Ion Fury

1997, 3D Realms, riding on the money bags from Duke Nukem 3D, began scratching its head towards developing a sequel to the suddenly successful game. During the brainstorming session, the development department was divided into three groups: the main one, which went to work on what later became known as “Duke Nukem: Forever”, the auxiliary one, which began developing additions to the first game, and, finally, several people who decided to create a separate project about the girlfriend of the Nuclear Duke, nicknamed “Bombshell” (book. "Pretty Woman"), which was supposed to fight side by side with Duke, but somehow it didn’t work out. But the artists continued to create and the girl even acquired a first and last name over time: Shelley Harrison. However, developing add-ons and spin-offs about Duke for consoles turned out to be more profitable than working on a game about the unknown Shelley. In addition, the development of the sequel to the original, Duke Nukem: Forever, dragged on so long that it became the talk of the town, and the femme fatale was forgotten for almost twenty years..

… until the game “Bombshell” starring Corporal Shelley was announced in 2015. It went gold a year later, in 2016, and was a top-down shooter with role-playing game elements. But neither gameplay, nor visually, nor in any other way “Bombshell” was anything outstanding, and was soon forgotten by everyone.

Shelley Harrison in the first sketch on the left (1997) and the artwork on the right (2015). Despite the passage of time, the whip is still with her.

But in 2018, 3D Realms unexpectedly released a trailer in which sprite skulls crashed and voxel bombs exploded for a minute. The new game was dubbed a prequel to “Bombshell”, they also announced that they were making an old-school product on Ken Silverman’s “Build” engine and went to collect money from pre-orders. A year has passed, and now, in our 2019, the full version of “Ion Fury” is released, indistinguishable from what was shown previously.
True, the game was originally called “Ion Maiden,” but a musical group with a similar name, “Iron Maiden,” sued 3D Realms for copyright infringement, and they had to make concessions.

"I live! Again. »

The main burden of development fell on the small studio Voidpoint, which had previously helped 3D Realms with the re-release of Duke Nukem 3D. Most of the company’s employees are once experienced and famous mappers who worked on the Build engine. And believe me, this is very noticeable in the game.

Under the hood, however, the toy does not have the original engine, but a modified version – EDuke32, which allows you to run the product on modern computers and supports not only the OpenGL mode, but also the initially impossible level layout with a room above the room. But I never found any honest rooms above the rooms in the game, only the old fashioned way – through portals. Awareness of this fact adds both authenticity to the game and honor to the creators.

True, all the bugs that could be found in games on Build migrated here without changes: if you dive under the water made with the help of portals, you will become invisible and invulnerable to opponents, because technically, you are with them in completely different places on the map. You will also be crushed a couple of times by closing doors and killed by a flowing waterfall when you relax too much. Optionally, some particularly fat monster will pass right through the thin wall and delight you by suddenly hitting you in the rear during a hot firefight (but you can also, on the contrary, show the enemy how much you can do by leaning against the wall and furiously slamming into the gap).

Undoubtedly, the landscape is promising, but believe me, there will be even better scenes.

Continuing to study the technical side of the project, you will notice that almost all the limitations of the almost twenty-five-year-old engine have remained unchanged: the maximum resolution of textures and sprites, the number of colors in the palette, the size of the map – everything is exactly the same as it was in the bearded nineties. Every innovation achieved in the game, be it colored lighting or voxel objects, was created with tools and crutches that were available back in the days of Blood, Shadow Warrior and Redneck Rampage. Why, even the editor is practically the same. You can already rub your sweaty palms in anticipation of usable custom cards.

The feeling of the game is indescribable. This is not an “old school” version, assembled on the knee from pixels drawn in paint, thrown into the world of shaders and post-processing of Unity or Unreal Engine, but a real old game. Set the resolution to 640×480, enable the classic render mode and you will be able to run it at a playable frame rate even on the third Pentium (although the developers tested on the fourth). From time to time, however, the crappy EDuke32 code, which was screwed on top, interferes and freezes the computer for a second or two, during which time they manage to kill you a hundred times. But this is a matter of a couple of patches that should correct the situation.

Separately, I would like to mention the soundtrack by Jarkko Rotsten, which consists one hundred percent of tracker music. What is striking is not so much its artistic value (a couple of tracks, however, would not be a shame to download to a smartphone), but rather its quality, achieved literally in midi file format.

If you are interested in details that I can’t fit here even if I wanted to, I recommend watching the interview with the developers, where they talk about the tricks they resorted to when creating the game.

