Ion Fury
Playtime: 15.0 Hours
Capital Punishment Playtime: 8.9 Hours, finished 08 October 2025.
Aftershock Playtime: 6.1 Hours, finished 11 October 2025.
Played on the "Normal" difficulty (Wanton Carnage) for both Capital Punishment and Aftershock since Build Engine games are generally tuned to be pretty rough, and I'm not sure how much I'd be interested in struggling in combat segments in a Build game. I didn't really do much secret hunting, and didn't find any of the secret levels.
It's just another Build Engine game!
Pretty much all of the thoughts I have on this game essentially boil down to this; this game is extremely faithful to the era of games it's trying to recapture, including all of the same mechanical strengths and weaknesses of the likes of Duke, Shadow Warrior, and BLOOD. To rehash some of my issues with the other Build games, I don't really like how your bullets and your crosshair don't line up when aiming up or down, making it really difficult to hit things above or below you and almost requiring the use of auto-aim, which is itself severely overtuned. Hitscanners are as annoying as ever, even accounting for the developers' efforts to minimize them among the enemy roster. Explosive damage are still quite overtuned, pretty much instantly shredding your armor compared to any other damage type. And some levels feel a bit too drawn out (way too many sewer levels too!); I couldn't play for more than ~1-2 hours at a time because of it.
With that said, there are plenty of things that distinguish this game from the others, and most of them are quite good! The weapon variety is wide, and each weapon feels unique and useful throughout the entire game. Even the stun baton has its uses for some environmental puzzles and to clean up trash mobs, though I prefer Lo Wang's sword still. The overall post-modern techno-dystopia theme is captured brilliantly, with the various environments managing to be relatable & recognizable while evoking a kind of "Deus Ex" vibe to me - my only issue is the over-reliance on those damned sewers! At the same time, the numerous references to the games and culture of the '90s, including all the 2.5D shooters (particularly DOOM and BLOOD from what I've noticed), and the cheesy dialogue lines make the entire experience feel like a very polished love letter to that era of gaming. Not to mention, the music is phenomenal.
Aftershock is more of the same, but with a bit extra. The big draw is the "motorcycle", which is more like a rideable quadcopter - it's quite fun to use, and the mounted plasma gun is SUPER strong and very satisfying to blow up enemies with. Unfortunately, you don't actually get to use it for very long, appearing for about ~25% of the campaign before it blows up, leaving you with just the "Homewrecker" gun (which is still great, thankfully). There's a few more powerful enemies that are basically just palette swaps of the other cultists using other weapons similar to the ones in your arsenal, and a couple extra toys for the Disperser, adding (useless) gas grenades and (really fun) cluster bombs, which are basically explosive flak rounds. There isn't too much else to say, except that the entire 3rd episode is basically a homage to BLOOD, and the final episode in the volcano sucks and is not very fun to play.
Given that this was one of the torchbearers of the retro shooter revival, I can't help but compare it to DUSK in that it feels far more faithful, in both the good and the bad. While I felt DUSK made an attempt to really cut out some of the "unfun" enemy behaviors and mechanics (for example, completely eliminating hitscan enemies altogether without making the game too easy), Ion Fury just wanted to recapture the exact same vibe, which I can respect. Personally, given that I've gotten a bit burned out of the 2.5D-era games, I don't think I'll be playing any more of this for the foreseeable future, but it was definitely worth playing through once. If I ever care to come back, it's worth noting the Aftershock DLC also adds an Arranged version of the entire original campaign, so there's more that I can still do!
