Ion Fury, a new Build Engine game out now.

[DooM_RO]

Someone should play one of their songs on that piano.

[esselfortium]

Censored versions of Duke, Blood, and Shadow Warrior were all widely distributed in the 90s due to requirements of major retailers like Walmart, and those versions made far more substantial cuts than "we removed a slur from a hidden script message you can only noclip to". Updated releases of DOOM.WAD removed the swastika that was originally in E1M4. I guess John Romero "bent the knee" in 1993 or whatever. You can stop pretending to be outraged that a game developer apologized to a minority group.

 

This wave of review-bombing is very telling. It's not coming from the trans or gay people who felt targeted by ignorant remarks that were made by staff members. Despite them having every right to still be upset and not want to support the game, I've mostly just seen forgiveness and genuine interest in the game, and relief that the developers were willing to acknowledge they had fucked up. It's awful to find out that the creators of something you love, something you might even have found empowerment in, have been saying terrible things about people like you. People spoke up because that shit hurts.

 

The review bombing is coming from people who are angry that even the smallest concessions were made to right a wrong. It's transparently manufactured outrage for which the blame is being projected onto a minority group for speaking up about the way they were talked about. Despite all the claims that Resetera or whoever else holds some vast power to destroy developers they don't like, looking at the endless spam reviews posted from "anti-SJWs" trying to tank Ion Fury and smear its developers for "bending the knee", it's clear who's actually aiming to destroy developers who offend them.

[seed]

24 minutes ago, esselfortium said:

The review bombing is coming from people who are angry that even the smallest concessions were made to right a wrong. It's transparently manufactured outrage for which the blame is being projected onto a minority group for speaking up about the way they were talked about. Despite all the claims that Resetera or whoever else holds some vast power to destroy developers they don't like, looking at the endless spam reviews posted from "anti-SJWs" trying to tank Ion Fury and smear its developers for "bending the knee", it's clear who's actually aiming to destroy developers who offend them.

 

Agreed.

 

I've also been reading some reviews early this morning and although I do believe some of them might have a valid point, a bunch of them are from, well, neanderthals, dunno how else to label those people who complain about apologizing to a minority.

 

I would have never thought that donating 10K to a charity (I keep seeing this popping up) to support a minority, replacing an "OGAY" soap box (which, while I frankly don't find necessarily offensive, I do find it to be pretty bad taste) and removing a text from an inaccessible area is "bending the knee to SJWs and compromising your artistic vision". Go back to your caves people, you belong there.

[incel]

35 minutes ago, esselfortium said:

Censored versions of Duke, Blood, and Shadow Warrior were all widely distributed in the 90s...

 

I've never heard of censored Blood. What did they change? The name?

[esselfortium]

Just now, incel said:

 

I've never heard of censored Blood. What did they change? The name?

They removed the blood. 😂

[seed]

It would seem someone needs a Blood™ transfusion then.

[incel]

 

2 minutes ago, esselfortium said:

They removed the blood. 😂

 

Oh.

[Linguica]

On 8/18/2019 at 12:10 PM, Linguica said:

Let's not bring the current online drama into this thread.

 

[CasualScrub]

So yeah Ion Fury's pretty sweet huh guys?

[mrthejoshmon]

I really like the character design of Shelly in this one, she's got that cute fun office girl look mixed with a "has killed, will kill" tough look and a cheeky/quirky attitude backed by furious anger.

 

They're a contradictory mix of traits but I think they make a very appealing character, better than Lo Wang at least who's trait is to be legit just a an insufferable cock.

[DoomedFox]

At least shelly can down multiple bottles of jacks without any problems compared to duke drinking one cheap can of beer and suddenly becoming shitfaced. 

 

Plus by the fact she can lug a chaingun arm from a mech around with her without any augmentation is just total badassery. 

[Jon]

I'm really enjoying this. I hope we see some community mods and maps for it. 

[esselfortium]

4 hours ago, Jon said:

I'm really enjoying this. I hope we see some community mods and maps for it. 

