It seems to me that, at this point, when setting out to make a retro FPS, you need to ask yourself two questions - can I make this game (i.e. do I have the design chops to pull it off - make levels, weapons, enemies, etc.) and - as I think this game proves, more importantly - should I make this game (i.e. do I have any interesting ideas at all for what to put in it). Functionally, this game is perfect and the look and feel are as good as anything on the Build Engine could possibly be, but unless you're just looking for more shooting gameplay to pass the time, you're probably gonna find this pretty boring. Lifeless, lame one-liner voice acting and every basic-bitch reference you can possibly imagine being in something like this crammed into every corner and repeated to death doesn't cut it.

Given that, my rating for this might seem high, but other than being dull, it's so overwhelmingly well done that I can't bring myself to rate it lower. The feel is fantastic, everything works right, and the levels are for the most part very clever. Just wish there was someone on the team with a little more creativity! Feels a bit like a waste of potential.

Ion Fury left me speechless

Procedes to write the longest review ever

Seriously, Ion Fury is so perfect that i can’t even. I’m pretty sure this would’ve been my child obsession if i’d played it in the 90’s. I’m pretty sure that Ion Fury is seductive enough for everyone just by it’s visual aspect. That whole cyberpunk/neon bisexual lightning/retro-futuristic/80’s sci-fi aesthetic might be something pretty common in videogames and culture as a whole nowadays, but one can’t resist it’s charm. And to see that it has finally made it’s way not just into a random FPS, but as one of the kickstarters of the whole Retro-FPS revival, and all of this in what makes the comeback of the glorious Build Engine after more than 20 years... well, it’s just something way too big.

Rarely something so promising manages to fit the expectatives. Ion Fury actually surpasses them. This game is essentially a masterclass in atmosphere, gameplay, and level design. As for the atmosphere, this game goes for completely different direction compared to a game like, let’s say, Dusk (But you can also count Blood, Cultic, and even Quake). And i’m not just referring to the most obvious difference which is the strong differences in their respective themes. What i mean is that a game like Dusk, even if it’s not a survival horror game or anything like that, it is still supposed to make you feel uncomfortable, at times. It’s still obligated to make the experience not entirely pleasant. On the opposite, Ion Fury is pure sci-fi bliss, pure joy, pure pleasure. It’s a fun time from beginning to end. This, concerning the atmosphere, is posible not just because of the visuals, but also because of the music.

Music here deserves it’s own paragraph. The correlation between the FPS genre and electronic music has been explored before, obviously (Unreal comes to mind), but Ion Fury should be consider as a true paradigm. It’s a really eclectic mix of synth sounds. It can sound badass without relying on heavy guitars, it can also sound groovy, and at times it can sound like something out of the Robocop or Terminator soundtrack. It’s nice blend of styles from the 80s, like synth-pop and new wave, and also styles from the 90’s like house music, trance, and such. To put it simple, it’s one banger after another.

Let’s talk about level design. In terms of concept/art/aesthetic, you have 7 different episodes or “zones” as they are called in the game, comprising between 3 and 6 maps, altogether creating a single long campaign, because there’s some kind of narrative progression here. First zone is probably the most iconic of all, and it’s based on the futuristic city of Neo D.C. The second zone is pretty much a mix of some city maps and a few, let’s say, “tech-bases”. Third zone, one of the best of the whole game, happens inside a large building, pretty much in the style of Die Hard. Episodes 4, 6 and 7 are essentially a bunch of tech-base levels. Episode 5, one of my favourites, is a mix of different ideas: A natural environment during daytime, a sewer level (probably one of the best sewer levels of all time), and a fantastic spooky mansion level (i just love the spooky mansion theme in shooters, Blood and Hedon are some other examples). If i can make any criticism is that, overall, it feels like there are too many tech-base maps, but this is only a superficial and very subjective nitpick, since all of this maps are actually pretty good and it’s pretty hard to tell which one you would leave out of the game. It’s just a matter of theme/concept, which comes down to a matter of how and why certaing textures are chosen.

Looking at the level design In terms of pure gameplay, Ion Fury can proudly say that it’s a singular case of an FPS with no bad maps at all. Even the most iconic games of the genre might have a couple of bad maps here and there, but truly, Ion Fury has none. For sure, there might be a few mediocre ones – And i’m sure that’s mostly determined by some repetitive themes – but objectively, there are no shitty enemy placements, no convoluted mazes, no annoying puzzles, no dark places. Simply, there’s no bullshit here. There are simple maps aswell as some bigger and more complex ones. Yet you’ll never feel lost, you’ll never be wandering around looking for a hidden switch. Except, of course, if you’re looking fot the hardest secrets, of which i’ll talk later.

