Ion Fury

enemy visibilty is dog. Don't even know what im getting hit by half the time.

The spiritual successor to Duke 3D. I quite enjoyed this game, and if you enjoy boomer shooters, you likely will as well. There are quite a few issues with it, this definitely isn’t as strong as Duke, but it’s still a rather good time. Read on if you want the list of Pros and Cons: [h1]Pros:[/h1] [list] [*]Great feeling Weapons [*]Satisfying exchanges with the enemies [*]Fantastic Art [*]The Environments are lovely and really convey the type of world the player is in [*]The maps/levels interconnect really well, in a way others such as Duke Nukem never really succeeded in. [*]The secrets are often quite charming, and there’s a lot of great references to beloved media of all sorts. [*]The Doctor is a fantastically hate-able enemy, despite how little we know about him [/list] [h1]Cons:[/h1] [list] [*]There are some niggling pieces of bad art, such as Shelly’s reflection sprite. They just don’t fit in with the rest of the game [*]The enemies are nigh invisible sometimes. You will be getting shot at, and despite circling around multiple times, you will just not see them. The core issue is that they simply blend into the background far too well; this is a glaring issue honestly. The enemies need to have greater contrast with the background, or need to be outlined or something. [*]Only worsening the above problem, I swear the sounds just do not indicate where an enemy is in the slightest. They’re not location based at all. This may be an engine issue (they’re using the build engine), but it still should have been something they tried to fix. [*]The Map Designs range from fine to middling. If I’m zipping back and forth on the map trying to work out where to go, the map design has gone awry. This happens almost on every map. They may look beautiful, but that hardly matters if they’re irritating to play. [*]There’s not really too much in the way of theming for the episodes. They’re all located in grey-ish city areas. Though I really liked The Villain’s office tower, and there is a nice Canyon Map, the rest of the game really has a samey look through out. It's all very grey. [*]There’s so much clutter that you’ll find yourself being blocked or hindering during play. Not a big thing, but a little annoyance that adds to the rest. [*]Shelly just lacks any sort of personality. Duke just oozes personality from his one liners, short cut-scenes, and character interactions, and yet I can’t really say anything about Shelly after playing through the game other than she’s a ‘bad-ass’. Having a few survivors for her to interact with, like duke did, could have really added more character, or perhaps she could have been able to drink loads of alcohol in each level, at least establishing a fault and defining her character a bit more (that she’s an alcoholic for example). Ultimately, she’s somehow a chatty blank slate, something I didn’t realise you could pull off. [*]The Evil Doctor trying to take over the city is a bit of an enigma; why is he taking over the city? What’s his motive? Doesn’t matter apparently, he’s just doing it, no explanation necessary. I would have loved some actual interactions and back and forths between Shelly and the Doctor, to flesh out both their characters. [*]There are a few enemy types that are just obnoxious; the flying heads, and the spider heads are just dull to fight, and are among the most annoyingly difficult to see. The spider enemies are often placed on the roof to drop on players, or will somehow appear behind the player. They would, perhaps, be far less annoying if it weren’t for the afore-mentioned problems with seeing enemies. [*]A good amount of the secrets are just too out of the way. In play, the secret shouldn’t force you to practically stop and spend minutes, of your time to get them. Sure it’s fine for certain secrets, such as the ‘mega secrets’, but just for a secret medkit or armour? It just takes you out of the gameplay loop. [*]The game let’s you know if you found all the of the episodes secrets and killed all the enemies at the end of the episode. While trying to kill all the enemies is fun, on some levels that seems to be impossible – despite the fact that I combed through each level carefully, I had 2 or so enemies not killed each episode. I suspect they either just didn’t spawn or they went out of bounds. This goes from a ignorable to obnoxious when you realise there is an achievement for 100% secrets and enemy kills for an ENTIRE GAME PLAYTHROUGH! Oh cool, I love annoying basically broken achievements. [*]The grenader enemy looks exactly like the shotgunner, which wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that a grenader will take off 90% of your health from a single shot. He’s often placed around corners or in dark hard to see locations and makes no specific noise indicating that he’s around. Super cool. [/list] Despite my much longer list of cons, it’s always easier to criticise than praise, so I overall enjoyed this game. This review is written before I’ve bothered to play the Expansion, which may resolve each of the issues mentioned. It should be noted that I do find the enemy visibility a particularly bad issue though, as I would often need save, walk out and let myself get shot whilst looking around for the enemy, find them and load so I could actually continue playing normally. Anyway, this gets a reasonable recommendation from me, so long as you enjoy old-school shooters.