Ion Fury is a very good shooter, but its launch has been something else entirely. Just after its release earlier this month, transphobic and sexist comments made by a couple of developers in the Ion Fury Discord were discovered and shared publicly. Developer Voidpoint initially tried to defend the comments as being taken out of context, but then homophobic language was found within the game itself: The use of the word "Fagbag," and an in-game item labeled "Ogay," apparently a play on "Olay."

Following that, Voidpoint and publisher 3D Realms issued statements apologizing for the behavior and content: 3D Realms told Eurogamer that the company "has taken pride empowering marginalized groups, as evident by our strong female protagonist Shelly 'Bombshell' Harrison and the makeup of our team," and that going forward, all contracts with developers "will include terms which would allow us to sever relationships if a contractor does not abide by our zero-tolerance policy for hate speech."

Voidpoint's apology was more full-throated: "We recognize these statements are insensitive, unacceptable, and counterproductive to causes of equality. We unequivocally apologize both for these comments and language as well as for any pain they have caused the gaming community, particularly women and members of the LGBTQ community. We take full responsibility for any damage that has been done to the relationships we've worked so hard to build," it said.

"Moving forward, Voidpoint will institute a zero-tolerance policy for this type of language and all employees and contractors will undergo mandatory sensitivity training. As part of our efforts to contribute to the work that must be done to further support these communities, we are donating $10,000 from Ion Fury's release day proceeds to The Trevor Project. We are also patching Ion Fury ASAP to remove all unacceptable language."

Not everyone saw this as a fair outcome. Review bombs came flooding into Steam, simultaneously praising the game and castigating the developers for responding to criticism and engaging in "censorship." The numbers weren't massive—Ion Fury isn't Metro Exodus—but it was enough to pull recent user reviews on Steam to "mixed," although overall it remains at "mostly positive."

The review bomb has had the desired effect, however, as this morning Voidpoint and 3D Realms issued a joint statement saying that the "Ogay" item will not be removed after all.

"We’ve caused a recent controversy suggesting Ion Fury game content was to be censored. We will absolutely NOT be censoring Ion Fury or any of our other games, now or in the future, including but not limited to by removing gags such as gaming’s most controversial facial wash," the Steam update says.

"We do not support censorship of creative works of any kind and regret our initial decision to alter a sprite in the game instead of trusting our instincts. 3D Realms and Voidpoint stand together on this matter."

The statement said nothing about the status of the promised donation to The Trevor Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to suicide prevention among LGBTQ+ youth, but Voidpoint said on Twitter that it is "absolutely still donating." The studio also said that it sees no incongruity between donating to an LGBTQ+ charity while refusing to remove homophobic content from Ion Fury.

In subsequent tweets, the studio said that the "fagbag" term used in the game was "a legitimate error" by a developer who lives in a non-English-speaking country, and will be removed (it is unclear what "fagbag" could possibly mean in another country). It also said that "Ogay" is not homophobic, and implied that it was forced to walk back its promise to remove the content after a PR firm tinkered with its initial apology.

Publisher 3D Realms has also issued a statement indicating that it stands behind Voidpoint's new position. It acknowledged that the joke was made at the expense of the LGBTQ+ community and said that such things will not be tolerated in the future—unless, apparently, enough people think it's funny and cool.

"We at 3D Realms spoke with Voidpoint today and they reaffirmed their commitment to honoring their original statement, including the donation to The Trevor Project and sensitivity training. However, the soap bottle will not be removed," it said. "The use of the word “f*gbag” in an area that was inaccessible without hacking the game, and was added by one developer without approval from anyone else, was removed a few days ago. We once again apologize for this text as it does not reflect the values of 3D Realms or Voidpoint."

"Jokes at the expense of marginalized communities will not be present in future games published by 3D Realms. However, a portion of our community made it loud and clear they felt removing 'Ogay' was censorship and should be protected by free speech. Voidpoint wanted to listen and we respected this decision."