As for the combat, i just have to agree with Civvie about the comparison with Shadow Warrior. Ion Fury’s difficult is not as hard as Blood, and not as easy as Duke Nukem 3D. Instead, it’s actually something pretty close to Shadow Warrior. Weapons are tight, featuring the best pistol ever introduced in a FPS, an excelent shotgun, and some very interesting dual sub-machine guns. It’s also interesting how the chaingun is introduced as the most powerful weapon here. Explosive weapons, on the other hand, well, they could’ve been handled a little bit better. Bowling bombs take some time to get used to, but they end up being the best of the bunch, a very interesting concept all in all. The grenade launcher is ok, but has some problems with the aiming. Clusterpucks, i rarely used them in my entire gameplay, given how hard they were to figure out for me. But the three explosive weapons share the same problem: The unpredictability of the splashing damage. Sometimes you might want to use one of these to deal with a group of weak enemies that are practically tied to each other. Given that case, there are chances that you might only kill the enemy who actually hitted the explosive, with almost no splash damage to the surrounding left. That’s a little janky.

I guess my biggest nitpick with this game is the -sort of- imposibility to reach a 100% at the end of every episode. First of all, Killings are pretty much imposible to do in a 100%. There will always be a single enemy that didn’t spawn correctly when it should, for some unknown reason. And if that’s not the reason, then the counter is broke, or maybe deaths by enemy-infight don’t count. Idk really. And second of all, secrets, which are probably some of the hardest to find i’ve ever experienced in any FPS. They tend to be a lot for every map, and sometimes they are so hard to discover, that it feels a bit excessive, to the point where it kinda goes against having fun. But of course, if you’re able to deal with your OCD, none of these should be a real problem. Actually, i did two consecutive full playthroughs of this game (something i can recall doing just a couple times in my whole life), the first one exploring all of the secrets, and the second one only going for those i remembered. Naturally, the second was a lot more fun.

Ion Fury is so good that it even has a good sewer level. Does it get better than this?

Feels weird to call this game “safe” while it relies on you liking a specific game engine from 1995, but it kind of is. The weapons are all useful but fairly standard, not having any of the wackier focus other Build Engine games put on this and the enemies are similar with you fighting a lot of the same "grunt with gun" types through most of the game. The levels too don't try to suprise you outside of a couple exceptions and this leads to a campaign that doesn't feel like it goes anywhere.

It is fun though! It's really cool to see something use old tech in this way where it takes advantage of modern hardware while still feeling like the older games this is inspired by. It's not "DOOM HD TEXTURE PACK 4K" it feels like an older game just on a much bigger scale and that ends up giving the whole thing a really cool vibe. And the combat is genuinely fun with all the weapons having that similar, old but smooth feeling.

It's just a shame that it ends up feeling a bit like a tech demo? They had a cool idea of what to do with the game technically but not creatively and the way it gives you its few ideas feels a bit badly paced. For example, it tries to give you a full, uninterrupted campaign like Half-Life or most modern shooters, as opposed to Doom and the other Build Engine games which were split into episodes and reset your weapons and items between them. This leads to the game dumping most of its weapons onto you in its equivalent of Episode 1, and then you just keep them for the rest of the game. A few enemy types are introduced later but it feels similarly quick to throw all its ideas at you and as I said levels don't change too much, with it feeling like a lot of the game is spent in a Cyberpunk city, Sewers or Labs.

Cool game but not a great one. Good core gameplay and cool aesthetic but misses a few beats elsewhere.


Also had a very funny controversy where the devs removed a joke no one was offended by, got review bombed and then added it back in saying "they wont stand for the censorship of art 😤", all over a bottle that said "Ogay".

Apesar de não ser meu primeiro Boomer Shooter, posso dizer que Ion Fury conseguiu captar muito bem todas as situações que alguém passa ao entrar nesse estilo, sendo essas: frustação, felicidade, diversão e cansaço.

Não estou dizendo que o jogo é ruim ou a oitava maravilha do mundo, porém ele consegue cumprir muito bem seu objetivo (até o momento que você decide fazer 100%).

Apesar de não conversar muito, Shelly é uma das personagens mais estranhas que tive o prazer de conhecer, pois quase todas as suas falas são referências de outros jogos, filmes ou séries e mesmo assim o jogador consegue sentir e entender a personalidade dela, chega a ser estranho como isso acontece.

