Ion Fury - Nintendo Switch Review


Review for Ion Fury. Game for Linux, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Steam and Xbox One, the video game was released on 28/02/2018 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 31/12/2019 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 31/12/2019 The version for Xbox One came out on 31/12/2019

We live years of deep nostalgia. The pop culture myth of the 80s and 90s is more rooted than ever today, finding expression in a dense array of works inspired by the past that cross horizontally across the media landscape.



The nostalgic focus proposed by Ion Fury becomes clear after a few moments after the game is launched, when the massive 3D Realms logo appears in all its pixelated glory. The Texan software house it lived its moment of maximum glory in the second half of the 90s when, in particular thanks to Duke Nukem 3D (1996), he managed to rise to the Olympus of development studies alongside His Majesty Id Software.

Ion Fury - Nintendo Switch Review

Well, 3D Realms has awakened that Build Engine from its twenty-year slumber who pulled the strings of his greatest hits, then entrusting it to the skilled hands of Voidpoint for the creation of a nostalgic and self-quoting work.

Ion Fury is a time travel in the late 90s, an adrenaline-pumping, fun, challenging work and stripped of all the innovations that came after.

The cruel doctor Jadus Heskel, dedicated to the improvement of the human being through cybernetic implants, unleashes his army on the streets of the futuristic city Neo DC bringing death and destruction. How to restore order and security? Entrusting the case to an agent dedicated to even more death and destruction: the braggart Shelly “Bombshell” Harrison.



Ion Fury - Nintendo Switch Review

The simple plot is introduced by a short sequence of cartoons with a comic flavor, then giving Harrison's commands to the player without tutorials or explanations. This stylistic choice presents itself perfectly in line with the FPS of the era before the narrative revolution operated by Half-Life (1998), all mixed with that pinch of topicality that meant that the protagonist had feminine features.

The following is a intricate labyrinth overflowing with secrets, elevators, key cards and switches to activate, theater of gore, machismo and bulletstorm. We thus arrive at one of the main advantages of Ion Fury: the level design. The levels, full of twists and turns, tangle up on themselves until they bring different areas, somehow, to interconnect with each other. The goal is a continuous search for keys, buttons and levers to open doors, move bridges and activate elevators. More, the settings teem with secret areas cleverly hidden in the most unlikely ravines, secrets able to equip the most hardened completists with additional equipment.

Ion Fury - Nintendo Switch Review

But it wouldn't be an FPS if the focus weren't, of course, firefights. The arsenal in Harrison's service is quite classic but varied enough to allow her to cope with all kinds of enemies. The opponents are not particularly smart, as per the tradition of the 90s, but they are decidedly fierce and diversified in terms of approach. Unfortunately, their variety is certainly not a point in favor of the game: it will happen in fact to run into the same types of enemies for a good part of the campaign, with some minor additions as you go through the ten hours required to complete the game.



Speaking of longevity, ten hours is just the basis. This figure could in fact multiply several times on the basis of factors such as the level of difficulty chosen among the four available, the desire to search for secrets and the skill in extricating oneself from a level of challenge that is always rather demanding.


Ion Fury - Nintendo Switch Review

And now we come to the biggest flaw of Ion Fury in the Nintendo Switch version we tested: the aiming system. If Halo (2001) introduced some ingenious design ideas capable of clearing the FPS on consoles, Build Engine is obviously lacking in them, strongly reminding us why in the past the genre was the preserve of PCs. The implementation of the aiming system is not enough to guarantee the accuracy necessary to fully enjoy the title, making us find in more than one occasion to fiddle with the right analog in the clumsy attempt to aim the enemies. Even the calibration of the sensitivity in the options did not bring the desired results, making us then resign to the activation of the motion sensors to try to adjust the adjustable. Such a pity.

At the same time, having to scroll between one weapon and another using the up and down keys of the D-Pad inevitably leads to having to stop, a choice that can be fatal in the most excited phases of the game.


In terms of usability, Switch's small portable screen will make everything a little too small to be enjoyed at its best, making docked mode preferable though some sporadic slowdown which is absolutely unacceptable given the graphic quality of the title.

Net of its technical limitations, Ion Fury runs fast, very fast just like the FPS of the past, making us children again and teaching history to those who in the 90s were too young to riddle to death droves of pixelated monstrosities.

► Ion Fury is an indie-Shooter game published by 1C Company for Linux, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Steam and Xbox One, the video game was released on 28/02/2018 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 31/12/2019 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 31/12/2019 The version for Xbox One came out on 31/12/2019

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