Looks like there are already some being worked on :)

 

 

 

[pavera]

This might be kinda weird, but are Shelly's "death" status bar portraits sort of upsetting to anybody else playing this game? I get the game is violent, but seeing her face explode horribly every time I get killed just sort of makes me a bit uncomfortable. Even Doomguy / Quakeguy / BJ's death portraits aren't that gruesome.

[Jon]

1 hour ago, Pavera said:

This might be kinda weird, but are Shelly's "death" status bar portraits sort of upsetting to anybody else playing this game? I get the game is violent, but seeing her face explode horribly every time I get killed just sort of makes me a bit uncomfortable. Even Doomguy / Quakeguy / BJ's death portraits aren't that gruesome.

They were on one of the consoles

[seed]

3 minutes ago, Jon said:

They were on one of the consoles

 

Yup, PSX Doom at least had an explosive Doomguy face. I think it triggered when the player was gibbed. It could be a reference to that since Ion Fury already has other references to Doom.

[scalliano]

Jag Doom has gib frames at the original resolution. There's a mod for ZDoom that adds them in. 

[grahf]

Love the game so far, mostly for the level design.  The enemies and weapons are ... quirky, I guess is the best way to describe them.

 

On the technical stuff, I have bad stuttering unless I turn off vsync, after which it runs perfectly fine.  Yes I'd prefer no tearing, but run at 120fps the tearing isn't horrible.

 

Negative side: I HATE the way the weapon sprite swings side to side as you move the camera viewpoint.  It feels laggy and awful.  I haven't played the old BUILD games in a few years but I don't remember that behaviour?

[seed]

17 minutes ago, grahf said:

On the technical stuff, I have bad stuttering unless I turn off vsync, after which it runs perfectly fine.  Yes I'd prefer no tearing, but run at 120fps the tearing isn't horrible.

 

Inherited from the regular eduke32 most likely. VSync in eduke32 is garbage for many users, including yours truly.

 

I usually just turn it off and cap the framerate to 60 instead.

[Noiser]

This is a great game and I'm having a lot of fun with it! However, I'm a bit disappointed with the reload and headshot mechanics. They add nothing to an oldschool game like this, except for making the combat clunky or convoluted. I guess these features were added to appeal Brutal Doom fans, which is an awful idea imo. I'm definitely more inclined to Dusk or REKKR in that regard.

That said, it's still very enjoyable. Visuals are amazing, level design is outstanding so far and the tracker soundtrack is cool as hell. I'm glad to see a new build engine game after all these years.

[grahf]

53 minutes ago, Noiser said:

and the tracker soundtrack is cool as hell. 

Yeah the music is awesome, worth a shout out for sure.  BTW it appears to be on all streaming platforms - Spotify, Google Play etc.

 

On the other hand I found the enemy speech very repetitive.  And not distinctive.  In good FPS games it's pretty easy to identify enemy by sound.  Maybe with enough playtime in Ion Fury it's possible.  But initially, not likely.

[fraggle]

On 8/22/2019 at 9:34 AM, Pavera said:

This might be kinda weird, but are Shelly's "death" status bar portraits sort of upsetting to anybody else playing this game? I get the game is violent, but seeing her face explode horribly every time I get killed just sort of makes me a bit uncomfortable. Even Doomguy / Quakeguy / BJ's death portraits aren't that gruesome.

 

[Ozku]

I'm really enjoying this game as well, the movement and the gunplay feel spot on. The later levels are a bit less interesting since they are mostly similar looking labs/bases, the city levels felt way more impressive. I found 49% of the secrets on my first playthrough and I'm giving it another go on highest difficulty right now.

 

Good music too, it fits the levels quite nicely and certain tracks make me want to just jump all over the place as I gib enemies.

 

It also inspired me to give build mapping a go, all I can say is that Doombuilder has spoiled me when it comes to ease of use.