Sua gameplay como esperado é extremamente divertida, afinal quais são os pontos negativos de sair por um mapa desmembrando, matando e decapitando inimigos?

Apesar da gameplay ser boa, o jogo erra bastante em relação a dois aspectos: mapa e repetição. O mapa é praticamente inexistente e a quantidade de inimigos repetidos acaba deixando tudo muito mais enjoativo.

Um outro ponto que vale destacar é em relação as referências ou segredos do jogo, pois a quantidade exorbitante de pontos para encontrar em uma zona chega aos 90 (dividindo em 5-6 regiões) o que no início parece divertido, mas com o tempo passa a ser insuportável.

Já as referências aos outros tipos de mídia me impressionaram, tanto pela quantidade quanto pela qualidade. Inclusive, existe tantas coisas escondidas que até uma pintura ou um rabisco pode ter relação a alguma outra obra.

É perceptível que Ion Fury foi desenvolvido com muito amor e mesmo errando em diversos aspectos devo dizer que foi muito divertido acompanhar a loucura de Bombshell.

E que venha Phantom Fury!

This is a really weird game to review. On one hand, yes, the formula is there. It's obvious when you play it that Ion Fury is trying its best to emulate the likes of Duke Nukem and Shadow Warrior (Blood not so much imo). Super fast paced gameplay, levels bursting with verticality and secrets, and a quippy protagonist.

However, there are some issues that prevent Ion Fury from reaching the heights of the legendary Build trinity. First of all, and the most damning thing, is the writing and dialogue. I don't normally say things like this in reviews, as I generally respect most involved in game development, but whoever wrote the narrative and dialogue needs to be either fired or switched to another section of the team. I moderate a Dragon Ball roleplaying forum, and people who can barely type a coherent sentence could write more compelling and honest dialogue than whoever the fuck they got to write this shit.

From the first level to the last, Shelly says the most cringeworthy and (even worse) unimaginative bullshit you could possibly think of. Movie references that desperately scream "OMG I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT MAKES SOMETHING FEEL 90'S BUT I'LL TRY ANYWAY," comments on shit that basically amount to the most STRAIGHTFORWARD observation you could possibly make but in a voice that implies there's a joke somewhere. There is no joke. It's not funny, it's not witty, it's not interesting.

What made the Build trinity's dialogue good is how extreme it was. It didn't play it safe. Duke is such an insanely strong parody of 90's action heroes that he actually ends up being a GOOD action hero in his own right due to his many, many memorable quotables that are repeated to this day, in addition to unbelievably unique voice acting. Caleb is just so dastardly, vicious, and witty that you can't help but to love him. And Lo Wang... Alright, he's uh... Well, in an attempt to preserve my reputation I'm just gonna say at least he's memorable and extreme. Despite her solid voice acting, Shelly is not.

Now, regarding the gameplay. It does a lot of things right. The level design is some of the best in any Build game ever, I'd argue that much of this game's level design surpasses the quality of the trinity. The environments are insanely detailed and there's so much to see, it's really the only Build game i'd call "beautiful."

The guns are rock solid. I know some complain about the lack of weapon variety, but I seldom felt that way while playing. All of the weapons do a good job at filling a niche (with the exception of the crossbow... they probably should have fixed the aiming on that but i guess it does work in a pinch) and it's rare that you don't have the right tool for the job. The feedback on killing enemies is generally quite nice too, especially with explosions.

The enemies you face range from "solid" to "why the fuck did they put this in the game" tier. The "solid" enemies are the regular goons dressed in robes and the shotgun guys. I say solid because while they get the job done, they aren't the most stylistically interesting and they have no real dialogue other than basic tactical speak... Which is a far cry from the pig cops of Duke Nukem and the screaming cultists of Blood.

Now, on the other end of the spectrum... The fucking spider robots. Why God Why. I never had fun a single time dealing with these annoying motherfuckers. ESPECIALLY when the game decides to just spam them without any other enemies. At least there's an argument to be made that they er... make combat more tricky against a group? I don't know, I'm being too generous. Remove these fuckers and the game improves two fold.

Anyway, I think the primary issues with this game lay in the obvious lack of writing and style chops. The only thing I can really say has a ton of style in this is like... The music and environments. Shelly is terrible and the enemies are boring. Unfortunately, that's kinda like... the primary focus of the game, it goes without saying. The reason I'm still giving this a pretty good score is because fundamentally it's good, I found myself wanting to come back, and the level design is just too good to ignore.