Ion Maiden, the retro shooter and Duke Nukem 3D homage, has undergone a name change. Your dad's favourite metal band took issue with the name, and since there's nothing more metal than litigation, Iron Maiden filed a lawsuit. So now it's Ion Fury, which really isn't any worse.

Accompanying the name change is the release date, along with a trailer you can watch below. Ion Fury will let you brutalise cyber-cultists on August 15. 

I've not even managed to start Amid Evil yet, so I know I should hold off on adding another '90s throwback onto the pile, but I won't. These time machines, along with Doom, are what's keeping my love of FPS romps alive these days—I always want more. 

If you really want to be transported back a couple of decades, you can also grab the Iron Fury Big Box. It's a proper box, not on the DVD-shaped ones we ended up with, containing a Bowling Bomb flash drive with the game and official soundtrack, stickers, a poster, a key card and a booklet detailing the making of the game. You can buy it on the Ion Fury site. 

We've been eagerly awaiting Ion Maiden, the retro shooter made in Duke Nukem 3D's old Build Engine, for over a year now. While the release of Amid Evil did a little to scratch that itch, its Heretic-style shooting is a little different in style to what we've seen of Ion Maiden. Its "preview campaign" available in Early Access is much closer to Duke Nukem in tone and level layout, even down to the protagonist having cheesy catchphrases.

Now Voidpoint and 3D Realms are teasing something Ion Maiden-related on Twitter, saying there's an announcement coming and "You don't want to miss this!" Yes, this is probably an announcement for an announcement but we're pretty hyped for this game, OK? Whether it's a release date (it is "almost done" according to Frederik Schreiber, VP of 3D Realms) or an agreement being reached with the band Iron Maiden in the legal dispute over its name, we'll just have to wait and see.

Ion Maiden is a 2018 first-person shooter indebted to the genre classics of the '90s. Iron Maiden is a British heavy metal band best known for its 1982 album The Number of the Beast. You can probably see where this is going: the names attached to these two different things are similar, and feathers have been ruffled.

That's according to a story in Blabbermouth, which reports that the holding company for Iron Maiden has filed a trademark infringement lawsuit to the tune of $2 million against 3D Realms, the publisher of Ion Maiden. "Defendant’s Ion Maiden name is nearly identical to the Iron Maiden trademark in appearance, sound and overall commercial impression," the lawsuit reads. It characterises the infringement as "incredibly blatant" and as a "virtually identical imitation".

Another of the lawsuit's claims, according to a copy obtained by Blabbermouth, is that Ion Maiden's protagonist, Shelly Harrison, is itself a copy of the name of Steve Harris, one of Iron Maiden's founding members. It also claims that Ion Maiden has the same "look and feel" as the Iron Maiden smartphone game Legacy of The Beast, which released in 2016.

In addition to the $2 million in damages, the lawsuit also wants 3D Realms to cease using the name, and to hand over ownership of the URL ionmaiden.com. Whatever ends up happening, it's a shame that two of the world's greatest things — British heavy metal and Build engine FPS games — can't just get along.

Ion Maiden is one of our most-anticipated shooters of 2019, due for completion in Q2. Today a surprise update added its long-awaited second chapter, "Heskel's House of Horrors," a sprawling mansion map.

No patch notes were paired with the announcement, but 3D Realms says it includes "tons of new features and additions." When I booted it up for a moment today, I almost immediately picked up one of the game's new weapons, a red energy crossbow. 

The trailer also reveals a minigun, and shows off the new, innovative alt-fire mode functionality. Make sure you go into Ion Maiden's mouse settings (not keyboard bindings) to assign an alt fire mode button. You'll want this for the new crossbow, which can be charged for a few seconds to fire off a huge stream of red bolts.

Last year Alex Wiltshire praised Ion Maiden's expansive Build Engine maps, which are dense with secrets and objects. "The key pleasure for me is its weapons' sense of connection. In conceptual terms, they're nothing special: a six-shooter, a shotgun, an SMG and the Bowling Bomb, a grenade that rolls along the ground," Alex wrote in April 2018. "It's the way they enact instantaneous cause and effect, with the shot hitting the enemy and sending blood flying without a pause. Enemies in early FPSes tended to have only two states, alive and dead. In contrast, today's rich animation and ragdoll physics allow a third state to exist in between as enemies clutch their wounds, flinch and fall. It enhances the realism but it also makes you constantly second-guess your shots."

