Incline Ion Fury (formerly Ion Maiden) - Build Engine powered FPS by Duke Nukem 3D mappers - now with Aftershock DLC

[A_boring_GOG_bot]

Jarkko Rotstén

https://soundcloud.com/rotsten?fbclid=IwAR3o7Riw2lH53hJjIl86tIyPLtjqvwNGEgYlpMaaIC087gbsB7TSkECcs60

 

[Unkillable Cat]

So I gave this a go and finished the first episode. I'm not as impressed as most Codexers have been. To me this is a game that's still in Early Access, still needs time in the oven before it should be released.

I was mostly interested with what it does differently to the other Build games - and free movement between the levels is a clear improvement. If you're low on health or ammo, or just want to go look around, you can now just turn and head back at any point... at least, that's the theory. There are two problems with this: This feature is best suited to a game with Metroidvania elements (which Ion Fury does not have) and is highly dependant upon the level design. The biggest pro is that level transition is seamless and everything is linked together organically and coherently. Even the kill/secret counts add up as you reach new levels. The only con it needs is that if any level, at any point introduces a Point of No Return, the whole concept is ruined. Guess what Ion Fury does early on, without announcement? As a result the whole thing is pointless. Might as well have a smashable sign at the end and skip the whole thing.

Another problem with the level design is not the design of it as much as the direction of it. Most of the maps feel like they belong in one of the Thief games. That means that they're above-average quality, but they're made for the wrong kind of game. Ion Fury is an action game, a shooter. Thief is neither. People playing a shooter (even old geezers like myself playing retro shooters) aren't gonna waste much time pondering over the architecture to admire its details or possible travel paths. Sadly that's exactly what needs to be done to make any real progress in the game and find those secrets. Because as has been stated, ignoring the secrets leads to ammo shortages, while looking for them leads to an overabundance. During the first two levels there are 12 secrets in total. I found 2 by the time I reached the end, and decided to look around for some more. 20 minutes of that raised it up to 6, but at one point I spotted a potential path of travel involving way too much precision-platforming on the vertical axis. I thought "if this leads to a secret, I'm gonna be very disappointed with this game." It does. Jumping from one monopixel-wide platform to the next might be cool in a platformer or such, but Ion Fury is not that kind of game, and should be ashamed for even trying... no matter how cool that particular secret turned out to be. Another secret was obvious to spot, but involved timing the Use command just right to hit an arrow traveling back and forth. I couldn't get it right because it turns out I wasn't hitting the right part of the thing... because there was nothing to tell me what exactly I was supposed to be aiming at. Overly-complicated secrets are off-putting in games such as this, so why fill the game with them?

(To prove my point, I give this little challenge to the Taffers reading this: Fire up DromEd and make a Thief FM based on the first two levels of Ion Fury (read: Everything up to the drop-off down the drain). You'll soon realize that the level design is much more fitting to a stealth game with exploration aspects than an action shooter.)

The above paragraph would be moot if Ion Fury wasn't trying to bill itself as an action game, and one way it does so (that defies Build engine mechanics) is that it doesn't have an item inventory. Sure, there are a few pickups that you can hang on to unto later, but so far it's only a level radar and single-use medkits. The other Buiild games had various percentage-based items that allowed for neat shenanigans, especially when traversing the level. Jetpacks, jumping boots and weapon powerups, these could be used when the player desired and weren't single-use. Ion Fury does away with all that by having some powerups activate immediately upon pickup and only last for 30 seconds, thereby clearly placing the game's emphasis on action and not on player initiative, not on rewarding the player with options in dealing with enemies for spending time looking for secrets and items. One of those items are jumping boots, and Basic Game Design dictates that if you put a useful item like that somewhere, it must be used nearby. Fortunately I had just spotted a hard-to-reach location close by, but this just felt so forced and uninspired.

