Neo Retro Shooters - The intricacies of the renaissance of the "genre" known for gibs, quips and labyrinths.

[Sparky Lurker]

I checked and the closest thread we have on this topic is based on a youtuber personal tastes, and that is just silly.
At this point we all know the drill.
-Shooters evolved to military multiplayer focused ones.
-7th game generation and Duke Nukem Forever happens and the "genre" is laid to rest.
-Doom 2016 happens and the interest renewed.
-Dusk kicks off everything in 2018 and now everyone and their mothers got out of their wads and started doing Neo Retro Shooters.
Anyway I got a certain interest on the "genre" on 2020, but my interest got immediately deflated after 90% of the alternatives were stuck on Early Access, and I have allergies to Early Access games.
Fast forward 3 years later Warhammer 40K and even the kid from that 90's internet simulation game are getting Neo Retro Shooters.
One of the most noticeable things is that while Dusk kicked off the renaissance of this "genre" with a a retro style, you could separate these games in at least 3 categories:
-Neo Boomer Shooters inspired by the likes of Doom, Quake and the Build trinity.
-Retro Stealth Shooters, an actual hybrid taking notes from consol games like Goldeneye 007
and TimeSplitters and PC games like Deus Ex and Thief.
-Arena/Horde Shooters inspired by the likes of Serious Sam and Painkiller.
Starting with Neo Boomer Shooters, I decided to try a few them and made this start pack list that I took 1 minute to think off, it is based on theme variety and the fact that doesn't introduce too many elements straying off from its roots:

-Amid Evil is like Heretic meets Quake, but it isn't an actual chore to play (a.k.a. Hexen 2).
-We had aliens on LA, gothic pop culture galore and Eastern Asian stereotypes on Build engine, so why not a femme fatale on a cyberpunk setting, here is where Ion Fury comes into play.
-Prodeus is basically Doom 2016 lost levels, but actually runs on my potato PC.
-Yeah I picked HROT instead of Dusk because I am contrarian, but mostly because of the aesthetics, it is very Quake-like just on a soviet setting, not much can go wrong here.
After playing these you should either go in one of these 2 directions:
-Go after the more fast-paced ones like Turbo Overkill and Postal Brain Damaged and put your skills to the test.

-Try more experimental ones that brings more elements on the table and mixes genres: Hedon with Immersive Sims and Nightmare Reaper with Roguelites.

After this let's talk about the Retro Stealth Shooters, 2 of the more popular ones being the trippy Cruelty Squad and the nostalgic Agent 64 demo that helped renewing the interest in this category of games:

Other major examples are the obvious homage TimeShifters and the soon to be released survival horror Blood West:

There is also a few upcoming Retro Stealth Shooters that piqued the interest of fans of the genre, like the overhyped Gloomwood and the more obscure ones like Deep State and Peripeteia:

Finally let's cap off with Arena/Horde Shooters, while I am not a fan of this category of games it deserves at least a mention, the one that overshadows them all called Ultrakill, that is basically a hybrid of genres, and more traditional ones like illWill, Impaler and Devil Daggers

As of now there is dozens and dozens of upcoming Neo Retro Shooters, I would love to talk about them and hype them, but after Graven and Wrath : Aeon of Ruin I am now convinced that Neo Retro Shooter devs are the second most laziest game devs losing only to Quirky Indie RPG ones.
There have been a speculation about the crash of the Neo Retro Shooter market since 2021, but how a market can crash if it still on Early Access? Although the lukewarm reception of a few releases this year (Dread Templar and Boltgun) can hint a certain fatigue from the "genre" kicking earlier than usual.

 

[HyperboreanRightsActivist]

I'm tired of hearing about boomer shooters and earthbound clones. Total gen z death

I miss the golden age of immersive sims and CRPG's

 

[Cougar Pump]

I'm unsure who the audience is for these games, really. If you're an oldfag shooter enjoyer the O.G. games are still there, with modern sourceports and active communities, and featuring near-infinite modding potential with almost unlimited content to keep you going. Modern spins on the theme feel, I dunno quite how to put it, cheap? Uncessary?

