Ion Fury Review: Duchess Nukem

Ion Fury is a throwback to the 2.5D shooters. which has resulted in a fun title that takes both the good and the bad from the games that inspired it.

Ion Fury is a first-person shooter that acts as a spiritual successor to the 2.5D games of old, which will likely be appealing for those with a nostalgia for ’90s shooters, but its warts and approach to emulating the styles of titles like Doom and Duke Nukem won’t be for everyone.

Ion Fury is a 2.5D first-person shooter that was created in a modified version of the Build engine, the same engine used for the Duke Nukem 3D series, as well as similar games like Blood and Shadow Warrior. Ion Fury is a prequel to a game called Bombshell from 2016 which earned middling reviews at the time, but knowledge of Bombshell isn’t necessary to understand Ion Fury. The story of Ion Fury follows Shelly “Bombshell” Harrison, who earned her nickname while working as a bomb-disposal expert. The evil mastermind known as Dr. Jadus Heskel has unleashed an army of robots on the city of Neo DC and it’s up to Shelly to blow them all up and take Heskel down.

Ion Fury is a retro first-person shooter in every sense of the word. If the player has experienced the ports of the original Doom trilogy that were recently released, then they will know exactly what to expect going into Ion Fury. The purpose of the game is to shoot through hordes of robots in order to collect keys and overcome barriers to complete each stage. There are no rechargeable shields or unlockable abilities to purchase with experience points, which means that the player must rely on their skills. There is a limited amount of ammo and medkits available in every level, so players can’t afford to be wasteful with their bullets, nor can they gobble up every healing item if they are not in desperate need.

The average Ion Fury level requires the player to find several color-coded keys to unlock doors, as well as powering up fuse boxes to activate devices that will allow them to proceed through the stage, such as moving bridges into position. The levels in Ion Fury are packed with foes, including gun-toting robots, small spider droids that can cling to ceilings, and flying enemies that resemble disembodied heads that have been attached to drones.

The sheer number of enemies in each stage can make the lack of variety of foes stand out, as it can become tiresome to face the same mobs of robots over and over again. The bosses also don’t offer much in the way of variety outside of being damage sponges. The game has a great selection of weapons, including the likes of a combination shotgun/grenade launcher and a laser-enhanced crossbow. The limited ammo supply means that the player will need to master every weapon to succeed and they can’t rely on one kind of gun to carry them through.

The visuals of Ion Fury are suitably retro and the fact that all enemies are 2D sprites in a 3D setting will feel right at home to fans of Duke Nukem 3D. What the graphics lack in detail they make up for with some stellar lighting effects that build the atmosphere of being trapped in a neo-futuristic city, with enemies seemingly hiding in every dark shadow that is created by colorful lights spilling through windows.

There isn’t much to the story of Ion Fury, but there isn’t meant to be, which wouldn’t be as much of a problem if Shelly wasn’t such a flat character. It feels as if the developers were trying to create a female version of Duke Nukem, with Shelly spouting one-liners in response to events in the game, but the entertainment value of such quips was already old by the time Duke Nukem Forever was released and the result is Shelly having no identity of her own outside of tired wisecracks.

Ion Fury can best be described as a labor of love from developers who were fans of the classic first-person shooters of the ’90s and wanted to create their own version of that style of game. Ion Fury is like receiving another chapter of Doom or Duke Nukem 3D, with all of the limitations that brings with it. Ion Fury doesn’t revolutionize the genre, nor is it attempting to, as the game accomplishes what it set out to be – a new title that uses an old fashioned style that might not be to everyone’s tastes, but is still a lot of fun to play.

Ion Fury is available now on Windows and Linux and will be released on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in 2019. A digital copy of the Windows version of the game was provided to Screen Rant for the purposes of this review.

About The Author

Scott Baird
(2543 Articles Published)

Scott has been writing for Screen Rant since 2016 and regularly contributes to The Gamer. He has previously written articles and video scripts for websites like Cracked, Dorkly, Topless Robot, and TopTenz.
A graduate of Edge Hill University in the UK, Scott started out as a film student before moving into journalism. It turned out that wasting a childhood playing video games, reading comic books, and watching movies could be used for finding employment, regardless of what any career advisor might tell you. Scott specializes in gaming and has loved the medium since the early ‘90s when his first console was a ZX Spectrum that used to take 40 minutes to load a game from a tape cassette player to a black and white TV set. Scott now writes game reviews for Screen Rant and The Gamer, as well as news reports, opinion pieces, and game guides. He can be contacted on LinkedIn.

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