Ion Fury has been on my radar for a while, and I was glad a friend sent me a gift copy on Steam to check out. After around 9.5 hours with the game, finally finishing it on "normal" difficulty, I can say that Ion Fury is a good, yet ultimately derivative "boomer shooter" experience.
Being built in the famous Build Engine, Ion Fury looks and plays a lot like games like Duke Nukem 3D and Blood. Outside of some modern shooter conventions like reloading, Ion Fury very much feels like a 90s shooter, for better and worse.
While the gunplay is pretty good, it's a largely unimaginative fare. There's no amazing gun in the game, which really hampers the enjoyment of the combat, adding on top of enemies that feel really unoriginal. Additionally, the main character of Shelly just isn't all too interesting, being more of a reference machine than an actual character; essentially taking the more annoying aspects of Duke Nukem and creating an entire character around that.
Nevertheless, the levels are phenomenally designed for the most part (a few maze-like areas were frustrating to navigate), and the overall sense of challenge is largely fair and a great test of skill for fans of retro shooters. Sadly, as soon as you finish the game, there's nothing to really pull you back into it, making it a one-and-done sort of ordeal that makes for a nice distraction, but nothing much else.
Being built in the famous Build Engine, Ion Fury looks and plays a lot like games like Duke Nukem 3D and Blood. Outside of some modern shooter conventions like reloading, Ion Fury very much feels like a 90s shooter, for better and worse.
While the gunplay is pretty good, it's a largely unimaginative fare. There's no amazing gun in the game, which really hampers the enjoyment of the combat, adding on top of enemies that feel really unoriginal. Additionally, the main character of Shelly just isn't all too interesting, being more of a reference machine than an actual character; essentially taking the more annoying aspects of Duke Nukem and creating an entire character around that.
Nevertheless, the levels are phenomenally designed for the most part (a few maze-like areas were frustrating to navigate), and the overall sense of challenge is largely fair and a great test of skill for fans of retro shooters. Sadly, as soon as you finish the game, there's nothing to really pull you back into it, making it a one-and-done sort of ordeal that makes for a nice distraction, but nothing much else.