When it comes to the current boomer shooter scene, and really any movement that preys on nostalgia, a lot of the projects that come out tend to label themselves as a retro throwback made to emulate the feel of those old games people enjoyed, but oftentimes that is where they stop. Some choose to wear the guise of an older game in order to subvert expectations and do something new, while others settle with simple imitation of the classics; sadly the latter is more common than the former. Games like Prodeus, Warhammer 40k: Boltgun, and Slayers X, while having merit in somethings, ultimately just feel like hollow echoes of their influences. Ion Fury, at first, looks like it is going to be in a similar situation; a game that is trying emulate the likes of the Build Engine trinity, with Shelly Bombshell formerly being a Duke Nukem character, and the fact that the game is actually built in a heavily modified version of the original Build Engine. But, throughout the game's run time, it slowly unveils itself as something more; it is a direct evolution and improvement over its inspirations, it keeps the same feel but without the clunkiness and outdated design tropes.

The importance of the Build Engine games, that being Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, and Shadow Warrior, was their intricacy. The levels that make the worlds that these games take place in had a level of detail and openness that other FPS games just didn’t have; Duke Nukem’s levels were chalked full of air vents that acted as alternate routes and consumable items, like jet packs and steroids, that could lead to complete sequence breaks and level skips if used properly. Blood also had this, but added onto it with much more in depth combat and brutal combat, asking the player not just to aim and shoot, but to actively engage with the 3D environment by using crouch and jump to dodge fire, rather than just finding cover. In a modern context, these innovations aren’t anything unique, they have been integrated into the standards of game design, and as such, are just expected. This is the trapping that the boomer shooters mentioned earlier fall into, they replicate the innovation without improvement, creating a flat circle of design. Ion Fury sets itself apart by going beyond this; it uses the design tropes set up by its forefathers and fully explores them. Levels don’t just have one or two ways to approach, they have a hundred; there could be two different sets of air vents that lead to different positions that flank a group of enemies, there could be an explosive wall that kills the enemies on the other side, there could be a series of banisters or edges that can be jumped across in order to gain the high ground, and so on and so forth. Once the first one of these alternate routes is found, the player's brain starts to seek them out and begins to notice more of them as the game progresses; it keeps the player engaged and gives them a sense of freedom in a linearly structured game. It's not just the physical level geometry that keeps the player engaged, the way the enemies and the player interact also has a level of depth to them not seen in other games. The most blunt example of this is how the robot headcrab enemies overload and explode when hit with the electric baton, offering an ammo free alternative to taking out these smaller enemies. My favorite though is the centipede enemies; these guys break apart into shorter and shorter versions of themselves if you hit their body, but will die in one go if you get a perfect headshot, encouraging the player to slow down for a second so that the encounter won’t get out of hand. Additionally, much like blood before it, the enemies that fire projectiles, particularly the grenade grunts and bow grunts, really keep the player on their toes. If the player just runs around standing straight up like they would in any other game, the will get blown to bits; but, if they utilize the crouch and jump as not just platforming mechanics, but also ways to juke out enemies, these types of enemies become some of the easiest in the game. But, of course, these enemies wouldn’t be nearly as fun to fight if the arsenal of weapons wasn’t up to snuff, and they very much are.

I really appreciate the balancing and utility of the weapons in Ion Fury. Most FPS games that feature weapons with alternate fire mechanics make the mistake of either making the alt fires way too good, to the point that they overshadow the base fire, or they are way too gimmicky and not worth using. Ion Fury strikes the perfect balance between these two sides by having the alt fires be not too drastically different from the base fires, but different enough to where scenarios in which one would be better than the other can be differentiated. The Ion Bow is the weapon that I think first demonstrates this. The single bolt base fire is great for taking out the group of enemies right before the first boss because of how precise it is, giving clean head shots to all the singular enemies in that wave. But, the overload alt fire where it shoots out dozens of groups of bolts in quick succession proves to be extremely useful for both the boss and its accompanying flying drones that move sporadically. My favorite weapon in the game, the bowling bombs, do a similar thing, just on a much more subtle scale. The alt fire acts like a traditional grenade, Shelly lights the wick and lobs it in a general direction, and then it explodes, badabing badaboom, simple and reliant. But the base fire is a bit more tricky; it can either be rolled along the ground immediately to hit long range targets, or held a bit longer to activate a homing feature that can hit enemies from around corners, making it an extremely versatile weapon. The only weapon that doesn’t really fit this mold is the Loverboy, the starting pistol. The Loverboy’s alt fire lets Shelly pull a Clint Eastwood and auto headshot up to three enemies at a time, which is objectively better than its single shot base fire. Although, I think this is fine because it is the starting pistol, and it grants it relevance even into the final level of the game; as well it's not the easiest thing to get the hang of, so there is a bit of a skill gap. All the other weapons are great too, I just don’t really want to mention all of them here. That being said though, there are a couple of gripes I have with Ion Fury, but they are mostly to do with the porting job to the Nintendo Switch.

