Developed By: Voidpoint
Published By: 3D Realms
Date of Release: August 15, 2019
Price: $24.99
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 time changes many things, and the original 3D Realms is no more. The new studio is in Denmark, and has a few familiar faces and some
When I first fired up Ion Fury 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.
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.
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. Atthe end of the day, that's what Ion Fury brings to the table and it does a damn fine job of it. So I'm going to once again break tradition and give a numerical score, as much as I dislike doing so. Ion Fury gets a solid 10/10 in my books, and should be played IMMEDIATELY by anyone who loved 90s fps games growing up.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to duck out to Caco Bell for a $5 Phobos Fill-Up!
*No, not really Extreme Paintbrawl is an utter POS and a disgrace to the Build Engine.
