Developed By: Voidpoint
Ported By: General Arcade
Published By: 3D Realms/1C Entertainment
Date of Release: May 14, 2020 Price: $24.99
Portions of this article appeared previously in the 2019 review of Ion Fury for PC.
In the year 1996, a small game studio in Garland, Texas dropped an atomic bomb on the gaming world. Using the revolutionary Build Engine developed by Ken Silverman, Duke Nukem 3D ripped the emerging FPS genre a new one. Featuring balls-to-the-wall gameplay, a badass attitude, a titular hero who never stopped spouting macho one-liners and a level of interactivity and level design never seen before, it took the world by storm. The following year 3D Realms would strike gold again with Shadow Warrior, an ultraviolent Build Engine powered romp across the land of the rising sun. Several other companies made smash hit games as well on the Build Engine, such as Monolith's Blood, Xatrix's Redneck Rampage, Lobotomy Software's Powerslave, and the critically acclaimed masterpiece Extreme Paintbrawl* by Head Games. The Build Engine ended up powering quite a few amazing games, however such fame could not last forever with the rise of true-3D engines such as id software's Quake. However times inevitably change, and the original 3D Realms is no more. The new 3DR studio is based in Denmark, and has a few familiar faces and some Fresch, er fresh ones, but what remains for sure is the dedication to bringing the best gaming experiences to the market, whether they be modern refreshes of classic styles, or in Ion Fury's case an absolute love letter to fans of the classic Build Engine shooter. The development studio Voidpoint partnered with the new 3D Realms to create Ion Fury on the EDuke32 variant of the build engine, which allows for modern resolutions, widescreen graphics, and much much more complexity in the levels, and of course it makes this port possible on the Nintendo Switch thanks to the porting efforts of General Arcade. PS4 and Xbox One fans also get their own respective versions.
When I first fired up Ion Fury on the PC I was blown away by the vibrant colors, the sprawling urban vistas, and the sheer detail that had been crammed into the retooled Build Engine. Right off the bat I noticed a billboard that had a cute reference to Duke Nukem 3D's pig cops. Then the music hit, and wow, it's good old XM tracker format. It sounds amazingly like a blend of classic Apogee/3DRealms style music with a dash of futuristic electronica, and really fits the tone of the game. Another thing that bears mentioning is the excellent voice acting. The main villain, Dr. Jadus Heskel, is actually voiced by none other than the voice of Duke Nukem, Jon St. John! His performance is incredibly impressive, and perfectly conveys the mad-scientist persona of the character. Valerie Arem returns as Shelly, reprising her role from the original Bombshell, and let me tell you, she sounds appropriately badass. Of course all of this remains the same with the Nintendo Switch version, though it should be noted that it's now capped at 30fps. The tradeoff though is worth it, as you now have a version of the game that can be enjoyed anywhere and any time, and with motion controls to boot. Ion Fury really does shine on the Switch in both docked and handheld modes. The visuals look particularly crisp on the LCD screen, and you can adjust your FOV to make up for the closer distance when holding the system.
The level design in Ion Fury really shines with an absolute arseload of secrets to find, sprinkled all throughout the classic sprawling mazelike layouts that games of the era were famous for. One problem (not really a problem) I had when playing is just wanting to stop and take an obscene amount of time to go through and savor the loads of in-jokes and references that flavor the environments. There are some amazing tributes in this game, and they are all quite clever. Another thing that stands out are the vast majority of pickups and switches in Ion Fury are high-resolution voxels, which certainly add to the charm and appeal. The weapons are amazingly balanced, and the ammo distribution is paced nicely so that you need to keep on your toes and swap weapons to keep up. It nicely encourages you to think outside the box rather than just relying on one gun to spam endless shots. The difficulty is quite challenging and will keep you on your toes, but I didn't feel like there were any cheap deaths. The boss encounters are quite enjoyable as well, even if I did get my ass handed to me on a platter repeatedly.
About the only thing Ion Fury is missing that games from the 90s excelled at is multiplayer, however it doesn't really suffer for it. It works just fine as a single player experience, and would not have benefited IMHO from the typical tacked on deathmatch/capture the flag/etc. modes that usually ship with fps titles. I'm much happier having an awesome single player campaign in this day and age rather than just dive into a stale online fragfest. At the end of the day, that's what Ion Fury brings to the table and it does a damn fine job of it. The Nintendo Switch port is definitely a jewel in the awesome little hybrid system's FPS crown, and should be picked up IMMEDIATELY by anyone who loved 90s fps games growing up. The only thing that I can find to complain about the Switch version is the fact that vertical aiming with the sticks has no inversion option, but that's coming soon in a patch (the motion controls offer an inversion toggle, no problems there!). I'm one of those weirdos who played too many flight sims as a kid and have "down is up" permanently etched into my brain.
Anyway, at the end of the day Ion Fury is a perfect example of how a retro throwback can go os-so-right, and gets a score of 10/10.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to duck out to Caco Bell for a $5 Phobos Fill-Up!
*extreme sarcasm detected
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