I love oldschool FPS’s, but somehow the whole boomer shooter resurgence just passed me by. I just finished Boltgun on the hardest difficulty and had a great time, would love to hear some other suggestions
There are a lot to sift through, but I recommend:
- Nightmare Reaper You play as a woman sent to an asylum and the battle is against the horrors within her head. It has tons of fun weapons, enemies, and challenges.
- AMID EVIL A magic themed FPS that reminds me a lot of Hexen/Hexic. It has a superb soundtrack.
- Forgive Me Father A horrific adventure to fight a cult and its otherworldly summonings. Has a perk progression system that sets it apart from most.
Seconding Amid Evil, it’s a lot of fun. Sometimes I fire it up for a quick game. Cool weapons.
I’d throw Painkiller into the ring. I still think of “shurikens and lightning” whenever I think of it https://youtu.be/qk7DlYcQ0uM
HROT is a great, stylized boomer shooter if you’ve got a kick for eastern Europe/Soviet-era architecture.
STRAFE is one I enjoy. Sort of a Quake style aesthetic and gameplay, as a roguelite.
It’s been a while since I played it, but Sauerbraten / Cube 2 had a very old-school FPS vibe to it. It’s open source, so just download and play.
Dread Templar was great fun, and a very smooth experience. It even has melee weapons that aren’t crap.
Wrath Aeon of Ruin was a mediocre experience for me. The shooting was fun, but there was a real lack of enemy diversity. I remember the checkpoints being funky somehow?
Og games like Quake, Doom and Unreal hold up really well. They can be modded to your hearts content too. Brutal Doom is just way too much fun
Blood is super fun, but unfairly difficult on the highest difficulty. It kicks your head in, until you learn, but every minute of the experience is fun. Until the maze-like levels and actual mazes make you dizzy.
Cultic is like a modern Blood, but an even more deliberate version. The demo is good fun and the game is cheap.
Poweslave Exhumed is something I remember enjoying as a kid. Iron Maiden themed romp through mummies. It kinda reminds me of…
Amid Evil and Hexen//Heretic. Both feature mystical weapons, mana for ammo and fantastical locations and monsters to kill. Amid Evil is a great shooter with survival modes, a full campaign and all Heretic and Hexen are older, more dated games that will hurt you. But I love them for it.
Dusk was rhe first new retro shooter I played, and it’s fun. It’s slick, has a nice deathmatch mode and the campaign doesn’t overstay its welcome. I hear it has been surpassed by Hrot.
Blood West tricked me hard. It’s not a boomer shooter, but more like a single player version of Hunt, or a wild-west monsterhunting Dishonoured? It’s fun and unforgiving, but not a boomer shooter, even if it has guns.
EYE Divine Cybermancy could qualify, I guess. It’s a trippy grimdark warhammer inspired rpg shooter. Very boomery in it’s visuam style and lack of handholding, but definitely more modern than Quake.
Black Mesa is Half-Life, and it’s good. Nuff said.
Haven’t played enough of Hedon, Project Warlock, Ion Maiden, Incision, Prodeus, Graven or Rise of the Triad to say more than they exist.
Ion Fury:
It doesn‘t try to emmulate the look and feel of those build engine games like shadow warrior or duke nukem 3d… because it is one of them.
It is legitimately running on a modernized source port of the build engine. It has fantastic level design. It somehow feels modern and old at the same time. If you grew up playing games from that era this one is a must play imo
OG Doom is still a fantastic game that holds up better than many of the modern boomer shooters (nothing against them as I enjoy them too), and still has one of the best modding scenes in gaming that is more active than ever. People have made so many levels that surpass the originals in quality, there’s basically endless content there.
I’d recommend using the GZDoom engine (there’s a lot of others but that’s a good starting point), and for some mods that show off the cool stuff that can be done but are still accessible to newer players: The Golden Souls 2, Pirate Doom, Eviternity, and Ancient Aliens are some that are worth checking out.
ULTRAKILL is the most fun I’ve had with an oldschool FPS in ages. The difficulty ramps up perfectly, it’s super approachable for new players, and the skill ceiling for what you can do when you’re good is absolutely insane. The soundtrack is also fire.
Clips like this make me want to do another playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdHVt7cTwXc
Alright, I did go on a boomer shooter and arena shooter romp a while back and found quite a few gems, although most of these answers will probably sound obvious.
-DOOM classic, of course. Also try with mods, like Brutal DOOM
-DOOM 2016 and DOOM Eternal are also really good, modernized takes on the formula -Quake is still really good, the remake is really nice. -Unreal Tournament '99 and 2004 might be officially dead, but they still have players if you follow the player maintained master servers
-Blood:Fresh Supply on GoG
-Hexen/Heretic is a classic -Dusk
-Amid Evil
-ULTRAKILL, really, all of the New Blood shooter projects are really good
-Prodeus is one that flies under the radar of most, but it has a kickass soundtrack and vibe, and a gameplay that is between DOOM and Quake. Probably my favorite of the new bunch.Prodeus hasn’t been mentioned and is excellent
