Ion Fury

Ion Fury is a treat for fans of boomer shooters. Pushing the Build Engine to its limits, it reproduces the feel of an old FPS more faithfully than other throwback games such as Dusk or Amid Evil, and looks and plays (almost) straight out of the nineties. Nostalgia aside, the game is very solid in itself. The high movement speed and the punchy weapons, including one my favorite grenade launchers in video game history, make for hectic gunfights where you’ll turn dozens of enemies into mush. While the gunplay is tons of fun, the real kicker is the level design: each area is wide, intricate, and exciting to fight in and to explore – notably thanks to the many secrets to hunt (perhaps a bit too many)! The atmosphere is quite fantastic: it essentially looks like a high-budget, cyberpunk version of Duke Nukem 3D. Although they could be more varied, the environments are as pretty and realistic as 27 years-old graphic technology will allow, with a great use of bright colors. The obligatory referential jokes and schoolboy humor can sometimes get a bit eye-rolling, but have their charm. The soundtrack isn’t bad either! Yet, Ion Fury makes a few mistakes along the way. The enemies hit hard but are brain-dead: one minute, your health gets depleted by grenadiers hidden in the distance, while the next you easily gun down some idiot stuck behind a wall. More aggravating is that the game drags for a few hours too long, or perhaps does not renew itself enough: there aren’t that many guns to play with or enemy types to dispatch, and pretty much all of them are introduced early on, so in its second half Ion Fury gets repetitive and unchallenging – at least in contrast to earlier levels, which I think are more varied and difficult. Overall, Ion Fury may not be as much a banger as I remember, but it’s still a fantastic action game: it’s old-school, crafted with love, and such a blast to play that it made us forget the existence of its predecessor, Bombshell. I can only recommend it.

On three separate occasions I launched into this beautiful game, expecting to have.. fun. On all three occasions I got a little bit more frustrated. I bumped up the difficulty to maximum as well, thinking that maybe I wasn't challenged enough on the first two tries. Still, the fun factor eluded me. Ion Fury has every element of what should be an amazing shooter. It has puzzles, it has massive and interesting levels, and it has some tense gunplay when in close quarters. Unfortunately, a lot of the levels dump the player into large arenas with enemies immediately lobbing explosive shells from above, and right into the protagonist's face. These explosive shells can bounce around corners as well, so don't expect to use cover to survive. This kind of enemy may be a common design in retro shooters, and it often works when running down tight corridors, but Ion Fury is not exactly retro, and that seems to be the problem. The game looks retro but it doesn't feel like it. The levels look really cool, but they don't play how you would expect.. or maybe want them to. It pains me to say this because I want Ion Fury to be the best game ever. Instead I have to be honest and say Ion Fury is a beautiful game that plays just above average. I still think you should try it, and I sincerely hope that you stick with it, and completely disagree with my opinion.

For my first review on GoG, I thought I'd review a game that needs support right now. I have it on Steam, and I'll probably buy it here one day, but man I still love this game. The weapons, while not too crazy, are all satisfying. The heads gib! The level design has so much little details that are very nuanced, but they're still chock-full with details and references. Playing the levels is great and it never gets too keyhunt-y. The city and mall levels are great, and the sewer levels, while brown, are still fun to play through. The protagonist is pretty cool, too. The whole controversy was stupid, in my opinion. Censorship is bad, yeah, but this game had a lot of effort put into it, and for people to get upset at one guy at 3D Realms who wasn't aware of the rest of the team's viewpoints is dumb. I think the game is amazing, and I'm glad the whole thing ended with "There's no more censorship!" I just hope the game devs recover. TL;DR: good game where you shoot a lot and get keys, buy now and don't worry about controversy

The demo does show a lot of promise and really is the best of both old and new style FPS games. By restricting development to an old engine while using ideas that have evolved the FPS genre the result is a game that feels natural to play. You run and gun fast but you also have modern conveniences that don't get in the way of the game. Hunting down hidden paths/switches took a little readjusting to but once you get the logic of that down the game is fast and fun!

I was very hyped after finishing the mini-campaign in the demo version. And now I'm freshly after finishing the full game. Sadly, the full game is not providing the same positive experience. Mostly due to the fact that it's becoming quite quickly monotonous - developer had the good idea about the general gameplay etc, but it fails in details - most levels don't have this characteristic "soul" which would separate one level from another, give more or less unique experience and keep the player entertained. There are also other, minor issues. Arsenal of weapons seem to miss some quite important things for every FPS, like some kind of rocket launcher, there is also no equivalent of sniper rifle etc. Some weapons seem to be more or less "clones", like clusterpuck and bombs. And by some reason the amount of ammo possible to carry is for some weapons surprisingly limited (can't count how many times I've run out of shotgun bullets). And that Shelly. She was supposed to be "cool", like good old Duke, but she's nowhere near as good as him. Or Lo Wang or Caleb. Her comments are so often without any sense (e.g. "we're done when I say we're done"), mostly because our enemies are somehow lifeless and mindless cyborgs/robots. Plus it sounds like "oh, I'm SO COOL, look at me", but it's just pathethic. At some point I started to regret that I can't control Heskel and get rid of the Shelly... I never thought that I would say that - but Shelly from "Bombshell" game is more likable and less annoying character than in Ion Fury. Yes, exactly. It's also not good that we don't have up to this moment (it's July 2020 when I'm writing these words) some kind of multiplayer, nor dedicated level editor - so far we can only play in campaign and two "challenge levels" with killing waves of enemie (there is also mini-campaign from demo, but it's hardly a bonus). If you can't live without another "Build-based" game, I guess you can try it. In other case - better think twice before buying.