“Oh well, wherever, wherever you are, Iron Maiden's gonna get you, no matter how far.” 🎸🎶🤘 ~Iron Maiden It just happens that some games are bad. The others, of course, are good. But sometimes? Sometimes there's one heck of a story behind 'em. Ion Fury ? Is one of such games. Back in 2010, 3D Realms and Apogee noticed a small team of modders from Denmark. The guys called themselves Interceptor Entertainment and were working on Duke Nukem 3D mod called Duke Nukem 3D: Reloaded . Big guys got impressed and approved it, but eventually canceled it and moved Interceptor to work on Rise of the Triad remake instead. What's interesting to us, though, is their second game. The one that was called Bombshell . It was a twin-stick shooter, it introduced us to Shelly "Bombshell" Harrison , a veteran lady with the mechanical arm, a-a-and... It sucked butt. No, seriously. Bombshell was a cheesy half-broken disaster full of game-breaking bugs that were never fixed. That was the story of Shelly up until 2015, when 3D Realms noticed some other Duke fans. This time from fansite called Duke4.net (not a sponsor), known collectively as Voidpoint . Guess what? Guys were working on Duke 3D project too. The project was called Hail to the King Collection and aimed to be an enhanced port for Android systems. Again, 3D Realms approached them, again, the project got canceled, and again , guys got hired to work on the official project for 3D Realms . 3D Realms even gave 'em Interceptor 's character – Shelly . The story repeated itself. This time, though? It ended entirely differently. Ladies, gentlemen, everybody else, please welcome! Ion Maiden . And no, this wasn't a typo. Originally, the project was called Ion Maiden and that's quite a story on its own. See, soon after the official announcement, 3D Realms got sued... by Iron Maiden . Yeah. The Iron Maiden . Steve Harris and sh*t. I mean... It's so stupid (the name came from Shelly 's prime weapon from Bombshell , while originally, iron maiden was an ancient torture device) that is actually awesome. No, seriously. This here? It's some serious Beavis and Butt-head sh*t. A video game. Got sued by a heavy metal band (am I the only one here old enough to remember when heavy metal was a thing, lol?). Wow. Just wow. But guess what? Even that is not the end of the crazy sh*t here. See, Ion Fury (despite staying quite strong, 3D Realms decided to simply rename their game) is built... on Build Engine . Yeah. The Build Engine . The one that powered games like Witchaven , PowerSlave , BLOOD , Redneck Rampage and, of course, Duke f*cking Nukem 3D . That Build Engine . Which makes Ion Fury the first game to use it... in 20 years. 20. F*cking. Years. Think about it. If you want some technical details, the game uses a modified version of Duke 3D called EDuke32 , created by Richard Gobeille (AKA TerminX ), which is, like, one of the best and most popular source ports of the game, but still. Think about it. After the 20 years since WWII GI (yes, NAM had a sequel, guys, and it's even in Steam ), we've got Build Engine game. And it's good. Wow. But I'm getting ahead of myself. To make all of this even more crazy, let's mention that Build Engine ... was not... actually that good. Remember John Carmack ? The man who revolutionized PC gaming by introduced it to proper side-scrolling experience and then blew everybody's minds with first Wolfenstein 3D , then DOOM and then, of course, QUAKE . With the last one being a direct competitor to what Build Engine had to offer. John despised Build . He'll later praise Ken Silverman for his creation, but in a moment? Well, you can clearly see his problem. At the time being, id Software aimed for innovation. Their every big thing was a step forward for industry. Technology-wise. QUAKE brought us fully 3D engine. No “buts”, no sprites (everything was fully 3D), native “room-over-room” (which was a huge thing back then), etc. Build Engine , on the other hand, was clunky old stuff, closer to what we had in DOOM . Which was already considered history. You want “room-over-room”? Bring duct tape. Sure, in DOOM it wasn't possible at all, but... You know what I mean. QUAKE was future, while Build was past. But somehow (and that's the lesson we'll learn here with Ion Fury )? The past finds its way to prove being even more fun than the future. See, despite all of its clunkiness and limitations, Build Engine allowed more interactivity. Which meant one thing – creativity. Sure, QUAKE was a groundbreaking achievement. But in Duke Nukem 3D ? We were able to sing Steppenwolf 's Born to be Wild on stage, play pool and... yeah. Tip the strippers. Yes, it was stupid. But it was fun . And that's, my friends, is what Build Engine is all about. Having fun. While QUAKE 's engine ended up giving us Half-Life , Build gave us some of the crazies and most entertaining FPS games in history. And now? Now it's back to give us some more. Kinda funny how when it's about the game itself, there isn't much to say. Not because it's bad or something like that. Exactly the opposite. You like this kind of games? You'll love Ion Fury . It's just what we have here is the Duke Nukem 3D total conversion. You played Duke 3D ? You'll feel at home here. Which works both ways. I mean, I'm... old? Ish? Anyway, I'm one of those people who played Duke 3D on launch. Loving it since then. Younger audience? Well... Don't get me wrong, I'm not doing “kids nowadays” thing here, it's just gap is a thing and personally? While doing my best, I do have problem understanding what's so fun about Apex Legends . Therefore if you'll expect this game to be like the other modern products, you'll end up with a weird “WTF?” aftertaste. Like I said, Ion Fury is a Duke 3D conversion. A glorifying mod (and it's proud of it, heck, 3D Realms even brought back Duke himself, AKA Jon St. John , who'll play the main villain). Voidpoint gave us the new weapons, they've added some elements from the other popular games on Build (no multiplayer, unfortunately), they've added some unique touches to give game its own face (for example, Shelly 's default weapon is the electric baton, which can also power up generators and, together with other things, will make it clear for you that you play Ion Fury , not Duke 3D or anything else), but still, it's a conversion. In other words, it's a new... old game. All the modern elements are nothing but minor things, something you may expect from source ports. You don't feel like playing old FPS ? This game is not for you. And vice versa, if you're tired of playing old games on Build , this here is a bloody treasure. We've got Duke 3D with a strong female lead (aside from other things, Voidpoint saved Interceptor 's character by giving her juicy one-liners, some of which are direct nods to Duke ), secrets and levels that would make Levelord proud (no, seriously, I really want to praise level design here, it's very nice). What else can you ask for? If, like yours truly, you miss this kind of entertainment (let's just admit it, games from Build era are heavily different from FPS' we have now) or just like retro shooters now and then? Stop reading and click on that green button that says “Add to cart”. Dixi.
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