Genre: First-Person Shooter
Developer: Voidpoint
Publisher: 3D Realms

The best development out of the game industry over the past ten-odd years hasn't been 4K, or HDR, or the proliferation of VR headsets: it's been the acceptance of the "Hi-Bit" art style, as popularized by games like "Minecraft" or "Freedom Planet". Ion Fury marries the best of modern technology and art direction-- 1080p output, 16:9 aspect ratio-- with what makes video game art what it is: pixels. Textured skyscraper, office building, and train car environments, populated with digitized enemy sprites and voxel-rendered "3D" objects like table lamps and trash cans, combine to stupefying effect. The "final form" of non-hologram video game visuals? Perhaps.

Little-known composer Jarkko Rotsten delivers a fully-digital light-rave, drum-and-bass techno soundtrack filled with strobing sounds-- think a less memorable take on the "One Must Fall: 2097" concept. The songs won't get stuck in anyone's heads, but they fit the game's quasi-cyberpunk themed world and goofy sense of humor perfectly, and the relatively simplistic beats are successfully evocative of the music from yesteryear's first-person shooters. Long-time talent director-cum-voice actress Valerie Michelle Arem produces the protagonist's one-liners, and her delivery is every bit as good as the work Jon St. John put in with "Duke Nukem" back in the day. A huge emphasis was also clearly placed on sound effects, which pop from the speakers.

In the true spirit of "Doom" or "Duke Nukem 3D", Ion Fury involves exploring huge 3D labyrinths, scooping up health plus ammo and killing baddies along the way. The key card level design is up there with the best games in the genre, with levels wrapping around on themselves, while also providing plenty of clever uses of the game's-- by modern standards-- limited amounts of geometry. There are several guns on offer including a fun-to-use melee one, and each gun serves a discrete purpose-- although flipping between them without access to a PC's keyboard numbers is cumbersome. The game could also use a bit more variety in terms of enemy types, versus the borderline palette-swapped hooded guys mostly served up.

It's incredible to see Ken Silverman's original "Build Engine" still not just alive and kicking, but producing 4K visuals on today's more powerful platforms. On Nintendo's hardware, 1080p is used even in handheld mode-- downsampling!-- and the overall look is mesmerizing. Also featured on Nintendo's platform is a superb gyro aiming implementation, lending mouse-like precision to fine-grained movement. All-in-all then, Ion Fury does what every video game should: take the best of the old, the best of the new, and marry it together into a single, well-designed package. It's a pity the game doesn't also support multiplayer, but that sacrifice is a small price to pay for all of the game's other enticements.