So yesterday I finished 3D Realms' recent Build Engine shooter Ion Fury (previously Ion Maiden, copyright law can eat my ass) and man is it fucking wild that this game exists. We've been living through a bit of a shooter renaissance lately, what with your DOOM and your DUSK and your AMID EVIL and various other games with all-caps titles, and between them we're kind of running the gamut of full 3D, from early low-poly stuff to modern AAA and everything in between.
Ion Fury takes a slightly different approach seeing as it's, as mentioned before, built in the Build Engine, by absolute madmen. It's ridiculous, the size and scope of levels that are achieved in this over 20 year old engine, not to mention several standout gimmicks and setpieces that make it behave in ways it was absolutely never meant to. I can't overstate how much of a technical achievement it is to get the build engine to look and act like this, without utterly falling apart in the process. Mind you there's a fair chunk of jank as a result, ranging from occasional odd behavior to performance issues when things really heat up in a way this engine was never meant to handle, but even still it's very impressive, and it's not like Build games didn't already have plenty of jank anyway.
Aside from the sheer technical marvel of the game, it's also just really fun to play. It's got a particular approach to balance where everything is really high-damage, both your weapons and the enemies', and this allows the game to feel like a proper power fantasy without skimping on the challenge. Sure, you can take out most enemies with a single pull of the trigger, but they're just as liable to get the drop on you and smear you across a wall, so you'd still best be on your toes at all times, especially with some of the more wide-open environments in the game. What you end up as is a glass cannon barrelling through the level, dealing out explosive death in all direction while avoiding anything that might chip your exquisite finish, lest you shatter into a billion pieces. Comparisons to John Woo are inevitable, with the mobile, desperation-fueled daredevil playstyle this incentivizes, not to mention the staggering amount of breakable set dressing items populating the levels. Every aspect of the game's presentation is pitch perfect to convey a sense of power and excitement, from the massive kick and cloud of tracers spewed by the shotgun to the way a table full of jars and beakers will erupt into shards of glass as you leap across the room, blazing away. The gameplay is just pure energetic fun, and Bombshell's charming one-liners are the cherry on top. The game includes a "silent protagonist" mode in case you hate fun, but I wouldn't recommend it.
The game as a whole, in addition to being built in an old engine, does a simply fantastic job of capturing all the best aspects of the aesthetics and tone from this classic style of shooter, littering the environments with interesting tidbits, gags, references, and of course those sweet sweet secrets to hunt down. If I had to level one complaint toward the game, it'd be that the final boss is kind of lame, being essentially a more in-depth version of DOOM II's Icon of Sin; You're in a large room, filled with enemies, with a boss in the middle who needs explosives inserted into a weak point, but it takes a lot of them and every few grenades you drop in results in a new wave of enemies to deal with. Ultimately it's kind of tedious and doesn't play to the strengths of the game, but it's a fairly minor black mark on a game which otherwise has you facing off against a knockoff ED-209 and ripping off its chaingun arm, or taking down a pair of chainsaw-wielding battlebots.
The game is dripping with style and is a blast to play, and I would strongly urge any fan of classic first person shooters to check it out. Ion Fury gets a 4.
Ion Fury takes a slightly different approach seeing as it's, as mentioned before, built in the Build Engine, by absolute madmen. It's ridiculous, the size and scope of levels that are achieved in this over 20 year old engine, not to mention several standout gimmicks and setpieces that make it behave in ways it was absolutely never meant to. I can't overstate how much of a technical achievement it is to get the build engine to look and act like this, without utterly falling apart in the process. Mind you there's a fair chunk of jank as a result, ranging from occasional odd behavior to performance issues when things really heat up in a way this engine was never meant to handle, but even still it's very impressive, and it's not like Build games didn't already have plenty of jank anyway.
Aside from the sheer technical marvel of the game, it's also just really fun to play. It's got a particular approach to balance where everything is really high-damage, both your weapons and the enemies', and this allows the game to feel like a proper power fantasy without skimping on the challenge. Sure, you can take out most enemies with a single pull of the trigger, but they're just as liable to get the drop on you and smear you across a wall, so you'd still best be on your toes at all times, especially with some of the more wide-open environments in the game. What you end up as is a glass cannon barrelling through the level, dealing out explosive death in all direction while avoiding anything that might chip your exquisite finish, lest you shatter into a billion pieces. Comparisons to John Woo are inevitable, with the mobile, desperation-fueled daredevil playstyle this incentivizes, not to mention the staggering amount of breakable set dressing items populating the levels. Every aspect of the game's presentation is pitch perfect to convey a sense of power and excitement, from the massive kick and cloud of tracers spewed by the shotgun to the way a table full of jars and beakers will erupt into shards of glass as you leap across the room, blazing away. The gameplay is just pure energetic fun, and Bombshell's charming one-liners are the cherry on top. The game includes a "silent protagonist" mode in case you hate fun, but I wouldn't recommend it.
The game as a whole, in addition to being built in an old engine, does a simply fantastic job of capturing all the best aspects of the aesthetics and tone from this classic style of shooter, littering the environments with interesting tidbits, gags, references, and of course those sweet sweet secrets to hunt down. If I had to level one complaint toward the game, it'd be that the final boss is kind of lame, being essentially a more in-depth version of DOOM II's Icon of Sin; You're in a large room, filled with enemies, with a boss in the middle who needs explosives inserted into a weak point, but it takes a lot of them and every few grenades you drop in results in a new wave of enemies to deal with. Ultimately it's kind of tedious and doesn't play to the strengths of the game, but it's a fairly minor black mark on a game which otherwise has you facing off against a knockoff ED-209 and ripping off its chaingun arm, or taking down a pair of chainsaw-wielding battlebots.
The game is dripping with style and is a blast to play, and I would strongly urge any fan of classic first person shooters to check it out. Ion Fury gets a 4.
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