As mentioned, the version of this game that I played was the port released for the switch back in 2020, this is the version I bought years ago when it first came out, and I didn’t feel like buying it again on Steam or Xbox. This port of the game is pretty good all things considered; the frame rate does dip, and sometimes slows to a crawl, when big explosions happen or lots of enemies are on screen, but these instances are few and far between. My main issues come in the form of accessibility and options, there are very few of them. Firstly, there is no button mapping, just two alternate control methods, which is better than nothing, but these alternate options don’t change the things I wanted. The game has bumper jumper set to the right bumper and makes the player use the D-pad to toggle between weapons. The first of these is an issue because it means the player can not shoot and jump at the same time, which I am used to as a console FPS fan, but it still sucks regardless as it was so close to being functional, it just needed to be moved to the left bumper. The second issue is bad because having weapon selection mapped to the D-pad means that the player can't move and select weapons at the same time, which is a big issue. The game tries to mitigate this by having the shotgun’s grenade alt fire be a shortcut to the other side of the selection wheel, but I would have rather had a proper weapon wheel like in Dusk or Doom Eternal. Additionally, the games draw distance can be a little low, leaving things far off in the distance hard to see, this is only really bad in some of the levels set in the open streets or subway tunnels, otherwise it is not that big of a deal.

Ion Fury stands proud as one of the originators of this boomer shooter phenomena, standing alongside both Dusk and Amid Evil. It is a prime example of how to take what was set up by its influences, and improve upon them in order to unleash the full potential of those ideas. As this new genre continues to grow, and more and more games come out that simply want to be like the classics and nothing more, I hope more games look to what Ion Fury has done, to see how to properly create a meaningful homage to the past.

Ion Fury is a Build engine game with plenty of knick-knacks and homages made to entertain, compensating for the lack of creativity of its cyber-cultist cyberpunk setting. Shelly "Bombshell" Harrison pops snarky jokes throughout the game which for the most parts are amusing, Shelly isn't anything but Duke Nukem's own spiritual daughter.

Weapons are mostly satisfying, albeit a little generic. There's no plasma rifle, or ray guns in this cyberpunk universe; rather the usual dual Uzi, a satisfying revolver, to cartoonish fuse bombs. Weapons are repeating, with a grenade launcher and two grenade taking up half of the weapon slots, we felt the variety of them a little barren compared to other shooter of days past.

Many attentions to details are present in its game, Voidpoint does not half-ass its secrets, notably with the inclusion of a fully working piano; we won't spoil the rest of the secrets but many of them made us chuckles a fair bit. As for the rest of the map design, Ion Fury is generally a gorgeous game with beautiful sceneries in Neo-DC and again a lot of attention put into its details.

Unfortunately a game made by bigots, who apologized for their puerile homophobia only after being confronted by their higher-ups at 3D Realms. Additionally, Ion Fury's Discord exposed Voidpoint's sexist and transphobic viewpoints, calling trans people "mutilated", it would surprise me that this is the extent of their unscrupulousness. What next is hiding in Viewpoint's closet; homophobia, transphobia, racism? For those wondering about the extent of the humour we are talking about in their game, Ion Fury included a soap named "Ogay" in their game referencing the Olay skin care brand. It's not even offensive to marginalized communities, rather simply second-hand embarrassing.

Does Voidpoint think that people will be coming back for Aftershock after the conduct of their employees. It's an average first-person shooter at best which, while novel, does not warrant its developers' indemnity. Total conversion WADs are a dime a dozen.

Retro shooters are flooding the market and Ion Fury is usually named as one of the better ones. And I agree with that assessment, while I still think Dusk is the best of the bunch, Ion Fury is up there. The shooting in Ion Fury is tight and accurate, and it got a lot of cool callbacks to '90s shooters, and it's super fast and hit that old-school run-and-gun gameplay well.

