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".

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!

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.

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.

Kickass! I don't play a lot of DOOM clones, but I always have a good time when I do. Ion Fury is definitely pretty late of a DOOM clone, but it gets a lot of that innate appeal. Dodge and weave, keep peppering the enemy, gore and gib 'em.

Duke Nukem 3D is admittedly a blind spot for me when it comes to DOOM clones (most of my Duke Nukem exposure comes from Manhattan Project and the first third of Forever), so any particular nuance with how the Build engine contrasts with the DOOM engine is lost on me, at least for now. Broadly speaking, levels are HUUUUUUGE compared to what I'm used to - I'm honestly reminded of Sonic Robo Blast 2 first and foremost, at least with respect to how long you spend navigating a particular level. I imagine things get paired down a lot once you memorize certain levels, but even so...

The main thing I find myself impressed by here is weapon variety. When I play DOOM, I tend to fall into almost exclusively using the Shotgun (or Super Shotgun, in DOOM II). Sometimes the Chaingun gets its due if I'm low on Shells, Rockets get their play when I'm fighting a boss, and sometimes fists come up if I'm berzerking - but it's mostly the shotgun's show. In Ion Fury, there's a good amount of forced variety at play. The Disperser tended to be my go-to weapon out of habit, but there's enough of an ammo restriction that I'd have to be comfortable switching to the Penetrator(s). The Loverboy got quite a bit of use, too. Specific enemies would also be easiest to solve with the Electrifier or the Ion Bow, and the Chain Gun and Bowling Bombs made for good switch-up options. The only one I never got comfortable with was the Cluster Puck (heh), largely owing to how little I use Trap Mines in these sorts of games. But it made for a decent alternative grenade.

By contrast, I didn't think enemy variety was great. We're definitely skewing closer to the first over the second DOOM here, where a small suite of enemies carry very specific functions, and you just have to get used to gunning down the same cybernetic cultists rhe whole game. Not a huge deal, the first DOOM did fine, but don't expect a ton of new foes until, like, pretty late into the campaign.

The level pacing is also pretty front-loaded, where the first four zones have 5 levels apiece while the latter three zones... don't. Speeding up towards the finale works fine enough for a game of this length, but I sorta felt like the developers were hurrying along to get to the end, too, after that big climactic fight with the helicopter. Especially since "Countryside Carnage" and "Ordinary Laboratory" are completely missing bosses. I know part of that is that the devs really wanted to use demo level "Heskel's House of Horrors", and it's so much of a non sequitur that it must've been hard to sequence in as anything besides a capstone, but like it's pretty noticeable. Not bad, just kinda funny.

Good, good game all around, though. I definitely think the final fight against Heskel is one of the first times I've been suitably impressed by the final boss in one of these (DOOM and DOOM II are great, but I don't love the Spider Mastermind or the Icon of Sin). Honestly just cool to see that there's a market for this type of game/development in modern day.

P.S. - I get why they had to change it, but I'll forever bemoan the fact that they couldn't call this game "Ion Maiden". Woulda been perfect.

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.

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.

I'm sorry to offend people over the age of 30 but this game is MID. The movement and gun play is fine but HOLY FUCK GIVE ME MORE. I understand this game was built on a really old engine but bro. The music is mid. (cardinal sin for a video game) The title is mid. The art style is mid AT BEST; the environments can look nice but the enemies and weapons ARE MID. The writing is worse than mid, it's just BAD. I understand you're not supposed to take it TOO seriously but I can literally tell this game was written by horny nerds. (a bad thing) And to top all of this off, the latter half of the game is WAY too fucking long and unfocused. So many rooms and routes where I'm like, why does this exist? I actually liked the last boss because I just got to shoot shit and not worry about collecting the third keycard of the stage! Don't think I'll ever play this game again fr.

I think this may be my new favorite retro shooter.

I love everything about this game, the art, weapons, levels and sfx, etc. Everything is so tight and refined, I feel like this game really is the peak of Build Engine. (This or Blood. It's hard to decide which one I like more lol)

Unlike a common issue in a lot of boomer shooters, there wasn't really any low points within this game I feel, like the entire playthrough I was completely engaged and had so much fun.

Extremely fun build-engine FPS.

A ridiculous but really fun and punchy arsenal (I'm pretty sure dual-wielding SMGs that shoot burning flechettes is a violation against the Geneva conventions somewhere), really good level-design featuring a ton of secrets, and fast shooter action.

If you liked Blood or Duke Nukem for their action, I wholeheartedly recommend this game. Be warned, however, that the levels in this game are significantly longer.

An impressive modern take on the classic Build games of yonder; of course, the game advertises itself as being made on the classic engine too. I Was impressed with how far they took the old game code pile. Maybe my only issues were a slightly small weapon arsenal and honestly too many secrets. Like there are actually so many secrets I just had to accept that I'd find what I did and be fine with a low percentage. Otherwise, I got everything I expected out of it, in a good way, an easy classic FPS recommend.