't already been said a thousand times about this game. If you're interested in old-school shooters, than this is one to definitely check out. From a technical aspect, it's amazing what these people have managed to do with the old build engine (for you younger folks, no, this isn't at all what our games in the 90's looked like). Unfortunately, the game's strength is also its weakness. It's old-school in every way and I've come to expect more from FPS games. This is a high speed, shoot everything, rinse and repeat, kind of game; best enjoyed by turning off your brain for a few hours. If you're expecting logical level design, cinematic presentation, or an in depth story, you won't find it here. But if you're looking for the frantic violence that used to get Joe Liberman's panties in a bunch, this is as good an example as any. I had no technical problems running it on a modern system and it ran natively in 21:9 (3440x1440). It also ran incredibly smooth given it's old school design isn't as demanding on computer hardware. Definitely a plus these days given that you have to win a lottery just to get the option to spend two months salary on a video card. If you're a fan of old school shooters or you want to check out what all of the buzz is about, this is a good one. Also, a note on the "controversy": I didn't even see the offending label in the game and wasn't aware of it existing until after beating the game and seeing it mentioned in the reviews, so I'd say that it's a non-issue unless you're looking for it. Regardless, it's a dumb pun in a game filled with violence and foul language, so why someone would care so much about it is beyond me.

Just a fantastic game, through and through. The native linux build runs absolutely beautifully, good visuals, banging soundtrack, great level design. I'd say that Ion Fury is more frantic than the old Duke games. It's definitely a little more 'Brutal Doom' in that regard, although the AI is much more challenging. I've not seen a single frame drop during my play time. This is a very faithful homage to the FPS games I grew up playing in the 90s. I had high hopes for this game, and I have to say that it has met all of them. Really good fun. PS. I tried playing this with a controller at first and, while that's doable for the first 2 or 3 levels, a mouse and keyboard really is a necessity in my opinion. Way less fiddly, and a lot more head shots! So buy it. Buy it now.

This is one of the best First-Person SHooters I've played in a while

Epic.

I'm split between ION Fury and Blood for best Build engine game. But I tend to go with this one for that title because the spectacular cyberpunk setting is more appealing to my taste than Blood's wild west horror theme. That said, ION Fury has all the fun, speed and bombast one would expect from the Build engine games (or at least from the holy Build trinity of Duke Nukem, Shadow Warrior and Blood) but with a much grander and modern sense of scale. I would personally compare it to the mod Death Wish for Blood (but not as difficult), or the DNF mod for Duke Nukem 3D to get an idea of what to expect here, and as I understand, some of the map makers for the DNF mod actually worked in ION Fury. And compared to other games from the recent Boomer Shooter renaissance (think DUSK, Amid Evil, Devil Daggers, Hedon, etc.), this is in my opinion the single best one of them all and alongside Hedon, the most 90's authentic too.