Some of this might be forgettable if the action was good. Once again Ion Fury finds a way to disappoint. As has been mentioned, the enemy has no AI whatsoever and they all feel bland and similar. When those little spider things appeared I was actually delighted because they finally bring some variety into the enemy roster... but sadly it doesn't go much farther than that. The worst part is that they're not even dangerous. The only one that poses any threat is the red-hued variant of the base enemy, because if you're up against a wall when his projectiles hit it, you're roadkill. Otherwise the enemies are just target practice. And as has been harped on many times, the weapons are crap. SMGs that eat bullets faster than a minigun, a revolver clearly overcompensating for something, a shotgun that can't make up its mind whether to drop a close-up baddie or or just push it back a bit, and a grenade launcher whose grenades don't seem interested in connecting with their targets, but instead decide they want to travel the world and see the sights before inevitably exploding somewhere. One might think to blame me for having poor aim, but all I needed was a minute to compensate for the crossbow's paltry idea of "aiming" along the vertical axis, but the grenade launcher just does not want to kill anyone. Also, if we're supposed to reload all of these weapons it's only common courtesy to give us a readout on how much ammo is currently in the gun!

With all of this said, I'm not going to refund the game or something like that. I have fabulous optimism that the devs will update the game to address at least some of these problems, so I'm gonna hold out for that. Currently it's not worth $20.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Second level is very hard.
You jump from pipe and there are tons of enemies, including flying torso.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

One other thing I just remembered now: When it comes to 'decorating' the levels they either used a script to add in certain extras, or at least one area got changed drastically shortly before release.

Because there is no reason whatsoever for electrical wall outlets to be found inside of shipping containers. Yet here we are, in the final area of the level in the first zone where you have to activate three generators to power the elevator, and there are numerous electrical outlets inside shipping containers, at regular intervals.

 

[Darth Roxor]

speaking of - remember not to put your fingers in power outlets

 

[Wunderbar]

Just got killed by an infamous build engine door bug, then found this.

Spoiler

 

[Junmarko]

All voxel assets in this game are such a joy to look at. Every time I see a spinning pick-up, I approach it slowly to observe it for a while haha. Very cool.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I'm 5 hours into the game now, which is about halfway through. I think I've played enough to have some ideas simmer.

-Level design is consistently good. It feels really natural and flows well. There are some weird things though, like sometimes you'll open up a shortcut that is completely pointless as it'll take you to an area that you'd otherwise have no reason to return to and only exists so that the mappers can stroke their ego and go "see! Just like in Dark Souls!".

-The levels themselves while good, are mostly uninteresting to look at. The game starts off strong with the sweet cyberpunk aesthetic, but then you quickly go down to boring tunnels, sewers, a nature area and then more sewers. It's all very rote and while this is just half the game and it can improve, it makes it feel a bit sloggy to go through.

-Enemy aesthetic isn't very interesting either. Most enemies don't have a particularly memorable look, save for the Archangel who is one of the more colorful enemies as well. He really pops up in a good way, in addition to being somewhat mechanically interesting.

-The drab enemy aesthetic design is brutally exploited by the devs where most of the encounter design can be described as "put these cultists with dull color schemes in equally dull colored environs, and turn the lights off". It's kind of boring tbh and they keep doing it ad nauseam. This kind of enemy placement is fine if used occasionally, but here it's clear that whoever is in charge of encounter design is a two trick pony.

-The other trick they exploit is they keep throwing Wentekos, Brutes and Archangels in very tight and closed areas. It's done so often that you develop a 3rd eye and are able to accurately guess when you are going to face off one of these enemies.

-Bosses aren't very impressive. The Revenant is especially crappy. Most Build Engine bosses were total shit, but at least they had some cool design so they were fun to look at.

-I see a lot of complaining about the gun variety, but I kinda like the guns that we have. I've seen some people complain that there isn't a rocket launcher, but I prefer nade throwers to rocket launchers since the former is always more skill based to use and the latter tends to trivialize most encounters in shooters.

 

[Junmarko]

-I see a lot of complaining about the gun variety, but I kinda like the guns that we have. I've seen some people complain that there isn't a rocket launcher, but I prefer nade throwers to rocket launchers since the former is always more skill based to use and the latter tends to trivialize most encounters in shooters.

