Blood, Shadow Warrior, Duke Nukem 3D – Generally regarded by enthusiasts as “The Holy Build Trilogy,” each of these games were known for their referential humor, gritty atmosphere, fast action, and unprecedented level interactivity. Enter Ion Fury: 3D Realms’ and 1C Company’s addition to the recent surge of “throwback shooters.”
The title aims to live up to the legacy of the aforementioned Trilogy by creating a brand new experience based on the same engine – but since we’re over two decades past the inception of Ken Silverman’s Build Engine, developer Voidpoint decided to make an experience to scale with the superior technology of today. And since I don’t seem to be able to shut up about it, it seemed fitting that I review it. Especially since, at the time of this writing, I’m already starting on my third playthrough.
The story is pretty straightforward: You are GDF Soldier (and legally distinct, non-musical entity) Shelly “Bombshell” Harrison, a quip-happy gunslinger (once again voiced by the talented Valerie Arem) that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Duke, Caleb and Lo Wang. Dr. Jadeus Heskel (voiced by Duke Nukem himself, Jon St. John) has released his cult of cybernetic minions onto the streets of Neo DC, and it’s up to you to shut him and his abominable lackeys down by any means necessary.
Spoiler Alert: the means are termination with extreme prejudice.
The first thing you’ll notice upon starting is that the quintessential Build Engine feel is intact; you move swiftly, your weapons are responsive, and if you stand still, you won’t last long in combat. The enemy roster ranges from standard cultist foot soldiers wielding grenade launchers and ion crossbows to robotic spiders and drones, most of which give very short notice before attempting to tear a chunk out of your health. Fortunately, the game gives you access to a versatile, well-rounded arsenal. While there aren’t any weapons that are particularly flashy (like, say, Duke Nukem 3D‘s Freezethrower), I also didn’t find any weapons to be particularly worth avoiding (like Duke 3D‘s Freezethrower; fight me, it was gimmicky.)
Noteworthy among them are a pair of SMGs with incendiary rounds, a shotgun that doubles as a grenade launcher, and my personal favorite, the Clusterpuck: an explosive disc that can be primed to explode and scatter an assload of slightly less powerful explosives in the nearby vicinity for some fast and savage crowd control. Each weapon has fairly distinct functionality while still being quite versatile; on the very rare occasion that I’d run out of ammo on a gun, I never felt like I was put at a major disadvantage or that I was stuck using something that couldn’t get the job done. All of this comes together to make for an incredibly smooth and satisfying combat experience across a plethora of big-ass levels.
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What I said before about scaling up in tech applies to the levels as well. The feeling of awe and wonder that you got back in ’96 at the then-insane amount of detail and interactivity in the first two levels of Duke 3D? That gritty atmosphere I mentioned before? That is non-stop throughout the entirety of the campaign. Neo DC, even when devoid of citizens and crawling with cyborg abominations, feels lived in and has the palpable, dingy funk of a dystopian future wrecked by urban sprawl.
You’ll find abandoned food and drinks laying around in restaurants and open markets that can be consumed for health, vending machines, jukeboxes, parlor games… the list goes on, but I’d hate to spoil too much.
As well as knocking feel and tone out of the park, the levels are just a masterclass in design. Enemies are waiting to ambush you on previously beaten paths after you secure an objective, which keeps the action going while still giving the player a bearing toward the next objective. Shortcuts for backtracking are also peppered into each area as you progress, making the task of nabbing previously left behind a pickup or scouring for secrets less arduous than one might have come to expect.
My follow-up playthroughs? Secret hunting. The first time I went through, I only found 36% of them; my second: 45%. Secrets that you’d find in Duke or Blood have also been “scaled” to a degree. Finding a hidden door isn’t always just hitting “use” on a wall or whipping a bowling bomb at a cracked wall texture; it’s hitting the right book on a shelf to reveal a secret door or trying to figure out what in the room opened up after hitting a switch that seems to do nothing.
I’ve spent most of my following playthroughs (yes, plural) looking for level imperfections because after stumbling across a few “crazy enough to work” platforming scenarios that actually lead to secrets, the designers have me convinced that there are no imperfections in the levels, and everything means something.
There’s something really rewarding about going back to a level after your first playthrough, taking everything you’ve learned, and being able to apply that knowledge to the world you’ve come to know. Compared to a lot of modern FPS campaign experiences, it’s a breath of fresh air.
There are a few things I have some mixed feelings about. The most noticeable of which is how the campaign flows. While the game is divided into 7 zones, the levels in each zone are strung together in ways that aren’t always consistent; some simply go to a loading area that you can backtrack through, while others have a distinct “point of no return,” where you’re told how many undiscovered secrets are left in an area.
And while it’s convenient to have your full arsenal at the start of each new zone, I was always a fan of shedding weapons between episodes, getting a small plot update, and then pistol-starting the next, and getting to re-climb the weapon-acquisition ladder; Ion Fury doesn’t do this, which personally makes the cadence and pacing of the campaign feel ever-so-slightly off. And speaking of the arsenal, there’s no rocket launcher. While the game gets on just fine without one, it just feels like a weird omission to me.
The team at Voidpoint has a long and storied history working with Duke Nukem, EDuke32, and the Build Engine. But adherence to the tech is just the icing on the cake; Voidpoint understands exactly what made the Holy Trilogy the revered classics that they are, and that understanding and love for the game shine through to create something more than “just another throwback shooter”: this is an authentic experience that not only lives up to the experience of its legacy but builds upon it, standing tall among the pantheon that inspired it.
Despite a couple of my incredibly subjective nitpicks, Ion Fury delivers exactly what it promised in its Early Access campaign; a lasting and satisfying experience that keeps you coming back for more.
