...but only barely. The standard weapons felt really weak (explosives seemed okay, though), the enemy variety was interesting at first, but quickly became boring and tired by the second act. The level design is...okay, I suppose. Graphically, I can't complain - the game looks, and also sounds, fantastic. I just got tired of enemies that barely make a noise suddenly draining my health every 5 steps in certain sections of the map. A lot of the enemies can see you well before you can see them, which leads to a lot of tedium. I feel like a lot of this problem could have been solved by just making a low poly FPS in something like the Quake 3 engine because that's how the enemies are laid out. For flat, 2D sprites, they are way too easy to miss among the background. And again, they can 'see' and shoot you well before you see them the first time. Having just played another old FPS from the late 90's that I had never touched before and loved it, I can safely say that Ion Fury nailed the look and style of the old Build Engine games, but it's not as good as either Duke3D or Blood. I guess people can always play it if they're desperate for a throwback to better gaming days.
It's like they took the winning, over-the-top formula that made the first game such fun to play and replaced it with modern Call of Duty mechanics. The first few levels play embarrassingly badly. The shooting feels worse, then you have missions with mandatory stealth and AI that just does some weird things until you forget about it, followed by a mission that heavily involves scripted escort; and then a boring turret section. I think most of the cutscenes were unskippable, too. Easily one of the worst shooters I've ever played. Stop at SoF: Platinum and save yourself some regret.
It's like a 90's action movie with over-the-top violence. It may be the first FPS (at least that I can remember) having active dismemberment. All the guns sound heavy and devastating, which is great. The story is kind of typical 90's fare and doesn't get in the way too much while playing. While the shooting is fun, there are a couple of problems that hold this game back (I'm using the SOFPlus patch, so not sure if these criticisms will hold true without it). There is a propensity for the doors to sometimes either get you stuck, forcing a restart, or turning you around a random percentage; usually it was about 180°, which was perfect for enemies to either kill me or remove a large chunk of armor/health. It could just be the difficulty that I chose, but there were also a number of times that enemies would just spawn in right behind you as soon as you turn around. This only happened extensively in a couple of levels (Africa and Tokyo), but when they happened, they were incredibly annoying. That being said, this is an FPS classic and can still be enjoyed thoroughly despite the flaws. I'd also recommend staying away from the medium difficulty and going for something harder. The only time I was inspired to finish this game was when I played on the tougher difficulties.