Ion Maiden remains in Early Access on Steam at $20.

The last few years have been good to the FPS. Even as Battle Royale games have erupted onto the scene by the dozen, we've still had stuff like Overwatch, Rainbow Six Siege, Doom (2016), Dusk, Arma 3, Deep Rock Galactic, and Insurgency 2 that've kept the singleplayer and multiplayer fires burning bright.

2019 looks to be no different, with a mixture of exciting sequels and original shooters already calendar-confirmed. Here's some the best stuff slated for this year.

For a more comprehensive list of everything coming this year, check out the PC games of 2019. 

GTFO

Developer: 10 Chambers Collective  | Release date: Spring 2019 | Link: Steam 

The paranoia of Aliens mixed with the four-player cooperation of Payday. Although the studio says GTFO will make use of an Expedition Director that "throws players into new challenging situations in every play session," this isn't a hand-holding, casual descendent of Left 4 Dead, but possibly the most hardcore take on the genre we've seen, an FPS that relies as much on trigger discipline and coordinated stealthy movement through its pitch-black caverns as it does mowing down mobs of strange horrors.

Aside from sparse medkits, there's no health regeneration. Ammo is scarce. If you die, you don't respawn at checkpoints. Computer consoles scattered across maps aren't one-button devices, but more simulated terminals that you have to type commands into on your keyboard. One of the monsters, based on the first gameplay footage, seems to be composed of actual darkness—faint, humanoid shadows that are only visible as silhouettes in your flashlight. Good luck out there. 

Due Process

Developer: Giant Enemy Crab | Release date: Alpha "coming soon" | Link: Steam 

Breach-and-clear gameplay inside procedurally generated—but "hand-curated"—levels. This indie FPS has spent a lot of time simmering since we initially played it in 2014, but the retro, Time Crisis-inspired art it's sporting after pairing up with publisher Annapurna Interactive looks great. Expect a lower-fi Rainbow Six. 

Doom Eternal 

Developer: id Software | Release date: TBA | Link: Bethesda.net 

Maybe the most interesting addition to this Doom sequel is the new, optional Invasion mode, where your otherwise singleplayer campaign can be breached by another human, who adds a new dimension by taking the role of one demon at a time. SnapMap, meanwhile, is being cut, but there will be more, to-be-announced multiplayer stuff, this time developed by id itself. Crucially, Mick Gordon is back to do the soundtrack.

Quake Champions 

Developer: id Software | Release date: TBA | Link: Bethesda.net

After entering Early Access in August 2017, Bethesda's arena multiplayer FPS will probably emerge from Early Access in 2019, if we had to guess. In December 2018 the FPS swapped to a Battle Pass model from its previous loot box system and added CTF.

MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries 

Developer: Piranha Games | Release date: September 10, 2019 | Link: mw5mercs.com

17 years since the PC has been graced by a singleplayer, first-person BattleTech game, Mercenaries is in the hands of Canadian dev Piranha Games, which has spent the last several years building up the multiplayer MechWarrior Online. Four-player co-op, with the option of using AI lancemates instead, is one of the big appeals here, along with a new building destructibility system and some handsome new environments.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood 

Developer: MachineGames | Release date: TBA

The third chapter in MachineGames' trilogy-so-far focuses on B.J. Blazkowicz's twin daughters, who will be playable in co-op across the campaign. We don't know much yet other than it's set in 1980, about two decades after The New Colossus kicked off "the second American Revolution." It'll be interesting to see which parts of the world (or solar system?) Youngblood takes us to, but the initial E3 teaser didn't reveal anything definitive.

Mavericks Proving Grounds

At this point the biggest battle royale games are as established as Dota 2 and League of Legends. But if I had to pick a game that has a chance of stealing millions of players from Fortnite and PUBG on PC, it'd be Mavericks.

