Ion Fury, first impressions

Ion Fury is finally out! Honestly I was a little bit sceptical about this game before the full release. Why would somebody made a build engine game in the year of 2019? You can make great retro type shooters with modern engines, and you can add some extra without modernize it too much. That's how iD software did it with Doom in 2016.

I was sceptical, until I saw LGR's review about it, and I was very positive when I caught DansGaming playing the game on Twitch.

This is my first impressions of Ion Fury (formerly known as Ion Maiden).

Ion Fury is a game developed by some of the old guys of Duke Nukem 3D. What convinced me to pick it up, that they sticked to the old stuff. The game is based on the Eduke32 engine which is the modified and updated from the original build engine. It has an OpenGl renderer, so it looks a bit modern, but you can switch to the old software renderer, too. Of course it is just fake 3D, with 2.5 enemies that always look your way. And they shoot faster than you. The game doesn't hold your hands, and hard difficulty is really hard. Manual save is your friend.

Ion Fury release trailer

## Except it has a female protagonist…

What the hell they were thinking?! After all, it is clearly a 90s game, and in the 90s there were no female characters in gaming, at all. xD

(if you didn't get this was a joke, pls get off my website…)

Btw, I like her, she has good lines, and the voice actor is good! :)

## Level design

It has the good old level design, where you can lost easily, as it is multilevel chaos. But in a good way, as you explore the level for secrets. There are multipart levels, with instant loading, and at the end of the level they warn us, how many secrets have been missed. That's an improvement without actually making secret hunter's job easy.

Basically shoot everything and a secret place might pop up. Also if you want to jump to some crazy places, save before it! Heheh

And of course the devs didn't forget about colored key cards! Hunting for keycards to get to the next area is our favorite past time as gamers, heheh!

## Guns, guns, guns…

Gunplay is awesome with some nice weapons. Our basic looking weapon is a 6 shooter pistol, which is good for close ranged and from far too. Shotgun and Uzi also returned from the classic arsenal, and you can dual weild uzi. Using the shotgun is really satisfying.

Beside that we have grenade launcher, and a grenade itself with a softball like throw and some interesting physics. You have definitely get used to the throw.

*LGR review of Ion Fury

## Enemies and story…

One downside so far is the enemy variety. It's a cyberpunk-ish game, and mostly we get robotic enemies, including spiders, worms, etc. But they are ok, if you don't like bugs in real life, as it is not really life-like.

What about the story? What story? Just shoot the enemies and enjoy the great music! Also the main villain is voiced by non others Jon St. John aka Duke himself!

## Music

The music is excellent! And you can free to listen to on Spotify!

## Linux support

The game is fully supported on Linux, as Eduke32 also works on Linux. You can buy the game on Steam, but I would be happy if you buy the GOG version instead. Please support DRM-free gaming so our future would be from companies like Valve and Epic Games. Thank you!

## In short

I love the gameplay, the city atmosphere. The guns have power and satisfying to use, the level design is old school and can be challenging if you want to get all of the secrets.

I think this game will be appreciated by old fans of the 90s FPS games, and people who are younger probably find too difficult to play. I don't say this because I look down on them, but because todays gaming trends are about making everything easy for you with questmarkers, auto health regen and linear maps all the way to Mars.

## Also…

I also think that Ion Fury is probably will be on the list of Bryan Lunduke's realistic games that can inspire people to do public shootings…

And for people who are review bombing the game on Steam, please don't let your face hit the door all the way to the Moon, bye!

parasurv@webspace ~ $