Ion Fury (2019)

OVERALL SCORE = ★★★★★ (4.5 ★s)

__gameplay _ ★★★★★
___ design ___ ★★★★☆
____ fun _____ ★★★★★
__ graphics __ ★★★★☆
___ sound ___ ★★★★☆

One of the best boomer shooters out there. Feels like a spiritual successor to Duke Nukem 3D. Weapon designs are great and feel satisfying. Level designs push the Build Engine to it's limits, though I did get lost a few times. Overall design is very fun, some of the best fun I've had with a boomer shooter. Graphically it's the best looking Build Engine game for sure. I would have personally liked to see some more modern graphical features and lighting, like in Prodeus for example, but that's personal preference. The soundtrack is pulsing electronica with some symphonic sound mixed in here and there. Pretty great stuff, if a little forgettable. The one thing to note about this game is it's on the hard side. Consider Normal to = Hard. Enemies are plentiful and pretty aggressive, and if you aren't careful you can run out of ammo and have to scour the level to find more. It's not as bad as, say, a survival horror game, but it's definitely a bit more challenging than Normal in most other boomer shooters so it's worth mentioning.

In Summary: Ion Fury is one of my top 5 favorite boomer shooters of all time. Highly recommended if you love Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, or just boomer shooters in general.

First Impressions - Ion Fury

It's.... good? Judging simply by first impressions I had a better time with it than Amid Evil. Ion Fury has much better use of enemy prioritization and ammo resource management is more key here. I played on the second hardest difficulty (which is generally how i prefer retro fps). I think the biggest thing keeping the game back is the level design. It's too open, it goes hard on wide areas with huge ambushes but the game is strongly hitscan focused, which doesn't work with these kind of levels. It encourages stop and pop shooting from around corners rather than intricate weaving between cover points. Had it been stylized like FEAR it would probably much much better for it.

But in terms of positives I really liked the weapons, except for the bombs which feel like a "fuck this encounter in particular" weapon rather than something with any skilled variable use. The revolver with dead eye is satisfying as hell to utilize, and the 'shotgun' and smg equivalent are all great fun. There's also a few circumstances I saw where there were multiple routes within a singular encounter for you to weave down the corridors of but they still run into the issue i covered on hitscan.

It's no DUSK or Quake, or even Blood for that matter. But it's good and I'll probably get around to finishing it at some point but at the moment it's going to the shelf.

This is how you make an apology.

"Members of Voidpoint’s Ion Fury team have made sexist and transphobic comments, and included homophobic language in Ion Fury. We recognize these statements are insensitive, unacceptable, and counterproductive to causes of equality. We unequivocally apologize both for these comments and language as well as for any pain they have caused the gaming community, particularly women and members of the LGBTQ community. We take full responsibility for any damage that has been done to the relationships we’ve worked so hard to build.

“Moving forward, Voidpoint will institute a zero-tolerance policy for this type of language and all employees and contractors will undergo mandatory sensitivity training. As part of our efforts to contribute to the work that must be done to further support these communities, we are donating $10,000 from Ion Fury’s release day proceeds to The Trevor Project. We are also patching Ion Fury ASAP to remove all unacceptable language.”

https://www.gameinformer.com/2019/08/19/after-transphobic-comments-spark-controversy-ion-fury-developers-apologize-for-employee