Ion Fury review – a brilliant blast of nostalgia, and a decent first-person shooter too

Ion Fury isn’t so much a blast from the past as a gunshot straight through it, carving its way along time’s back-alley and punching a hole in history’s skull. Coming at you from the business end of 1996, Ion Fury is a brand new 2.5d shooter published by 3D Realms (the publishers of Duke Nukem 3D) and created in the Build Engine (the engine used to design Duke Nukem 3D).

Ion Fury reviewDeveloper: VoidpointPublisher: 3D RealmsAvailability: Out August 15th on PC and Mac, coming to PS4, Switch and Xbox One later this year

Let’s stop for a moment and take that in. For a fan of classic shooters, this is like finding out John Romero has created a fifth episode to the original Doom. Oh wait, . Somebody pinch me, I must be asleep.

In truth, I’ve been living in FPS dream-world for the best part of a year. The last nine months have seen the birth of two knockout retro shooters – the magnificent Dusk and the scintillating Amid Evil. Ion Fury, however, is the first one to come at me toting not just a shotgun but pedigree as well. Ion Fury is here to remind us what it was like to kick ass and not chew bubblegum, in the days before Duke fell forever into decline.

Ion Fury’s premise is typically slight. Players assume the role of Shelly “Bombshell” Harrison, a bomb-disposal expert on a one-woman quest to rid Neo D.C of the evil Dr Heskel and his cybernetic army. This isn’t Shelly’s first rodeo as a video game protagonist – Ion Fury is technically a prequel to the mediocre top-down shooter Bombshell. You don’t really need to know about it. I’m just getting ahead of the comments.