The potential differentiator: Mavericks isn't built on Unreal 4, but a pile of new tech that promises 1,000-player capacity, dynamic weather, "comprehensive" destructibility, wildlife, and details like trackable, persistent player footprints and shell casings across a 16x16km map. Is your Star Citizen Skepticism tingling yet?

The prototype we played in March only featured five players, but "even at this early state it's refreshing to see some elements coming to a battle royale game that might allow for new tactics and styles of play," Chris wrote then. The technical hurdles PUBG has faced in its second year have reinforced the importance of rock-solid technology sitting underneath battle royale games, and SpatialOS is a platform all about making a huge number of concurrent players possible.

Ion Maiden

Developer: 3D Realms | Release date: Q2 2019 | Link: Steam  

The first chapter of this neo-retro gem is already available, but the rest can't come soon enough. What's brilliant about Ion Maiden is the way it takes the best aspects of the ancient Build Engine it's built in, but applies modern ideas in weapon design and level layouts. The result is an FPS with some of the best ingredients of early '90s shooters (gorgeous sprite art, high-acceleration movement, secrets aplenty) without many of the rough edges from that era. Maybe the best example of this is the nuanced behavior of the Bowling Bomb, Ion Maiden's rolling grenade that detonates on impact with enemies, but rebounds dynamically off surfaces and won't explode if it doesn't connect with a bad guy. 

Metro Exodus

Developer: 4A Games | Release date: February 15 | Link: Steam

The underground underdog Artyom is back, and this time he’s got a train. Instead of claustrophobic, dimly lit subterranean tunnels (although we bet there will be at least a few), Artyom and his sniper rifle-wielding wife Ana will travel along the Russian railways in search of something resembling home. Of course, there’s still plenty of mutants, mutated wildlife, and various brands of cults and neo-nazis standing in your way.

Thankfully, Metro Exodus is giving you a considerably wider berth when it comes to tackling foes. The open railroad gives way to more open environments to explore, like a forest campground full of bandits who end up revealing themselves as the surviving campers who were sheltered by their teacher as kids. Sneak around far enough and you’ll learn they’ve split up into distinctive sub-groups who’ve all decided to implement their teacher’s lessons in, uh, differing styles. Metro’s bullet-scrounging economy has also been replaced with a crafting system that uses scrap you’ll find if you explore enough, perhaps keeping Metro grounded in its roots as a tense, stealthy shooter.

Rage 2

Developer: Avalanche Games  | Release date: May 14 | Link: Bethesda.net

Take the hyperkinetic shooting of id’s original 2011 game, throw in a bunch of fancier murdering tools, and give every third wastelander a pink mohawk, and you’ve got Rage 2. We haven’t seen much in the way of plot, but what does that matter when you’re gib-ifying cannibals with a razor sharp boomerang?

Despite the Burning Man chic here and there, Rage 2 seems to be taking some clear notes from Doom, of all things, giving you a multitude of powers to close in on certain kills so you can ultimately flex your damage and health-boosting Overcharge mode. Leap into the air and stomp on any baddie within a wide radius, or force push them into a wall so hard they liquefy. No word yet on how the vehicle combat is shaking up, but it’s teased heavily enough in trailers.

Dying Light 2

Developer: Techland | Release date: 2019 | Link: DyingLightGame.com

One of 2019’s most anticipated FPSes might be a little light on the S, but with more factions of humans than zombies to deal with, we’re sure you’ll get plenty of chances to drop some street warriors from afar. As is customary for game franchises, this second installment is bigger in just about every way imaginable: More weapons, more things to parkour over and under, and Chris Avellone (Fallout: New Vegas, Torment: Tides of Numenara, Prey) writing the thing to make it all mean something to players.