When you first start the game you will not be shown any cutscenes. The entire plot was initially presented through the option in the main menu – “Read Me”!", where, mixed with tips and controls, you will be briefly told the background of what is happening and sent on your way to fight evil. At the start, they will allow you to choose one of four difficulty levels (your protégé was on the penultimate one) and will immediately load the first map without any delays.

“Enemies ruined my day off”… https://primeslots-casino.co.uk/mobile-app/ or the plot of “Ion Fury” in brief.

The VIP room of some nightclub, where neon lights play in the reflection of glasses with strong drinks, is blown to hell by a missile salvo from a flying past warship of the main villain – Dr. Heskell, voiced by the voice of Duke Nukem – John St. John. The lower floor, where the bar counter is adjacent to the slot machine hall, is immediately captured by a group of transhumanist fanatics with a bunch of combat implants. Angry that Haskell spilled her expensive cocktail (and she likes to drink all sorts of crap), Corporal Shelley Harrison loads her three-barreled (and eighteen-round!) revolver nicknamed “Lover” and goes to smash the troublemakers over the course of seven chapters, each of which consists of several cards continuously connected to each other.

The starting revolver immediately arouses curiosity: in the alternative fire mode, Shelley marks any three targets that fall into the crosshairs, and then automatically fires two shots into each of them. Since all weapons in the game need to be reloaded from time to time, the number of targets marked depends on the number of cartridges remaining in the drum.

The overwhelming number of opponents die from two hits (or one to the head), so alternative fire is a great help in difficult moments, allowing you to send up to three adversaries per second to your forefathers with the daring of Clint Eastwood, or to catch actively maneuvering flying or crawling reptiles. Give me time dilation while jumping and I could easily imagine myself as the Max Payne of the 22nd century.

I’m not an architect, but the renovation of the club with TNT is so-so for my taste.

In the future, the arsenal is replenished with an ordinary shotgun with an under-barrel grenade launcher, a crossbow, a machine gun, mines (with quite powerful alternative fire) and other boring trinkets, but there are still interesting examples in it. Shelley’s next interesting weapon will be a submachine gun with the menacing nickname "Penetrator". It shoots not with bullets, it would seem, but with special incendiary flechettes that can set fire when hit. If you find a second copy, then the main character will be able to water the area with two “Penetrators” at once, knocking out even the fattest enemies.

The third fun toy in the hands of the corporal will be miniature bombs, which in the alternative fire mode are ignited from a fuse and thrown like ordinary grenades (but if thrown too late, they will explode in your hands), and in the main fire mode they are “charged”, and then go on an independent journey in search of a target suitable for detonation. The longer you hold the fire button, the longer the bomb will start, and the faster and longer it will roll in search of the enemy. With the help of this wonderful mega-device, you can check rooms for enemies sitting in ambush, and also fight those monsters that can become invisible to your eyes, but not to bomb guidance systems.

Over the course of seven chapters, Shelley will exterminate hordes of Dr. Heskell’s robotic freaks, while he will appear from time to time on the screens of televisions, computers and other electronic junk, reading out lectures about how stupid and weak the main character is. The bestiary that has been destroyed all this time does not cause much delight: a dozen shooting and crawling monsters (two of which also work part-time as bosses), two flying nasty bastards and that’s all.

The only truly memorable enemy is a biorobot capable of becoming invisible and SUDDENLY appear in front of your nose with a fireball of white fire at the ready. Each fight with this monster will be an interesting challenge that can tickle the nerves of even an avid horror veteran. Well, and in addition, Shelley herself, having come across a biorobot in a flask for the first time, lets out an obscene phrase, which for some reason is very amusing.

“This is the most terrible thing I’ve seen in my life: he doesn’t have a penis!»

Along with the guns, the main character can also carry two types of items, up to ten pieces each: a portable first aid kit that restores a quarter of health and can protect you from loading a quicksave at the right time, and a radar that shows nearby enemies and objects for twenty seconds. With the help of the latter it is very convenient to find various secrets hidden in disguised passages and rooms.

Fashion is nothing! Style is everything!

Despite the seemingly archaic graphics, the game looks just great. Any deficiencies in lighting are more than made up for by rich color palettes and sector shadows. What the environment lacks in polygons it makes up for with high attention to detail. Even voxel objects have several frames of animation, which makes you forget that they are not completely three-dimensional (don’t even think about turning off voxels in the settings – you’ll miss out on a lot of the game’s charm!). Almost every object can be broken, including some pieces of walls, which increases the effectiveness of explosives significantly, and even a banal shootout changes the appearance of the level.