 

[Sparky Lurker]

immersive sims

Here is your immersion bro

 

[BirdUp]

Here is your immersion bro

fuck you, cruelty squad is a good game but not a boomer shooter

 

[Jarolleon]

Boltgun was pretty good, too bad there weren't also Orks in it.

 

[Sparky Lurker]

fuck you, cruelty squad is a good game but not a boomer shooter

Steam tastes and publishers overlapped and mixed everything into a blender, I can see a clear difference between the audiences of Boomer Shooters and Immersive Sims, but I already mentioned Hedon and Graven in this thread, here is two more upcoming examples that also captivated Boomer Shooters addicts:

 

[Beautiful Border]

I'm unsure who the audience is for these games, really. If you're an oldfag shooter enjoyer the O.G. games are still there, with modern sourceports and active communities, and featuring near-infinite modding potential with almost unlimited content to keep you going. Modern spins on the theme feel, I dunno quite how to put it, cheap? Uncessary?

IMO boomer shooters should be taking the gameplay of old games like Doom/Quake/Blood and delivering them in an updated package with modern graphics and other modern bells and whistles. The biggest pitfall boomer shooters tend to fall into is in also trying to ape the graphics and technical limitations of the old-school shooters, not just the gameplay. Dusk was the worst offender for this, although it was a very fun game and mostly what I was looking for the graphics were frankly crap, somehow managing to look worse than the 20+ year old games it was paying homage to.

 

[Bubble Ba'ath]

I can play both old and new boomer shooters forever so this thread is for me. Also I like all the games you selected on your post. I have some more recommendations if you want em.


Cultic is my personal favorite of the new one shooters. It plays like Blood (still my favorite FPS of all time and still very much worth playing today) but with heavy aesthetic influence from RE4 of all places. Its amazing, you can duct tape molotovs and dynamite together and the atmosphere of 70s grindhouse film meets boom shoot is perfect. One guy did the whole thing including the super minimalist but very good soundtrack.

Ashes 2063 and Ashes Awakening are post apocalyptic Doom mods that are free and can be ran on GZ Doom and are perfect survival shooters. Way better than Hedon in my opinion.

Zortch is incredibly goofy and fun, plays like a combo of Turok and Unreal.
IllWill is a kind of Serious Sam type game thats pretty good.

Not really a Boomer shooter but if you like old school FEAR style action, check out Trepang2. In a similar vein, if your missing Max Payne type games check out El Paso Elsewhere.

IMO boomer shooters should be taking the gameplay of old games like Doom/Quake/Blood and delivering them in an updated package with modern graphics and other modern bells and whistles. The biggest pitfall boomer shooters tend to fall into is in also trying to ape the graphics and technical limitations of the old-school shooters, not just the gameplay. Dusk was the worst offender for this, although it was a very fun game and mostly what I was looking for the graphics were frankly crap, somehow managing to look worse than the 20+ year old games it was paying homage to.

I disagree here. While they dont all have to be old style, I certainly want some that are. Graphics advancement in games often leads developers forgoing style for detail. And I love the pixel art of Doom and Build engine games, hence why I think Ion Fury looks so great. Agree that Dusk isnt the best use of this trope though, but graphical advancement has slowed to a crawl in recent years anyway so I would like to see more people focus on style. Besides, everything good is indie now and you have 1-5 people working on any game worth playing. I think the PS1 and 2 aesthetics for horror also work because people understand something gets lost in atmosphere when people charge ahead towards just getting more hair strands and skin pores on their models.

 

[Beautiful Border]

While they dont all have to be old style, I certainly want some that are. Graphics advancement in games often leads developers forgoing style for detail. And I love the pixel art of Doom and Build engine games, hence why I think Ion Fury looks so great. Agree that Dusk isnt the best use of this trope though, but graphical advancement has slowed to a crawl in recent years anyway so I would like to see more people focus on style.