But, there are some notable problems with Ion Fury. You can die VERY fast, which means you gotta autosave constantly. The game is also too sparse on the ammo, I barely used my favorite weapons because they rarely had ammo. I used the first few guns 80% of the time. The game also reuses the same enemies all the time, and it's possible to get a bit stuck in some places (although some might say this is a part of being a retro shooter.)

But all in all the game is a success, but it's probably a game aimed more towards fans of retro shooters. It's quite long, around 8-11 hours, and its difficulty is likely gonna bounce some people off it before the end credits.

If it was around 5-6 hours, had more ammo, and scaled the difficulty to reduce the constant need for autosaves, it would fare a lot better in my opinion.

Best modern indie retro FPS, hands down.

Part of that is my Build engine bias speaking, no doubt, but I'll never pass up an opportunity to replay this.

The levels are technical marvels that still wow me years later and the gunplay and weapons are slick as hell. I still love this game's cyberpunk atmosphere too. Not as over-the-top like Turbo Overkill as an example, but grounded with some minor comical elements, akin to the 80s Sci-Fi it's inspired by. All that's missing is a bigger modding scene but even then, this is still one of my all-time favorites.

Originally Ion Maiden (still bitter about the name change), Ion Fury is a 2019 First-Person Shooter running on the Build engine. It was published by 3D Realms and developed by Voidpoint.

This is probably one of the better Build engine games (I at least had a better time with this than I had with Shadow Warrior. While that game is good, the comedy in it was very subjective to say the least). I had a fun time while playing this.

The attention to detail in every map is absolutely stunning, and certainly more detail than what Duke Nukem 3D was capable of at the time. Little quality of life touches like when you shoot a fire extinguisher, it's contents spray out before it explodes. Not only is that satisfying to do, but the hole it makes leaves item pickups you will need.

The weapon lineup is satisfying as well, with the pistol (named the Loverboy) probably the best pistol I've ever seen in an FPS game. The alt fire for it automatically headshots targets. It is extremely effective even late into the game.

Blowing up enemies is always beneficial. Kind of like Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal with glory kills, if you blow up enemies they drop a ton of armor pickups. This is very useful in this game because the monsters are relentless and will take advantage of Build engine jank to get to you.

The voice acting in this is so much better than Shelly in Duke Nukem: Alien Apocalypse. Voiced by Valerie Michelle Arem, she actually feels like a human and not a female clone of Duke Nukem. Heskel is especially great, played by John St. John. It's unfortunate that the final level doesn't have him as the final boss. But, it is a decent enough challenge so it can be forgiven.

Overall, I had a fun time with this, and I can't wait for the sequel coming out later this year!

Really fun FPS game which makes a really great usage out of the now outdated Build Engine - which captures the feelings of a 1990s FPS game, but also does so much more than that. Honestly, there's so much here which is impressive just from the standpoint that it's made on the Build Engine and the things that it manages to achieve with it - there's not a bit of this game which feels unpolished or messy.

But also it's a very clear example of people who knew what made those games so great, and also boasts some really satisfying combat and weapons, some great and intricate level design (also where each chapter is this one giant interconnected area, rather that segments that are over when you reach the end). Everything about this game just feels right, and is surprisingly longer than games like Duke Nukem 3D - and will probably burn you out if you try to play this all in one. Even more impressive is this game has a file size of only 93MB (which is honestly a lot of data, but nowhere near what you'd expect from games made in 2019).

There was some serious work put into crafting its levels and making its arsenal fun to use, but it's held back by a number of issues in other areas, namely repetition, enemy variety and humor.

The Good:

Good workhorse weapons with plenty of ammo - Quality level design

The Bad:

Irritating enemy types - Uneven arsenal - Bugs and glitches - Repetitive and overstays its welcome - Poor humor
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Announced in 2018 as a sequel to the underwhelming Bombshell, the legally embattled Ion Maiden (which I will henceforth refuse to refer to by its lawyer-compliant name "Ion Fury") decided to abandon the generic look and gameplay of its predecessor to boldly go where no one had gone in about 20 years: back to making a fully original shooter on the Build Engine that powered classics such as Duke 3D, Blood and Shadow Warrior (the "holy trinity" of build), as well as lesser productions like Powerslave DOS, Redneck Rampage, Witchaven and more. Released in 2019 to generally positive reviews, it significantly contributed to the 90s throwback shooter resurgence, along with games such as Dusk and Amid Evil.