[CyberDreams]

On 8/21/2019 at 2:07 PM, esselfortium said:

Censored versions of Duke, Blood, and Shadow Warrior were all widely distributed in the 90s due to requirements of major retailers like Walmart

I had no idea about that. Interesting. I mean, Walmart and K-Mart sold edited CD's and what not so why not games? ;) 

 

On 8/21/2019 at 2:07 PM, esselfortium said:

Updated releases of DOOM.WAD removed the swastika that was originally in E1M4. I guess John Romero "bent the knee" in 1993 or whatever.

Haha! True. I forgot about that as well as i (just like most people probably do) usually just play The Ultimate Doom v1.9.

 

Anyway's i haven't bought Ion Fury yet but it does look really damn fun. All of the video reviews i've watched have seemed to be pretty positive about it. I just hope that the game is actually balanced decently (even on the lower difficulties) and that it isn't just an over-detailed Shadow Warrior. To me Shadow Warrior had some real balance issues imo.

 

And yeah, fuck the drama. I'm glad it's pretty much died down (or so i think?). So all in all i probably will buy this game sometime soon when i'm feeling up to it and give it a shot. It definitely looks to good to pass up, especially since i'm a pretty big Duke Nukem fan.

Edited August 26, 2019 by CyberDreams

[incel]

Didn't like it. Too generic. Too many hitscaners, those flying and crawling swarms of little buggers are irritating AF. Levels feel too large for their own good – shooting at some fucks at the other end of the dark street is not fun at all. Oh, yeah, and constant spawn all around you (you walk in the room, kill everyone, push a button, turn over – the room is full of "cloaks" again). Overall, very disappointed.

[Manuel-K]

It's the Hexen/Quake 2 problem all over again. In theory I like the hub system. In practice I don't.

 

 

[Jon]

Whacking the head spiders with the stun rod is very satisfying. The little unique weapon specific deaths are a lovely touch 

[Koko Ricky]

Slightly off-topic, but did someone make the Doomguy's face explode after the fact, or was that an id creation that was unused?

[SaladBadger]

I don't think any id employee's said anything on it, but it's probably after the fact. Jaguar Doom and PSX Doom have separate animations for it.

[Woolie Wool]

On 8/25/2019 at 2:34 AM, CyberDreams said:

I had no idea about that. Interesting. I mean, Walmart and K-Mart sold edited CD's and what not so why not games? ;) 

 

Haha! True. I forgot about that as well as i (just like most people probably do) usually just play The Ultimate Doom v1.9.

 

Anyway's i haven't bought Ion Fury yet but it does look really damn fun. All of the video reviews i've watched have seemed to be pretty positive about it. I just hope that the game is actually balanced decently (even on the lower difficulties) and that it isn't just an over-detailed Shadow Warrior. To me Shadow Warrior had some real balance issues imo.

 

And yeah, fuck the drama. I'm glad it's pretty much died down (or so i think?). So all in all i probably will buy this game sometime soon when i'm feeling up to it and give it a shot. It definitely looks to good to pass up, especially since i'm a pretty big Duke Nukem fan.

Nope, they walked back their walking back, so now everyone is pissed off over a texture most people would otherwise never notice! Good times!

 

I've been playing through this in software mode, and this is the Metal Slug of 2.5D FPS games--it looks that good. The palette and art style mesh together perfectly in such a way as to blow Id Software and 3D Realms sprite work out of the water. There are little details and subtleties seemingly everywhere you look, huge complex outdoor areas that humiliate just about anything made for ZDoom, and the most beautiful weapon sprites I have ever seen, the Ion Bow especially being a crowning achievement in spritework. Fullbrights (especially reds) are used extensively to reinforce the '90s-future neon hellscape of Neo D.C. and they look absolutely fabulous. That said, I hope you like that '90s-future neon hellscape, because there are no episodes in this game and you will be staring at concrete and neon for about 15 hours. However many thousands of variations upon this theme live in the .art files. it gets very tired by the end of the game. I think a more traditional three-episode structure would have made the game's pacing a lot better.