Fair point, Ion Fury was brilliant. I mean more that if you're going to go for that aesthetic, do it right. And yeah, it gets a little bit tiring when almost every game in this genre tries to do it.

 

[Asian tech support]

Cultic, Ion Fury, and Turbo Overkill are all great. I like the genre but I'm not autistically invested; I just like good games. The one I got burned on was Graven. I was hoping it'd be like Hexen but it tries to do too much and everything is mid. Not played it in a long time tho. At some point I was toying with picking up Hedon but decided it was probably tranny coomer shit.
Thanks for pointing out Amid Evil. That looks like exactly what I could get into.

 

[BirdUp]

Not really a Boomer shooter but if you like old school FEAR style action, check out Trepang2.

we need more games/films where people shoot supernatural shit

 

[Kerr Avon]

Nightmare Reaper is and runs well on everything

 

[Judge Dredd]

Yeah I picked HROT instead of Dusk because I am contrarian, but mostly because of the aesthetics, it is very Quake-like just on a soviet setting, not much can go wrong here.

HROT was based on Chasm (aka. Chasm: The Rift)

I'm unsure who the audience is for these games, really. If you're an oldfag shooter enjoyer the O.G. games are still there, with modern sourceports and active communities, and featuring near-infinite modding potential with almost unlimited content to keep you going. Modern spins on the theme feel, I dunno quite how to put it, cheap? Uncessary?

It depends on the game. Doom, Quake, Duke, and others have modern source ports, but games like Chasm or Eradicator, not so much.

Also, the modern spins (the good ones anyway) file off the rough edges that disappeared due to rose tinted nostalgia. Games like Wolfenstein were big mazes with no rhyme or reason to their layout.

after Graven and Wrath : Aeon of Ruin I am now convinced that Neo Boomer Shooter devs are the second most laziest game devs losing only to Quirky Indie RPG ones.

The biggest pitfall boomer shooters tend to fall into is in also trying to ape the graphics and technical limitations of the old-school shooters, not just the gameplay.

I can give some insight into this.

Source: I'm an indie dev who was working on a boomer shooter before games like Dusk and Strafe were announced. It was never finished.

One of the reasons for the primitive graphics isn't laziness, but speed and aesthetics.

Speed because your options are either spending 50 hours modeling a single gun, or you stock asset that looks like crap as there's no uniqueness or cohesion (you end up with games like those "we made GTA5 in 24 hours!" type videos). So we choose door number 3. Now a gun takes an hour to design, leaving 49 hours for code, level design, etc.

Aesthetics because I happen to really like the look of unfiltered low res textures and low poly models. Unfortunately, it's been polluted by people using PSX and VHS filters on top of bad, rushed together art that doesn't resemble PS1 or late 90s 3D at all. But even that is preferable to stock Unity assets imo.

 

[Evil Peter Griffin]

I'm tired of hearing about boomer shooters and earthbound clones. Total gen z death

I miss the golden age of immersive sims and CRPG's

Here you go.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1260940/Core_Decay/

 

[rrtyui]

Is Ultrakill a boomer shooter?

 

[Healthy Boy Brand]

Besides some of the ones mentioned above I liked Arthurian Legend, though that wasn't really a boomer shooter as it was mostly based on melee combat so it's like Witchaven if it wasn't made by a total fuckwit.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

My issue with boomer shooters is that they pretty much have nothing interesting in them left. Like with indies, it just became another genre spearheaded by few good games that is now filled with trannies and coomers who focus more on visuals than innovation.

 

[Gravemind]

Is Ultrakill a boomer shooter?

Ultrakill's just a blending of genres using lower quality graphics for "aesthetic" because that's the style encouraged by New Blood.

 

[Coolio55]

I've said this before in a previous thread but I've never been a fan of Serious Sam's gameplay and it's become this strange inbred flanderized element that tons of wannabe retro shooters have copied ...despite none of the traditional shooters (Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem etc.) playing anything like it.