Time has not been kind to the self-proclaimed FPS king of the 90s’ Duke Nukem. What used to be the Pepsi to Doom’s Coke has been left to the wayside as the victim of countless half-hearted ports, a horrid outsourced continuation, and a guest spot in a sleeper hit that was marketed to a generation too young to fully appreciate the greatness that is Duke Nukem. Almost 30 years since his inception, Ion Fury has released, which is essentially a gender-swapped version of one of my favorite protagonists of all time, and is likely what will be the final nail in his digital coffin.
From start to finish, Ion Fury is a love letter to the 90’s FPS genre that only incorporates a handful of the quality of life upgrades we’ve seen since then. With the exception of the occasional autosave when hitting specific checkpoints, it’s you versus the world, and she’s a cruel bitch that will kick your ass and spit you out like Duke’s last piece of bubblegum. Even when comparing Ion Fury to the PS4 port of Duke Nukem 3D, the easy mode is more akin to the ultra-hard version of the latter. The game pulls no punches in terms of difficulty, often spawning endless waves of enemies while in the midst of a challenging boss battle, this is on top of trying to dodge and weave through what seems like an endless gauntlet of traps and environmental hazards that’ll do you in just as quickly as enemy gunfire.
The game follows the standard 3 keycard structure from the likes of Doom and the original Duke releases, requiring you to explore the world for your precious color coded ways forward, only to backtrack to that door that you walked past twenty minutes ago and can’t seem to find your way back too. Backtracking has never been on my top then list of favorite things to do while gaming, but I can generally trudge through it; however, Ion Fury insists on hiding the path forward on multiple occasions behind a vent or door that has to be blown open by gunfire. This wouldn’t be an issue if every one of these assets could be blown open, but it’s not, it’s a situation where the game picks and chooses which one is hiding hidden items or the path forward.
The arsenal at your disposal is a bulky one, but really limits our heroine to the generic SMGs, shotguns, RPGs, and the ilk, leaving me yearning for something a little more out of the ordinary to talk about, even when taking into account the secondary fire options all of the weapons offer. At the end of the day, I spent most of my playthrough using either the dual-wielding SMGs or shotgun, unless the situation really called for something bigger or I was completely out of ammo, which happened more often than I would care for. If you find yourself without ammo your only recourse is a shock baton that takes entirely too long to wind up, does about as much damage as a wet tampon, and usually saw my lady suffering a premature demise.
The game relies on the same Build engine that many classic FPS games used back in the day, which really makes the 3D environments shine, but once the 2D sprite enemies come into frame, looks kind of awful and even more dated than playing Doom or Blood on a modern setup. Each and every enemy, regardless of what type, viewing angle, or distance looks like they are a paper cutout from the shooting range. Except the paper cutout returns fire with pinpoint accuracy.
Despite these minor annoyances, the game delivers in the area that matters the most – the actual gunplay, which is fast and just as satisfying as any of the classic 3D FPS games that inspired it. Sprinting at breakneck speed through waves of enemies, barely making it out with an HP count in the single digits never gets stale and really forced me into making good use of the ability to save on the fly, something that was missing in the original version of Doom. This resulted in one of the most bi-polar gaming experiences I’ve ever had, as the amount of joy I experienced from mowing down the varied cast of baddies as they’d burst into flames or explode into bloody messes would suffer a loss of momentum as I found myself lost yet again. Being forced to backtrack through the indistinct looking areas that lacked the trail of corpses I was used to in similar experiences that would leave clues as to what areas were new and which were being revisited makes you appreciate just how well made the old games were.
It took a couple of hours, but once Ion Fury hit its stride I found it to be a solid shooter that only became more enjoyable when I turned the option for a silent protagonist on. I went into this game thinking that we’d be getting a watered-down, politically correct girl power version of good ol’ misogynistic Duke, which thirteen year old (or thirty-five year old) me couldn’t help but giggle at as he referred to strippers and ultra violence. Our heroine keeps the one-liners coming at a regular pace, but most fell flat for me with the sole exception of hearing a lady drop almost carbon copies of Mr. Nukem’s signature lines. The jokes and statements are just as X-rated as 3D Realms most loved character, but they never hit the mark. A prime example happens early into the game (right around the time I turned her voice off) when a vent was blasted open and she stated something along the lines of “This isn’t the type of ventilation I am an expert in,” which after polling some dirty-minded friends and family members, we can only assume she’s referring to fellating something or someone.
As a stand-alone experience, Ion Fury is a passable throwback attempt at the 90s FPS genre, but even with a few of the upgrades made to bring it closer to the current age of gaming, it still feels quite dated and lacks what made Duke and his brethren so popular in their glory days.
7 out of 10
Pros
- A Faithful Tribute to 90’s FPS Games
- Fast and Satisfying Combat
- Ability to Save on the Fly
- They Didn’t Water Down The Protagonist….
Cons
- … But She’s Still Not Duke
- Overly Reliant on Backtracking
- Lacks the Flair and Personality of Other FPS Greats
Ion Fury was developed by Voidpoint LLC and published by 3D Realms in conjunction with 1C Company. It was released on NS, PC, PS4, and X1. The game was provided to us for review on X1. If you’d like to see more of Ion Fury, check out the game’s official website.
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