 

Instead we get seven "chapters", pseudo-hub worlds which function as adventure maps on a truly gargantuan scale. And they're all epic adventures, and linear ones too, with exploration leading to cute environmental setpieces, supply caches, terrible "humor" (more on that later, I assure you), or monsters, but almost never to an alternate route through the level. Even air ducts, which riddle nearly area in the game, are usually very short and bypass one or two rooms at most. And they are just too damn large--pretty much every player who played my Wolf3D mod Operation Serpent complained about how humongous the levels were and how they dragged--but the largest of those levels only took one hour to beat. You'll be spending two or three hours in each chapter, seemingly traveling miles but never seeming to get closer to your goal, insofar as you have a goal besides "kill this vaguely defined villain". These chapters would function much better as 20-40 minute maps, as the first episode of a three-episode, 21-level game (which in the end, would still be shorter than the game we actually got)! There are some standout levels, though, especially Heskel's House of Horrors, an almost totally self-contained segment of the fifth chapter, a very tightly-executed romp through a Gothic horror mansion and its outer courtyard with complex multi-level gunfights and a welcome infusion of wood, carpet, stone, and other nice, pleasant things in a game that is otherwise saturated with metal and concrete.

 

Making this worse is that there's no sense of progressing towards something until the last two chapters of the game, set in Heskel's laboratory. Until that point over 10 hours in, the levels get harder and the monsters get bigger, but there is no clear progression from one concrete jungle to the next, and it feels more like being lost in a seemingly infinite monster-infested wasteland than being on a great trek. Heskel is a worthless antagonist who speaks often but communicates never, a stupid bald head spouting empty boasts and threats like an insecure, cowardly knockoff of Blake Stone's Dr. Goldfire, whose only line was "Ha ha ha ha ha, you'll never succeed!" but made Blake Stone players live in fear of him for his ability to drop in seemingly anywhere, anytime, and fuck you up in a heartbeat. And no, a baroque, bloated boss battle at the end cannot make up for 15 hours of neither putting up nor shutting up.

 

Likewise, Shelley "Please Forget About the Whole Bombshell Thing" Harrison is an empty protagonist to match the empty villain, and really her problem is only the most obvious symptom of a contradiction that goes right to the heart of the entire experience and people picking up on it may have caused this stupid "controversy" in the first place. Ion Fury wants to follow in the footsteps of Duke Nukem 3D, but it doesn't want to be, you know, irresponsible about it. But Duke Nukem 3D was a game about being exactly such an irresponsible, sociopathic asshole, indeed its primary selling point for the overwhelming majority of the audience who would play the game once or twice without ever bothering with mods or developing an appreciation for fine level design. Shelley, of course, was once "Bombshell" without any other name, with a cartoonish porn star body and the bare minimum of clothing, one of the Duke Girls orbiting Duke's mighty manhood. The original version fortunately never made it to the final Duke Nukem Forever, but she's now apparently 3D Realms' full-time ersatz Duke, and she does not work, at all. Having any link at all to the "Bombshell" idea from the DNF design docs was the first terrible mistake, because it does nothing at all for her and comes with some rather unsavory baggage that works directly against her new role as a mass-murdering hardass. And of course, she has to look like a "bombshell", so whereas Duke is massive and rugged, Shelley is scrawny and delicate with magical hair, a look as absurd as the hopeless position she is put in trying to satisfy both reactionary pigs and woke Twitter, both object and subject, intimidating and eye candy, playing a male role without taking on any masculine coding (can't have any scary gender ambiguity!), being offensive without offending anybody.

 

Now I don't think the gap can't be bridged, but it would have required Ion Fury to critique Duke 3D and its successors while building on them--not just jokey references to other games, but satire with actual teeth. This, however is a fan product made by fans for fans with a fannish mindset and fannish priorities, and it's not going to upset the Duke3D community's apple carts. It would have also required perspectives and life experiences at least tangentially related to actual women at some point in the creative process to make Shelley a fully realized character, to make her jokes have actual points rather than a collection of unfunny non sequiturs. Many of the things she says are references so apropos of nothing they sound like verbal tics or stereotypies more than anything somebody would intentionally say. She's an edgy character with an edge that doesn't cut butter.

 

The same with the environmental humor, which is relentless and relentlessly dreary. Ha ha, foreskins. Ha ha, '90s reference. Ha ha, pornos. Like Beavis and Butthead, but instead of you being in on a humiliating joke at the expense of Butthead, you get to be in Butthead's mind and experience his pride in his idiotic caprices. A slew of '90s pop culture is referenced, but never commented on or subject to real satire (that would be irreverent, and this is above all a game that is reverent of '90s pop culture). And it's ladled on way too thick, with a joke seemingly around every corner and jokey textures reused many, many times over the course of the campaign, and as I progressed I began to disconnect from the environment and game world and just focus on the fighting.

 

The game does offer some good fights. I am playing on "Wanton Carnage", which seems about on par with Dusk or Blood on their respective medium difficulties, and it plays a lot like a truly 3D Wolfenstein 3D--movement is very fast but also very tight, with just a tiny bit of acceleration to facilitate the shoot-and-dodge rhythm dance that is key to the gameplay loops of both Ion Maiden and Wolfenstein 3D. Dancing and jumping around will dodge some of the enemy attacks, but not all of them--they're not hitscan, but enemy bullets and crossbow shots move extremely quickly even if they are visible projectiles, so many fights become a mad rush from cover to cover to cover, being chased around by enemies from multiple directions and using their telegraph animations as a cue to duck behind the next pillar--but not for long, because it will just expose you to enemies from another angle. In one of the few modern influences, Ion Maiden has no real weapon hierarchy, with instead a range of situational niches and tools to fill them, and providing enough ammo to let you get some mileage out of all of them without really relying on any of them. The headshots are not perfect--how can they be with 2D sprites?--but they work well enough and being able to land headshots consistently with the shotgun, machine guns, and ion bow is an essential skill you have to learn to survive on higher difficulties. Even enemies that appear to be massive bullet-sponges, like the late-game melee enemies that look and behave like overgrown cyborged versions of Quake's Fiends, go down much more quickly if you can land multiple hits to the brainpan. Successful headshot kills result in spectacularly loud and gooey monster deaths to reward your efforts, and blowing several heads off in a row gives me some grim satisfaction. The monsters, at least after the first couple of chapters that are overwhelmingly dominated by three or four different grades of Man With Gun, are highly varied in shape, size, behavior, and threat level and have different weaknesses that call for different tactics and give all the weapons of your arsenal moments to shine. There are, however, way too fucking many of the little spider creatures. Tiny enemies in sprite-based FPS games are always a nightmare, especially in software rendering with y-shearing, but here instead of being an occasional nightmare used in fights built around their unique traits (see Blood's hands for such an enemy used well), they're in virtually every fight, where a larger, bulkier melee combatant in the vein of the Sabreclaw, Axe Zombie, Pinky Demon, or Dusk's Leatherface would usually be more appropriate.

 

Also, the lack of true hitscans for the player annoys me. By all means, let me dodge their bullets but a player shotgun or machine gun works best with hitscans for that instant punch that you just don't get even with the heaviest projectile weapons.

 

I have enjoyed Ion Fury (except for the second boss map which was complete bullshit to play and eventually slowed my computer to a crawl, even at low resolution--and I have a Ryzen 5!) and I certainly wouldn't consider being one of those jerks who demand a refund for a game they've already played. I hope, if nothing else, this does not relegate Voidpoint and Ion Maiden to being another one-and-done commercial failure like so many other retro game efforts (alas poor Overload...). I think this team has enormous potential and they could outdo themselves next time, with more experience, a clearer vision, and perhaps backing away a bit from the Duke Nukem "character FPS" concept in favor of a more somber, impersonal, Id-like approach.

Edited August 28, 2019 by Woolie Wool