Avellone’s “modern Dark Ages” take on the zombie apocalypse leaves plenty of room for players to leave a footprint on the unnamed European city. A dispute over control of the water pipes means you can side with the Judge Dredd wannabes who will bring order to the streets but hang offenders if they so much as sneeze wrong, or side with the bandits currently holding access to the water, which means things are more “free,” but ultimately at a cost to the weak and infirm. Lead designer Tymon Smektla says there will be plenty of moments where there isn’t a binary good vs. evil choice, so hopefully we’re flexing more than our legs. If you need more info to tide you over, check out everything we know about Dying Light 2.

Aftercharge 

Developer: Chainsawesome Games | Release date: January 10 | Link: Steam

It’s like a more cartoony and bombastic take on Splinter Cell’s spies vs. mercs mode. Three invisible robots attempt to destroy six glowing “extractors” around a map while three invincible enforcers coordinate their overwhelming firepower to defend them, with each side able to pick from a pool of different classes. It might sound a little lopsided in favor of the defenders, but there’s a ton of powers at your disposal that can instantly shake things up, like electrified tripwires, invisibility-disrupting grenades, and good old fashioned bubble shields. Factor in that there’s zero cooldown on your abilities and you’ve got some maniacally quick matches.

Far Cry: New Dawn 

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal | Release date: February 15 | Link: Far-Cry.Ubisoft.com

Someone at Ubisoft looked at Rage 2 and said “not pink enough.” It’s cool to see the post-apocalypse looking so fresh, even if it does mean that Far Cry 5 villain Joseph Seed was indirectly right about the end of the world. You’ll still be doing the typical Far Cry things in a reformed Hope County, but combat takes on a much scrappier quality to it. Instead of modding pristine weapons, you’ll scrounge up some Mad Max-lookin’ machinery held together by wire and duct tape, like a crossbow made from motorcycle parts which shoots buzzsaw blades.

New Dawn is also following Assassin’s Creed’s lead when it comes to making everything a level-based RPG, including your own character, weapons, and even enemies. Thankfully, you’ll have some new and returning allies to keep fights fair, but don’t expect the goodest boy Boomer to return. 17 years between the games means he’s definitely dead, says creative director Jean-Sebastien Decant.

Halo Infinite 

Developer: 343 Industries | Release date: TBA | Link: Xbox.com

It’s definitely Halo 6, it’s definitely Master Chief’s next tale, and the jolly green Spartan is supposed to have a new look from art director Nicolas Bouvier, powered by the brand new Slipstream engine, which has been optimized for PC. We still don’t know much in the way of plot, but Halo 5 set up a rampant Cortana as an inevitable antagonist, Halo Wars 2 will factor in somehow, and 343 are likely finishing its “Reclaimer” trilogy with this installment.

By way of gameplay, you can of course expect multiplayer, both splitscreen and online, Spartan customization, but probably no battle royale mode. "I'll tell you right now, the only 'BR' we're really interested in is 'Battle Rifle'," 343 Industries lead writer Jeff Easterling said. We salute your dad joke, sir. 

Here’s everything else we know about Halo Infinite.

Atomic Heart 

Developer: Mundfish | Release date: 2019 | Link: Steam

It certainly gives off a BioShock-meets-Metro vibe, but developers Mundfish say they’re far more inspired by the pulpy science fiction of their youths in the USSR, like authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.

You’re a secret agent in an alternate universe Soviet Russia, filled with crazy Nier-like robots, zombies, and some seriously weird experiments gone amok. There’s mysteries to solve at Plant 3826, as well as across the rest of Russia, which Mundfish says is connected via railways. It’s not clear if it’s one big open world or a bunch of connected hubs you’ll have to load into, but suffice it to say you’ll be shooting and clobbering through a lot of it in grisly fashion. Mundfish says that “everything on your path,” be it kitchen cutlery or robot parts, can be assembled into a weapon or mod of some sort.

Blood Remastered 

Developer: Nightdive Studios | Release date: TBA

Doom might be comfortable with updating its look, but Blood Remastered seems to prefer it old school, and we’re getting it from the same team that brought us remasters of Turok and the upcoming System Shock. The original’s classic shooting evidently holds up well enough, so Nightdive is focusing on a new coat of paint, a more compatible engine, updated audio, and support for contemporary networks like Steamworks and GOG Galaxy.