Every nook and cranny, every room contains at least one active item or pop culture reference. Shelly can eat food lying around the levels and increase her health, or buy a can of soda from the nearest vending machine. You can stick your fingers into a socket and get an electric shock. You can raise and lower the toilet lid. You can spy through surveillance cameras, turn lights off and on, fry hamsters in microwaves and much, much more… In one of the levels I even found a fully working piano with a metronome. If your hands are straight enough, you can play some simple etude or “Christmas tree” on it.

“The priest had a dog, he loved it. »

Despite the apparent complexity of the levels, they are neatly and imperceptibly divided into sections, inevitably looping on each other or some central passage, so spending hours in circles, tearing out your hair and trying to figure out where to go, will not work even if you suffer from topographical cretinism. There are no cleverly hidden keys or buttons, and the dynamics of the level do not sag for a second, unlike Duke, with his level in a burger joint, or Blood with an abandoned temple, in which you had to poke each brick for half an hour to open at least some door.

If necessary, additional doors are made manually. Shoot the fire extinguisher and a passage will open into the next room. Almost every ventilation shaft leads somewhere, allowing enemies to go behind the lines or find additional supplies that are scattered from stashes that are not secrets, but exist “just like that”. It often happened when I found cleverly hidden armor or ammunition, but the secret counter did not rise. “This is just a warm-up,” as the developers say.

Secrets are an integral part of Ion Fury. They are really complex and intricate, almost puzzles, naturally woven into the design of the cards, and requiring a lot of brainstorming. If you poke around in all corners and frantically press the use button, you will find at most 15-20% of secrets. Finding movable furniture to jump into higher places is a banality that you will soon get used to if you don’t want to experience “shell hunger”.

When you reach the end of the level, you will be told how many secrets you missed, and at the end of the chapter they will mockingly tell you that your result is “not bad, but real gamers always get 100%, and you are a real gamer?». I guess I don’t. There is also a secret level somewhere, but I never found it either.

Pop culture in the game at every turn. The TV Tropes website will soon swell by a couple of megabytes trying to count all the references.

From time to time, following the canon of classic “build” shooters, Shelley inserts caustic comments between the iron bastards being torn to pieces. Of course, Shelley won’t reach the level of cult status of Caleb or Duke, but her inspired cry is “Oh my god.”! The quarterback is toast!“- stuck in my head and won’t come out. If I lived in an English-speaking country, I would probably already start using this phrase in everyday life.

All that remains is for Shelley to switch from a firearm to her arms and legs by pressing some special key, but her only melee weapon, an electric baton, hangs on a separate slot and in order to wave it, you have to take it out in advance. But this club had such potential… however, it doesn’t matter, after the first level you practically stop using it, so it’s not a big loss.

"Oh my God! Our striker is baked!»

What can we say about “Ion Fury” in conclusion?? Well, at least it’s a good game. And that this is a good first-person shooter that fits well into the revival of “old-school FPS”. “Ion Fury” will be placed in the eyes of history on the same shelf as “Dusk” and “Amid Evil”.

But the game has a twist in the form of the old engine, which influenced its final appearance. This is really, again, an old game. From the first to the last pixel there was nothing in it that could distinguish it from the background of examples of bygone times. Along with modern shooters, Ion Fury can also fit neatly among classic shooters, be it Duke or Blood.

First of all, this is a game that can be recommended without a doubt to everyone, regardless of tastes and preferences. It is not a masterpiece, but it does not have any critical flaws or elements that could turn any category of players away from it.

I’m not giving any rating, but in my eyes, “Ion Fury” is not so much a breakthrough in the gaming industry as a look at it from a different, long-forgotten angle that will be of interest to many.

Now on Steam, a terrible tragedy is happening with the ratings of the game: someone from among the “social justice fighters” from the “ResetEra” forum dug up their comments in the Discord of the developers from “Voidpoint”, which they considered insufficiently politically correct, and thereby created a small storm. 3D Realms, apparently wanting to save face, apologized, contributed $10,000 to a helpline fund fighting LGBT teen suicide*, and promised to send the game developers to anti-prejudice training. Dissatisfied with the publisher’s “deflection,” buyers who initially sided with them now went to destroy the game’s rating. In general, the molehill has been blown out of proportion, and a good game suffers.

* The activities of the international LGBT social movement are recognized as extremist and prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation