Ion Fury

after playing so many games lately that were good with some caveats, this game is nothing short of a true breath of fresh air. it is a finely crafted gem of an experience and the decade+ of experience that the team has making games of a similar style really seeps through practically every corner. the weapons are almost all unique twists on otherwise old standards. the starting revolver fires shotgun shells and has a homing attack that is great for cleaning up small groups of fodder enemies. the shotgun doubles as a grenade launcher, although for some reason instead of an alt fire (which the shotgun and grenade launcher both don't have) it counts as a seperate weapon with a reduced weapon switch time, which is weird. the crossbow is laser-fied and stuns enemies while also allowing you to charge up multishots. the bowling bombs have homing capabilities and will roll when tossed. the SMGs set things on fire. the mines can be thrown like grenades (which is 100% of what I used them for), only the mighty and strong machinegun had no extra flair. the enemies are well designed in a similar fashion. it starts out simple enough with robed cult mooks that shoot crossbow bolts and shotgun shells at you along with the occasional special forces man. but then it starts getting a lot more creative, with spider robot heads that hang on the ceiling forcing you to either look up when traversing new territory or get ambushed. men with no skin that fly around shooting electric bolts and exploding when they die. giant mechs. zombies that toss goo at you like they're right out of quake. it does feel like the length of the campaign could have used one or two more enemy types to keep the gameplay fresh the entire time throughout, but I'd say the enemies only started getting stale around the last two zones. not perfect pacing, but a lot closer to it than most other games reach. and the level design, my god, the level design. it's a crowning achievement not only standing up to legends of the FPS genre, but even superceding some of them. each level is finely crafted in such a way that I was hardly ever lost (though it did happen once or twice). constant looping hallways and shortcuts, never showing you a key without forcing you to pass by the door it unlocks first. and the detail in each one is off the charts, especially in the beginning. in the opening few zones that are outdoors you can see decorations litering every six inches, most of them references to other properties like duke nukem or doom or even the movie commando. I will however agree with criticism I've seen other people levy that late game takes place in far too many underground levels. sewers, train metros, underground labs, throwing in a few more topside ones near the end would have made things a little less samey. this is going right into my top games of all time list somewhere, maybe even top 10, and as soon as I recover from my slight fatigue from marathoning this game for nearly three days straight I will tackle aftershock next so the fun won't end just yet. I greatly hope that whatever game this team puts out next will live up to the promise this game not only showed, but delivered on masterfully. if you've got even a slight, remotely vague interest in old school FPS shooters, Get This. it has some flaws, but what little it has are masterfully overshadowed by everything it does right. ps. this game actually made me laugh out loud more than once. it's probably the funniest any game of this type has been.