Gun variety is fine, feel like the combat shotgun is a little underwhelming though. In a game like this you need to have a shotty with a wider spread. Grenade launcher should be a seperate gun too imo.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Do you even play it on hardest difficulty?

 

[Hobo Elf]

-I see a lot of complaining about the gun variety, but I kinda like the guns that we have. I've seen some people complain that there isn't a rocket launcher, but I prefer nade throwers to rocket launchers since the former is always more skill based to use and the latter tends to trivialize most encounters in shooters.

Gun variety is fine, feel like the combat shotgun is a little underwhelming though. In a game like this you need to have a shotty with a wider spread. Grenade launcher should be a seperate gun too imo.

Agree. It has great range, but its damage is kind of pitiful unless you're doing headshots, but then it doesn't really matter what weapon you're using as they are all effective at headshotting.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

It's possible to add more enemies and weapons in the future with mods? It is confirmed that the game will have a Workshop on steam, but I'm not sure if only custom maps with the current assets of the game will be available there.

 

[Razor]

-Level design is consistently good. It feels really natural and flows well. There are some weird things though, like sometimes you'll open up a shortcut that is completely pointless as it'll take you to an area that you'd otherwise have no reason to return to and only exists so that the mappers can stroke their ego and go "see! Just like in Dark Souls!".

Secret hunting. I constantly need the shortcuts to traverse back into former territories to study the map and find hidden connections I did not notice on the first go. Also to look for supplies that were missed the first time when one is running low later.

 

[Valestein]

It's possible to add more enemies and weapons in the future with mods? It is confirmed that the game will have a Workshop on steam, but I'm not sure if only custom maps with the current assets of the game will be available there.

Might be able to add weapons and enemies from other build games into this, like the sentry drone from Duke 3D wouldn't be out of place in this (maybe give it a bit of a color retouching), and you could give the RPG (also from Duke) the Ion Fury explosion animation to make it fit right in.

 

[Sodafish]

Been playing this for a few hours. Fairly decent fun, but very easy, at least on the "normal" level. Should have chosen the next one up.

 

[Durandal]

I want to echo Unkillable Cat's complaints by mentioning how utterly indistinguishable most of the encounters are. Many fights follow the same routine: there's a room of enemies in front of you, so either go play popamole with the shotgun or start sifting heads using the revolver/crossbow from a distance. Then either before or after the encounter, clean up all the nuisance enemies (Skulldrones and Skullspiders) with your revolver alt. fire because they're so small and not susceptible to headshot damage that trying to hit them with any other weapon leads to inconsistent results. Sometimes enemies are clustered enough that you can afford to use an explosive, but otherwise most of the encounters follow the same routine. How fights play out in one zone is overall identical. The only exceptions are those which are willing to push you out of your comfort zone through tricks and traps or by surrounding you with enemies, but these are rarer than they should have been. Too often can you apply the dominant strategy of "find a safe corner or door to hide behind and then popamole everything to death", and it's because I can keep applying the same solution to many encounters that they feel so indistinguishable from eachother.

The enemy design is equally at fault here. 90% of all encounters will feature the Three Stooges: the brown cultist which has a low-damage hitscan attack, the soldier which has a short-range shotgun hitscan attack, and the red cultist which fires a spread of very fast projectiles. The first two are basically identical, they behave the same and have the same HP, except the latter is a bit faster and more damaging and the red on. The red cultist has a bit more HP, but dies in one shot to a shotgun or crossbow shot to the head all the same like the rest. You approach all three the same way (one shot to the head with the crossbow/shotgun or tag them with your revolver alt. fire) and they force you to avoid their attacks in the same way (hide behind cover or move fast), with the exception of the red cultist because you can actually crouch under his projectile burst. Individually none of them adds a different perspective to the combat the others haven't already, and they could have easily been consolidated into one or two hitscan enemy types like the Blood cultists.

