Every cloud has a silver lining, and let’s be
honest; isometric ARPG/shooter Bombshell was a pretty big (possibly
mushroom-shaped) cloud. Originally planned as a Duke Nukem reboot, legal
scuffles forced the game to re-brand, and it all turned out a bit pants anyway,
leading developers Interceptor Entertainment to fold not long after.
The silver lining may be just what old-school
shooter fans have been clamouring for, though. The Build-engine retro FPS now
known as Ion Maiden was originally planned to be a promotional tie-in with
Bombshell (and still shares a protagonist). It fell off the radar after
Bombshell turned out a dud, but it seems that side-studio Voidpoint never
stopped believing. Without warning, and under the (recently purchased) 3D
Realms banner, Ion Maiden has launched direct to early access.
To everyone’s surprise, it may actually be really
good.
While Voidpoint/3D Realms have been rather remiss
and forgotten to send me (our resident retro FPS nerd, after Alice, of course)
a preview build, I’ve heard quite a lot positive about Ion Maiden on the
grapevine from a folks that wouldn’t be satisfied with anything short of true
old-school authenticity. After watching a chunk of it being streamed live. I
reckon this may well be something special.
The quality of the game isn’t a massive surprise
once you dig into who Voidpoint are. The team mostly consists of long-time Duke
Nukem 3D mappers and modders, as well as some of the development crew from
EDuke32, a popular source-port that brings hardware rendering, improved
controls and a lot of bug-fixes to the occasionally wonky old Build engine. Ion
Maiden runs on a variant of this engine, effectively making it a real DOS game
running under emulation, of a sort.
One of the biggest departures from Duke Nukem 3D is
the removal of hitscan weaponry. Bullets from enemies are fast-moving and
avoidable projectiles, rather than just instantly deducting precious digits
from your health pool. This isn’t the first neo-retro FPS to do this either –
it’s a feature that’s found its way into some major Doom and Quake mods such as
Brutal Doom & Arcane Dimensions.
Perhaps taking a note from Blood’s book, thrown
explosives are used a lot more than in Duke 3D as well, appearing in the form
of the Bowling Bombs. Thrown like grenades, once these projectiles land on the
ground they roll for a distance, homing in slightly on any enemies in their
path, meaning that trick-shots around corners are not just possible but highly
encouraged. As with the best Duke 3D derivatives, there’s a lot of
environmental interaction and a lot of breakable objects, made all the more
clear when you start playing around with things that go boom.
One other divergence from Duke Nukem standards is
the absence of crude sexist humor. Everything I’ve seen so far seems relatively
innocuous, with protagonist Shelly “Bombshell” Harrison frequently cracking
wise, but not particularly at the expense of anyone beyond the expendable
cyborg goons that you’re chewing through. In the official art, she’s even
wearing practical-looking gear, including a chunky, flat breastplate that
actually looks like real armor that might stop bullets. A significant
improvement over her wonky design in Bombshell itself.
The current version of the game in early access is
technically not a shareware-type release, but rather a standalone handful of
levels designed for preview purposes, capped off with a boss fight. A glorified
demo, then. While they will be updating the early access build with some new
features and content over time, it won’t grow that much until the full game is
released in an estimated six months. The final product will include full
mapping and modding tools, and Steam Workshop support from day one, or so
Voidpoint promise, and the price won’t be going up after release.
Ion Maiden is out on Steam Early Access now for
£14/$18, and the final game is planned to release DRM-free via GOG as well.
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