And it's a mostly correct reception, since all the key components are there: they clearly understand the basics of what makes a fun shooter, as they provide a pair of great workhorse weapons with plenty of ammo lying around for both of them, namely a revolver that can lock on to multiple enemies for a Red Dead-style deadeye execution, along with one of the best shotguns you are likely to see in a recent first-person shooter and a fun homing grenade that can be rolled around corners, vents or gaps in the walls; it has huge intricate levels that twist and wind on themselves, filled with an outrageous number of secrets and shortcuts to find and a bestiary of enemies that are reasonably fun to shoot. Is it so good then that the Build trinity needs a fourth spot though? No, it's not, for a variety of reasons that will make you wish you were simply playing Duke or Blood instead.

First of all it overstays its welcome by being overlong: with 26 levels (plus one boss stage) separated into multiple sub-levels it will take you 12 to 15 hours to get through, depending on how thorough (compulsive?) you are in hunting down secrets. This would be fine if the pacing and variety were better but sadly it starts to get repetitive very very quickly: the same handful of enemy types with the same three or four voice lines repeated every single time they see you, dispatched in the same exact ways every time, especially since some weapons work far better on some enemies, which pretty much forces your hand on which to use on what.

It also features some outright infuriating enemy types, chiefly the spider-head things that hide in the corners or hang from ceilings, get the drop on you and start biting at your ankles bypassing armor and chipping away at your health directly: they're hard to spot, blending in with the environment, and annoying to kill, since they hop around almost incessantly, unless you leave autoaim on (which you shouldn't, since locational damage matters as do headshots). They are easily eliminated with one whack of your electric baton, but the hit detection is erratic and when they are too close it becomes impossible, since this is the build engine and you can only look up and down at a 45 degrees angle. Sniping them with the revolver lock becomes the only viable strategy but considering the spiders are literally everywhere, it will become quite taxing on your revolver ammo. Similarly irritating are the flying drone enemies, which have the nasty habits of spawning in half a dozen at a time, hovering just out of reach of your revolver's lock and pelting you with aggravating accuracy from far away, and that's when they're not the rocket variant, which can melt your life away with one wuick salvo the moment you see them, or the spongy androids that teleport around and turn invisible. same gues for the bosses, which are are few and far between and are scarcely any more fun to play.

These enemies would be far less aggravating if the game worked properly, unfortunately it suffers from bad AI (enemies get stuck on level geometry and furniture, making them unpredictable) and a number of irritating glitches, such as the revolver being unable to lock onto enemies through doors, which requires entering a room (and often getting ambushed) while fiddling to get it to work. the game's signature weapon, the bowling bombs that seek out enemies when you roll them, also suffer from wonky pathfinding, making them less useful than they should be: you can throw them like Blood's dynamite but you can only achieve the homing effect if you roll them on the ground, which means even a tiny irregularity on the floor like a step or a crack negates their intended use. They also tend to lock onto the wrong enemy (you have no control over which), leading to frustration: you might be trying to blast an automated turret on the other side of a room and your bombs will be steering elsewhere trying (and often failing) to kill some other enemy, usually one of the many, many spiders. When they do lock on it's not too rare to see them spaz out around an enemy instead of exploding, or even doing so to no effect. Clearly a weapon that needed more work before release, despite being prominently featured in the promo material.

The rest of the arsenal is hit and miss: incendiary akimbo SMGs that feel like they don't have enough ammo for the damage they deal, a minigun whose ammo is usually hidden in secret areas, a good crossbow that hits enemies in a line and sometimes can't land all-important headshots even if the crosshairs are dead on the target and an explosive disc weapon that can be thrown or placed on a wall as a proximity mine, even though the game fails to explain that in any way, so it wouldn't be a surprise if many players didn't even know that was a thing. There is no rocket launcher, but the shotgun doubles as a grenade launcher, which you can (a bit slowly) switch to by right clicking. Unfortunately these grenades do not explode on impact with the environment, rather bouncing around usually exploding where they do no damage to anything. they do explode when hitting enemies at least, which rewards precision but again makes them less useful than a nice rocket with predictable splash damage as a viable strategy.

A few more assorted annoyances: the save system is retro to a fault, making the quicksave and quickload buttons save and load over the most recent used save as opposed to a dedicated quicksave file like all modern games do. Imagine wanting to make a backup save before a difficult section and finding out that all your subsequent quicksaves have been saving over that one, which is not what you you wanted: what you need to do in that case is open the save/load menu, save on the backup file, then open the menu again and save again to the file you are using for quicksaves before you can continue. Saving is fiddly too, requiring hitting the Y and then enter keys to confirm twice, and this has to be done manually every time you boot up the game. It's also glitched, as it adds the letter Y to your save file every time you save (my quicksave file was named "quickyyyyyyyyyyy" after a while. There is also an occasional save bug that reverts all your saves you back to the start of a level for no apparent reason, forcing you to start that stage over. It happened to me twice, and made loading after booting up the game a tense affair as i never knew if the game would negate the last hour of progress on a whim.

