Ion Fury: Aftershock Review

I was pretty much expecting this to be more Ion Fury and I got just that there are some annoying things about it here and there but as a whole it's the same enjoyable gameplay. Playing this really does amaze me that the Build Engine can still be pushed this far.

If you played the base game, you know what to expect. Lots of guns, keycard hunts with mazelike levels, fast movement and lots of enemies. Considering this is following expansion logic from yester year, the game will expect you to play the base game so it expects the player to know how the weapons work and throws in multiple high level enemies at the player pretty much the moment you start up the game. It also introduces new enemies not in the base game either. There also are some new vehicle sections introduced in Aftershock.

You pretty much know the DLC ain't kidding around when it spawns in a Skinjob, as soon as you get decently into the first level but unlike a lot of the expansions of yester year, Shelly is given lots of ammo and good amount of new weapons to deal with the increased enemy waves like Disperser getting Cluster and Gas Bombs as well the Homewrecker which is Ion Fury's equivilant to the BFG. You get a good amount of ammo for those as well as other guns so it never feels like you are underpowered while playing.

There are some annoying quirks with this like for example when running around in a level and a Wendigo, Deacon or a Skinjob just pops up in your line of sight and since your health when getting hit by them when at 100 health and 200 armour will go down to 20 in a couple of hits just makes it seems like the devs just want you to abuse that quick save button.

The new enemies are mostly just reskins and different weapon variants of already existing enemies but the GDF troopers are new even if they can be beaten with the Penetrator.

The biggest new addition is the vehicle sections and I'm mixed on these that racing section was awful and felt out of place in a game like this since some of the turns feel too tight to consistently pull off and the jump physics feel too unreliable to consistently make the gaps without falling to my death.

The following vehicle section after is a fascinating thought experiment of, "what if Half Life 2 was done on the Build Engine?" It doesn't have the Gravity Gun, at the same time, it has a similar section very reimiscent of Highway 17, where the player drives across really long and expansive roads, makes pit stops to activate a part of the level to continue onwards except there is now keycard hunts. It is amazing that the Build Engine is capable of this even if this part of Ion Fury didn't have nearly as much as the narrative foreshadowing and the sense of adventure Highway 17 did. Still, I commend the devs for pulling this off.

Afterwards, the game also takes another cue from HL2 with how you see Nova Prospect or in Ion Fury's case a massive Valcano and you will eventual fight Heskel there and everything from that vantage point of seeing the valcano onwards is slowly making your way there. It's great stuff since I have a soft spot for stuff like this.

The only major negative is that the final boss while not as insufferably designed as the base game still suffers from that 90s boomer shooter boss fight problem of you just circle strafing with your strongest weapon and then he dies, you might accidentally fall into a hole with lava but after a few minutes, he should be beaten unless you are playing on higher difficulties.

Overall, Aftershock is probably if not the greatest boomer shooter expansion I have played, it does a good job at adding in new ideas and it's not difficult for the sake of difficult like many of these expansions tend to be.