Four years ago Ion Fury became the first new commercial product in about 20 years to utilize the Build engine, best known for being used in Duke Nukem 3D, Blood and Shadow Warrior. The experience of playing the game was kinda neat, but also slightly confusing as while it was truly a classic FPS down to its engine, it also felt like a somewhat pointless exercise that didn’t really enhance the experience. Though the biggest issues of the title, as I’ve felt, were somewhat uninspired enemies and weapons and its extremely long length without as much variety in terms of levels. Aftershock is a new expansion for the game that addresses some of those flaws and leads to a result that, in my opinion, is superior to the main game itself.
The overall gameplay of the expansion remains largely the same, so it still feels very familiar to all fans of Duke 3D or Blood, but with several more modern quality of life features added on top. The game has had a big performance update a few years ago, so the game runs even better than before and allows for even larger levels with extremely fast loading between them. And yes, for a game that looks like this it might be obvious, but you have to remember that Build engine itself was not built with modern hardware in mind so tweaks and changes like this are genuinely impressive. As is the size of levels and its design – the single best aspect of Ion Fury and now especially Aftershock is in how its level design utilizes every square meter of the locations in a cool way, constantly providing you with new unexpected shortcuts to old areas. Before you get to each level exit you can’t turn back from, the game will warn you about the amount of secrets you’re missing, motivating you to re-explore the locations and find more cool stuff.
Levels themselves in Aftershock are a huge improvement. There’s a lot more variety in how they look and feel, the entire middle section of the game is utilizing a vehicle, with a race-like level included. And the expansion campaign is about twice as short as the main game is, which is the perfect length for it. As a fun bonus, on top of the new campaign the expansion also provides an alternative mode of the main campaign. Not that I wanted to replay it, but it’s still neat.
As far as enemies and weapons go – there are updates and changes, but they are still rather weak. The “get new item – get monster closet” design prevails in the expansion levels and while due to the shorter length it doesn’t become as tiring as it does in the main game, it’s still too predictable. And the final boss design is quite bad this time around. I’d say – the weakest part of the expansion in general is its first level and the last level, with everything in between being really solid. Even the music, in my opinion, got better this time around.
While I still don’t know if I could recommend Ion Fury with or without Aftershock to anyone who isn’t a massive fan of the actually old FPS games and not ones that call back to that design, I would say that Aftershock is a more enjoyable experience overall. To the point where I think it would’ve been better if this was Ion Fury instead of what the main campaign is. Should you get the game just for the expansion? Probably not. But it’s worth keeping it in mind for whenever you see a good discount on the game.