If you never ended up getting your hands on the original (fair, since it’s old enough to vote), Blood tells the story of Caleb, an undead 19th-century gunslinger looking for revenge against a dark god known as Tchernobog. True to its name, there’s lots of squishy ways to turn monsters into red pools, like the pitchfork, a floating orb that bores into enemy’s skulls, and an aerosol can flamethrower. 

The Outer Worlds 

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment | Release date: 2019 | Link: Steam

2018’s award for Most Blatant Dig goes to “the original creators of Fallout,” which is how Obsidian introduced all of us to The Outer Worlds, and that confidence seems to shine through in this FPS/RPG. You’re a spaceship driver, frozen in cryostasis for 70 years until a kindly mad scientist thaws you out, asking you to help rescue other frozen travelers. True to Obsidian fashion, you can shirk traditional storytelling and just turn him in to the law, or go out on your lonesome, where you can engage in plenty of shooting with “science weapons,” chatting, and sneaking.

The worlds themselves aren’t fully open. You’ll be exploring them in a slightly more modular fashion that Obsidian told Kotaku compares to their work on KOTOR II. Wes compared it to No Man’s Sky after seeing it in action. Between that and a long list of character traits to choose from or develop (you can take “flaws,” like a fear of robots, but you’ll gain an extra perk point immediately), we’re sure we’ll find plenty of ways to push the limits of outer space. Here’s everything else we know.

Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass 

Developer: Croteam | Release date: TBA | Link: Steam

At 18 years old, we’re not sure if Serious Sam is having a midlife crisis, but he definitely went out and got himself a motorcycle in the meantime. It’s unclear how much he’ll ride it, but the levels he’s blasting his way through have gotten much, much bigger, to the point where they can evidently hold entire armies of beheaded kamikazes. Alen Ladavac, Croteam’s chief technology officer, says the new “Legion System” will allow for hundreds of thousands of enemies in a single scene.

“Think Lord of the Rings, with you playing as Sam in the thick of it, wielding a minigun. And no beards,” said Ladavac. Shotgun-wielding dwarfs aside, you can expect a classic Serious Sam tale of fighting against the invading Mental, but with plenty of fellow badasses at your side.

Ion Maiden is a brand new first-person shooter about a former Global Defense Force recruit on a mission to murder an evil transhumanist mastermind. Which is pretty cool, but what's cooler is that it's built using the Duke Nukem 3D's Build engine — an engine going on 22 years of age. It's in Early Access at the moment, but according to the Steam reviews so far it's very good.

The game is headed to consoles next year through a collaboration between Ion Maiden publisher 3D Realms and 1C Entertainment, but buried in an email announcing these plans is another, more interesting fact: The companies are also working together on "a new unannounced FPS based on the original Quake engine".

That's all the information that's available: there's no name and no release window, but the prospect of a brand new game in id Software's pioneering engine is very exciting indeed. Interestingly, the last game to use the original Quake engine was the little-known 2005 top-down schump Silver Wings. But the engine also powered better-known games such as Hexen II, Malice and X-Men: The Ravages of the Apocalypse.

To refresh your memory, here's the original Quake trailer, come to visit us from 1996:

Update: The post originally said that "the team behind Ion Maiden" is working on the Quake-based project. Ion Maiden developer Voidpoint clarified that it is not involved in the new game, however. The partnership is between 1C and Ion Maiden publisher 3D Realms—and no, the irony of 3D Realms, famed for being the company behind the Build engine, making a new game in the Quake engine is not lost on us. 

Ion Maiden is the new game from 3D Realms being made in the same engine as Duke Nukem 3D, built to play like a first-person shooter from the 1990s. Its so old school its artwork, seen above, is a reference to the box art for the PlayStation edition of Doom. 

You may remember Ion Maiden's protagonist from a previous game, Interceptor Entertainment's top-down ARPG Bombshell, which Ion Maiden is a prequel to (not that you need to have played it first). She's got a history that goes back further than that, however. At one point, Shelly 'Bombshell' Harrison was almost an NPC in Duke Nukem Forever.