Lastly, a mention to the humor: it is sort of expected that this kind of game will have to feature the sort of crass jokes and visual gags that started with Duke 3D, and that's all well and good, but Ion Maiden fails to produce anything that's even remotely funny, from the dated internet memes and pop culture references to the cringeworthy one liners that the protagonist spouts on a constant basis, which are never, ever, entertaining in the slightest. They are a far cry from the funny quips that Duke or the original Lo Wang blurt out and especially the clever, well acted one liners from Blood, that is for sure. If nothing else the developers must have been aware of it, since they have an option for "silent protagonist", which is highly advised to be set to on.

In conclusion, Ion Maiden is a decent game, but you can have a far, far better experience just sticking to the classics, especially since no effort was put into modernizing the game via the QOL improvements we've had in the intervening two decades, which is the opposite that can be said about the many, many free source ports and total conversions that Doom enjoys.

I'm a fan of old shooters, they make my brain cells fire in every direction and I find aspects of their design that could be learned from modern games.

Hence why this game feels so odd to me, it shows itself as embodying everything that made the Build Engine era of games great while rejecting their most unique aspects. The compact and experimental level design, enemy variety, freedom to get lost, difficulty, etc...

And I understand these are flaws for many people, but at least for me and many that enjoy these games for what they are and not the memory of them, this sands down the edges too much.

A final note, even if the general gunplay is good, the reloading mechanic is uncalled for, I can see it had the purpose of making fights more tense by not being able to always shoot (you deal a ton of damage even on hard difficulties) but you can ignore that obstacle by simply spamming the dedicated reload button, making it more of a nuisance.

Though, it's still enjoyable, I will be going through it in depth to really understand it, something it does share with old school shooters is that the true experience comes after you are familiar with its secrets and maps.

Edit: About a month later I've done about everything in the game, went through all the secrets and explored every level, I did not get 100% as a trophy because the game asks you to kill every enemy in a level, even if high difficulties increase the amount of them to the point where they bug out and you can't kill them.

I've come to really appreciate the game's level design, at the same time that the combat becomes so simple due to the lack of enemy variety and the fact all your guns deal so much damage and get so much ammo that the only reason to constantly change is to spice things up yourself.

Still a good time, can't wait for Aftershock.

Sewer Levels are the evil twin of Train Levels, please stop making them.

Solid Boomer Shooter. One i think mostly improves upon the games it's inspired by. I have always thought the Build-engine games looked like ass, but it does it's damnedest to make it look nice. And this also feels much more satisfying to play. The shotgun is fantastic. It has a nice rhythm.

The trade-off i guess is it personality, it feels somewhat more generic than Blood or Duke ever did. It still also keeps some of the flaws those games had, like overly big levels, the annoying tiny enemy type and bullet-sponge boss fights. None of it a deal breaker and i did overall like it.

Bit of a weird situation with this one. I really wanted to complete it but just couldn't. It became a "slog" to play.
Maybe this will shed some spotlight:

The good:
-The OST sounds really great. Highlight of the game. Would recommend.
-The environments look cool, retro-style without too many irritating filters (that some put to replicate "old style")
-Satisfying to see head explodes

The bad:
-The weapons. Not much variety and you get most of them really early, so there's not much to look forward to.
-The enemies. Same enemies over and over and over again, with a rare instance where a new variant is added (again, very rare to happen)
-Levels & Map system: maybe I have a terrible sense of direction or too spoiled by modern games, but I would clear enemies in let's say 5mins, and then spend 15mins aimlessly wondering around in an already explored area with no idea what I am supposed to do as there are no Objectives that would hint where to go.
Map exists but despite multiple tries I found it to be pretty much useless and unintuitive.

Neutral:
-Secrets. As non-completionist didn't have major issues with this but having in some cases 35+ secrets per level and most of them being just a stash of loot? No unique weapons or anything like that? Sad.

Reason for quitting:
Got to next stage, thinking I was already close to the end of the game, already feeling slightly burnt out from repetitive enemies and aimless wandering. Decided to check a guide/walkthrough to see how much was left.
Found out I was only half-way done at best...