However, Ion Fury also has a grenadier enemy type which on the other hand is a great addition because their explosives can flush you out. It is more preferable to move forward and strafe past an incoming grenade into the open than risk staying in close quarters where the grenade will unpredictably bounce around you. Grenadiers are great when placed in a position where their grenades are likely to bounce around in your hiding place, less so in close quarters where there is very little room to dodge their explosive and you can't tell it's a Grenadier you're dealing with since their sprites are barely any different from the aforementioned soldier sprite. Unfortunately as with many other enemy types, Ion Fury is a bit chicken when it comes to using the non-standard enemy types like these.

You've also got a Fiend expy from Quake 1 which just lunges at you, but it's rarely ever used in concert with the Three Stooges where it could pose a more active threat in encounters, because normally the way it's used is on its own with minor backup where you can just backpedal and oneshot it with a charged crossbow burst. The Skulltorsos who fire a barrage of missiles at you are great in close quarters with no cover to hide behind because they force you to be more situationally aware so you know that you have enough space to strafe around their missiles or even crouch under them when necessary. In wide open spaces this need isn't as applicable when you always have enough space to circlestrafe them. There's these janky-ass dickless tanky mutant cyborgs with flaming heads who teleport around and throw projectiles at you, but they're almost always used on their own where you can just stunlock them to death with your minigun, whereas having tankier enemies be more present in general combat would give you more of a reason to use weapons other than the Shotgun/Crossbow for sifting heads and instead use some of your explosive weapons instead. I suppose the Bruiser Brothers Minor and Warmech Minor are also supposed to fill that role, even if I haven't seen much of them at this point.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Enemy variety gets higher as you go through the game, but the game lacks crazy weapons which were always a staple of 90s shooters.

I would give ANYTHING for Duke 3d's Shrink Ray in this game. I'm disappointed they didn't think to add it. This very much is a shadow warrior style game through and through which is still damn fine but Duke's weapon variety is really what this game needs badly.

You had weird weapon stuff in Shadow Warrior too, like the Guardian Head, this game for whatever reason seems to be completely missing that kind of stuff.

I think maybe the Bowling Bomb is meant to be this games crazy weapon, but it doesn't exactly have the punch of a shrink ray that lets you step on enemies or a decapitated monster head. It has a nice skull explosion, but it's too fast to sell it well.

When I first saw the Clusterpunk weapon I think it was going to be something like the disc weapons in I Come in Peace and Predator 2, but it just ended up being another bomb weapon.

 

[ShadowSpectre]

So I picked this one up tonight. I'm on the third level/map area. It's fun and exactly what you'd expect in a modern retro-FPS game in terms of the look/graphics; it looks as good as it can in the Build engine. I've never been big on weapon variety, since I tend to use the same couple weapons most of the time anyways. It would be nice if the combat shotgun had more of a "kick" to it, as it's a bit underwhelming. The revolver is great and you can double-tap enemies in the head which is fun. Minigun or something is not necessary with the dual-SMG which is kind of the same thing (if only they increased the ammo you can carry, although it hasn't really affected me much so far). The level design is good, but as was mentioned earlier, there are some strange doors that get opened after they aren't even necessary. I would prefer a more traditional close-out on the levels a la Doom, etc. The gameplay seems to be more strafe and fire around corners since the areas are larger. The music is great. The characters lines are alright, but they could have done more with them from what I've heard up to this point (see a previous post about song titles). So far I haven't experienced any slows downs that I've read about for the frame rate. I made sure V-sync was off and increased the max FPS. The game is running smooth so far.

More or less you'll know if this is what you are interested in playing or not before you buy it. It's exactly what the doctor ordered if you like oldschool FPS. Waiting for a sale wouldn't be a bad call either. If you never liked the FPS games from the 90's then I'm not sure why you are even reading this thread and you can go back to modern FPS spawn-a-pop-a-mole #50.

 

[Jezal_k23]

I've been listening to World Builder nonstop. What a fantastic track.

 

[markec]

Blood is great. It's just slightly worse than Nukem and Shadow imo.