She'd been conceived as the star of her own game back in 1997, inspired by Barb Wire (both the Pamela Anderson movie and the comic published by Dark Horse). When that game's creators left 3D Realms the decision was made to have Bombshell instead debut in Duke Nukem Forever, and then get her own spin-off. Early concept art from this period shows a version of the character very much like the 'bad girl' comics popular in the era, like someone straight out of Danger Girl. (Art by Dan Panosian and Paul Richards.)

In 2003, with Duke Nukem Forever still years away, Feng Zhu was hired to redesign the character with a slightly more practical look. But none of these versions of the character would be used in the final game, from which she was completely absent—a blessing in disguise, really.

It wasn't until 2015 that Bombshell was revived for her own game. While those early concepts had her as essentially a sexed-up female version of Duke Nukem, then as an EDF soldier, the next redesign transformed her into a bomb disposal expert—hence the nickname. This design kept the bionic arm that had been part of some of the early concept art, but not much else.

This brings us to 2018 and Ion Maiden, which details Bombshell's early career working for the Global Defence Force, building up to the 'Washington Incident' and the loss of her arm. Here, her look is much more practical, complete with armor. She even wears a helmet sometimes. (Art by Arturo Pahua.)

Finally, as a bonus these facial close-ups by Isabel Alonso, which were repurposed from concept art to become in-game health portrait expressions in the classic Wolfenstein 3D style. 

Ion Maiden's 'preview campaign' is currently available in Early Access, giving you a Shareware-size taste of the finished product.

Good news and bad news for fans of classic first-person shooters. The good news is that players who've bought the Early Access version of Ion Maiden, the retro shooter being made in the same engine as Duke Nukem 3D, will gain access to a forthcoming multiplayer beta. Developers Voidpoint are calling the multiplayer "classic" and "fast-paced" though what specific modes it will have has not been announced. That brings us to the bad news—Ion Maiden's launch has been delayed to 2019.

You can try Ion Maiden's single-player in the Early Access version, both Queen of the Hill mode and a shareware-style chunk of its campaign. Alex Wiltshire thoroughly enjoyed it, saying, "Ion Maiden's scale is ridiculous, with everything too wide and too tall, but that's totally fine because of your equally ridiculous run speed and jump height. You don't need special abilities to traverse the world, not even a sprint meter, because you can just run everywhere. Ion Maiden has the old school's vital kineticism, a sense of speed that more earthbound modern shooters has forgotten. I'm not saying that making everything fast is ideal in all cases, but when environments are this enormous zooming through them feels great."

Limited copies of a collector's edition are available, including a copy of the game on a USB shaped like a 3.5-inch floppy disk. You can get the digital version on Steam.

Is it the run speed? The clarity of its blocky, too-big architecture? Is it the immediacy of the guns, which go BANG without ceremony and send bodies flying? Is it the anything-could-happen sensation every time you turn a corner? The spent shells, bloody footprints and debris you leave behind after every encounter?

For those of a certain generation, playing Ion Maiden is like coming home. I spent the first half of the 1990s experiencing the flowering of the first-person shooter, from Wolfenstein 3D to Doom and then, my god, to Duke Nukem 3D. I progressed from "I'm seeing what it's like to shoot Nazis through my own eyes!" to "It's like being there and I'm terrified!" to "I'm playing the dumbest movie in the world and I get to flush the toilets!"

While Doom definitely did it best, I still have a place in my heart for Duke 3D's eye for mundane detail and the dynamic nature of its levels. Playing Ion Maiden takes me right back. Now in Early Access, it features a short demo campaign which will be joined by a full campaign and multiplayer in the final release, and it's the first commercial game to use Duke Nukem's Build engine—by way of enhanced source port EDuke32—in 19 long years. Since World War II GI, in fact. It's fascinating to see its best elements adapted and enhanced for the modern age. 

