Ion Fury

Ticks lots of 90s shooter boxes, however: - Large, confusing levels often with no clear path. YOU'VE FOUND THE RED KEYCARD! Now where the hell was the red door? Separate "DOOR UNLOCKED" message. Which door? This level has HUNDREDS. Good variety of weapons but Chaingun is held back for so long you'd expect it to be amazing but instead it takes as long to spin up as it does to empty and doesn't seem to be any more effective than the SMG. Walking around with RMB held down to spin it is uncomfortable. Throwing bombs is as much of a crapshoot as it was 28 years ago, this was a bug to be fixed back then, not a feature. The shotgun works as well at range as the pistol which makes no sense. Up and down aiming is severely limited, this might be engine-related. Great variety of enemies but Most of the time you'll be fighting only 3 types. You often only know that the cheap, cheaty crab skulls are there because your health is going down, and they can appear from anywhere, while making a sound almost indistinguishable from the various fires on every level. Enemies occupy no volume so can hide around corners where there are no corners. Enemy event appearances (key pickup, door open) get really tiresome really quickly. These are completely at odds with the verisimilitude of the level design. Serious Sam, Postal:BD and others do this but so much better - you get PANIC and a fight you can win first time, here you just have to do that bit again, now knowing where things are coming from. Like it's a 16-bit platformer. Showing your awareness of a technical limitation from a previous era (hitscan enemies) and still including it is...what? Utter (insert own expletive). - It looks good and the voiceover isn't annoying but needs a volume slider of its own; Shelly's voice is the loudest noise in the game. - It's just not fun. At all. You have a mission and a challenge. Play Dusk, Amid Evil or Postal:Brain Damaged if you want to shoot things and have fun. Not this.

In it's current state Ion Maiden is nothing more than enjoyable yet forgettable retro shooter. Everything you would expect to be here, is. Doom-esque weapons, non-linier levels, secrets, explosions, it's all good but nothing special. I am hopeful 3D Realms can turn Ion Maiden into a shooter worthy of your time. There is potential, but at the moment there is nothing here that hooks me over any other retro shooter.

I was really looking forward to playing this game, I even got it while it was on sale for a great price, but sadly it had to be refunded. The game became unplayable at a certain point, whenever I was shooting at an enemy, I experienced what can only be described as having my character glitch around the level. On top of the game being broken, I could tell very early on that this game wasn’t going to be Blood or Duke Nukem, even if the main character was trying her best to cosplay as him.

Seems to be a very a solid entry in the old-school shooter genre. It might even be the best in that class, but as someone pointed out: Half-Life happened, making this type of gaming experience a little long in the tooth; at least for me. But hey, it was fun for a few hours, and totally worth it!

Pluses: * Good music on most levels * Hard enemies * Pathfinding Minuses: * The same shooting scarios are going over and over from one level to another. Barely you will be gifted with someting new. Ocasionally, not so fast as you wish. * Even after correcting brightness and contrast I feel hard to find most enemies. * Much enemies will be on long and very long distance. You have no zoom nor sniper rifle. * Canalisation with 4D effect and inside feeling. Also with music that can bee played with you ass. And with poo enemies. * Pathfinding is often harder than you even could believe. For example on one level you will need to go inside the atomic electrostation mechanism and swim through the rotating elements to get to the next part of level. * Most of enemies will automatically catch you and crosshair in blink of an eye. Even those who are on long distance and barely seen. * Some enemies are absolutely dumb and will go to doors and stuck in them, won't see you staying some metres around. But there arent much of them. * Game is hard from the beginning. * You will have hard lack of ammo. * Game uses 256 MB of video memory and can't use more. That's why it will lag in some parts, especially when fighting with boss on the roof of institute. * There are much ammo and health packs that are hard to find. But people who made game think thats it's kind of 'hmm, yeah, whatever but not a secret'. There are much secret zones that are hard to find. You will need to jump on barrels, thashcans, etc. So don't brake them at first. * Most enemies need 2 HEADSHOTS IN A ROW to die. * Scorpions are very very powerful and can FLY and are shooting 6 rockets one by one with extreme accurancy. In much places you haven't place to run away from them.