I think that all three game are great and its only a matter of personal preference what makes someone choose one over others.

Now I respectably disagree with some of your points.

Recently I went to replay several old shooters including the most famous Build engine games, Duke3d, Blood, Shadow Warrior and Redneck Rampage.

Before replaying them I rated them SW>D3D>Blood>RR.

After replaying them it went Blood>SW>D3D>>>>RR.

-A notable portion of Blood Ep 3 and 4 maps feel like average community-made maps. You don't even need to invest any time or look up map names to see this, just start Episode 3 and the very first map serves as a great example. How the fuck does that even compare to ANY Nukem or Shadow Warrior maps?

-Where's the interactivity? Yeah there's still some but levels are just less dynamic than the likes of Duke Nukem.

All three games have some shitty maps and some great ones, I judge the game not by its worst but by the best part. Shadow Warrior easily has the best map design in terms of visuals and interactivity, but Blood has the best design in terms of combat encounters and that is to me the most important part of a shooter.

-The cultists are 3x worse than Doom's chaingunners and are overused. They'd be fine in moderation, but they're very present throughout the whole game.

Cultists are unremarkable enemy but are well used as a complimentary piece to other enemies.

The enemy roster in general is small and not very impressive (regarding gameplay. Aesthetics are good). It's serviceable nonetheless but could and should be better.

This is bullshit, Blood has the best enemy roster then any Build game, not only that there are more types of enemies then in other games but they also have certain quirks that really shows when playing on hardest difficulty. Things like cultists throwing bundles of dynamite that can one shot you or hounds being highly resistant to fire damage.

Few games provide such a great enemy roster and used is such a good way that you need to carefully plan what weapons to use and what targets to prioritize when attacked by multiple enemies.

-Some of Blood's arsenal is pretty underwhelming. Aerosol can, voodoo doll, life leach, pitchfork (not as good as sword or mighty boot imo).

If by underwhelming you mean in terms of visual style then its only matter of preference (sword is the best), some weapons while maybe looking unremarkable (aerosol can) its effects on enemies are quite fun. If you mean gameplay wise then I disagree, on highest difficulty all of those weapons are very useful, especially aerosol can that is perfect for smaller enemies and burning zombies and pitchfork is great against Flesh gargoyles.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

That whole area is a shoddy inn that uses shipping containers for rooms, hence the wiring and bedrolls.

If that was the case, the outlets would be an afterthought and added haphazardly where they fit, not all at the exact same height as if installed by qualified electricians. It would all be a giant mess, not professional workmanship.

 

[Wunderbar]

That whole area is a shoddy inn that uses shipping containers for rooms, hence the wiring and bedrolls.

If that was the case, the outlets would be an afterthought and added haphazardly where they fit, not all at the exact same height as if installed by qualified electricians. It would all be a giant mess, not professional workmanship.

there's just no pleasing you

 

[Curratum]

As a matter of fact, all enemies in IF have resistances and weaknesses and I found myself switching weapons constantly, perhaps even more so that I did in Blood 1.

 

[Curratum]

As a matter of fact, all enemies in IF have resistances and weaknesses and I found myself switching weapons constantly, perhaps even more so that I did in Blood 1.

Because of the "citation needed" reactions:

Flier drones are very resistant to shotgun shells, however the alt-fire of the revolver takes them down instantly. Spiders are very weak to the SMG. Fliers that shoot rockets and produce purple smoke are VERY weak to the SMG and the ion crossbow.

Bosses are very susceptible to the full-blown alt-fire of the ion bow, where you hold alt-fire down and don't let go even after the multiple shot loading, just hold it for like 4 seconds and it auto-discharges a massive barrage that takes up maybe 10 ammo.

Two of the later, big-threat enemies are very stun-lockable with the chaingun if you have the ammo for it. The cyborg ninjas take a LOT of damage from SMG headshots, you can waste 2 full mags of shotgun shells and still not kill them, while just over half a SMG mag to the head kills them.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

there's just no pleasing you

Not when it comes to stupidity and supporting decline in general, no.