The best Build levels were all about realism, offices and theaters and city streets, and they were also about smashing them up, sending buildings crashing to the ground and blowing up walls. That's exactly what Ion Maiden does too, maintaining Build's classic crude geometry but featuring more of it than Duke 3D ever could. The first large area of the game is a wide Washington DC street, with crashed cars and side streets blocked by collapsed high rises. At the end is a subway entrance, and along one side are shops which blow open when you venture near, disgorging gun-wielding terrorists.

It's a pleasure to play a game that changes its space so much as you run through it, a reminder of how static level design is today. When your world is made of massive flat planes rather than intricately modeled 3D detail, it's a lot more simple to rip a hole through a wall and tell you that's where you're going next, and that means that every time you press a big button or simply enter a new hallway you can expect things to go wild.

But while the levels are simple in form, they're filled with stuff. Secrets for a start, accessed through air vents and under water, and also material details. Offices feature rows of desks with screens you can turn off and on. The light switches work, and you can push office chairs around. Lots of things are destructible, like glass and fire extinguishers, and you can kick the heads of gibbed enemies around.

Duke 3D was pretty much built on the principle that if something exists you should be able to mess with it, and that's the same for Ion Maiden. The result is a far cry from the non-interactive nature of most modern shooter level design, which might have a handful of physics-enabled objects but few crafted details to play around with. You feel a flash of connection with a game's designers when you realize they foresaw that you'd want to hit an office chair with a nightstick to push it across the room, and that they thought to make it visibly damaged before being completely destroyed.

And then there's the size of the levels. Ion Maiden's scale is ridiculous, with everything too wide and too tall, but that's totally fine because of your equally ridiculous run speed and jump height. You don't need special abilities to traverse the world, not even a sprint meter, because you can just run everywhere. Ion Maiden has the old school's vital kineticism, a sense of speed that more earthbound modern shooters has forgotten. I'm not saying that making everything fast is ideal in all cases, but when environments are this enormous zooming through them feels great.

But the key pleasure for me is its weapons' sense of connection. In conceptual terms, they're nothing special: a six-shooter, a shotgun, an SMG and the Bowling Bomb, a grenade that rolls along the ground. But in the hands they're tools for the classic FPS power fantasy. It's the way they enact instantaneous cause and effect, with the shot hitting the enemy and sending blood flying without a pause. Enemies in early FPSes tended to have only two states, alive and dead. In contrast, today's rich animation and ragdoll physics allow a third state to exist in between as enemies clutch their wounds, flinch and fall. It enhances the realism but it also makes you constantly second-guess your shots.

In Ion Maiden there's refreshing certainty to your actions, born of a simpler and less nuanced age. To underline that your character, Shelly 'Bombshell' Harrison, occasionally shouts catchphrases like, "Clean up on aisle your ass!"

Ion Maiden has a strange background. It's a prequel to developer Interceptor Entertainment's little-loved 2016 top-down shooter Bombshell, which featured the same star, its roots in a 'Digital Retro' extra promised for the Digital Deluxe release of Bombshell. Then Interceptor went bankrupt, or restructured, or something (it's hard to tell, but they were re-established as Slipgate Studios), and Ion Maiden was born, with greater ambitions and a name designed to distance itself from its origin.

And, like Duke Nukem 3D, it's published by 3D Realms, who published Bombshell, too. But it's only 3D Realms by name, logo and IP: after a decade or so of the doldrums followed by legal battles with Take-Two and Gearbox around Duke Nukem Forever, 3D Realms was bought by a Danish holding company called SDN Invest, owned by one of the backers of, as it happens, Interceptor Entertainment. Uh, yeah. Anyway, the point is, all this weird wrangling has in Ion Maiden's case allowed a bunch of Build modders to release a commercial game. And that is good.

Today, the Doom scene continues to flourish with new engine features, maps and conversions, from The Adventures of Square to Brutal Doom, so it's only fair the spirit of Duke Nukem 3D should be raised as well. I'll always love Doom more for its tighter and more elegant nature, but it's a trip to experience Build's dumb, dynamic, flashy and clever charms once again.

Ion Maiden is available on Steam.