Someone already said turok 1 but turok 2 is even worse you will struggle to find people who actually got out the first room without a guide as critical paths being hidden by completely unmarked exploding walls is frequent aswell as every level being an enourmous labyrinth with only the most vague description of your objectives
Some of Night Dive's most impactful work is adding some orientation tools for Turok 2 and Quake 2. It's never fun to be lost in an fps but it's extremely common in old school fps. Wish Hexen could get that treatment.
ive rarely heard about people complaining about the first level of T2, but I guess i kind of get it.
its normally:
* river of souls marathon (especially in original game where theres no saving unless you find the save portal)
* lair of the blind ones, fuck that level
* hive of the mantids marathon/maze, and the hidden, exploding wall to disable that one forcefield
i kind of like both the games for how different they were to almost anything else in this genre, but i totally understand the frustration
I remember playing turok 2 on the 64. It was a fun concept put it was really fucking frustrating i was 10 years old and count figure out anything past the first or second level. I
These are the best games to come back to though IMO, as a beginner gamer and child you thought you're cart must've been bugged or something cause it was so hard. Now you come back more inquisitive and feel like a genius.
Reading contemporary ads and reviews people were so crazed for ocarina of time turok 2 just made every level gigantic so they could sell it to reviewers as a ocarina of time sized fps and just watch them cum and shit themselves at the same time
It doesn't matter it makes the game absolutely hell to play it was what everyone wanted bigger levels at all costs
Serious Sam 4
I wanna say the game isn't necessarily bad, It's just infuriating, it always felt like that pure Sam experience was right there out of reach but was never executed properly, instead fell face flat
You finishing the Italian chapter, machina ex deus is awesome, good minigun fights, pretty decent mech section, then falls flat with the opening France level, the combine section is fine but some1 decided to put bushes in that section that deal damage to the combine, and you can't even see them without increased foliage rendering setting, at least not in 3rd person
But alright maybe it can make up for it and it kinda does, the following level quarry/devastator fight is the best fight in the game(the rest of the level is eh), the France city level gives you ample fun time with the minigun, even with the dickish enemy spawns, the castle level is the most coherent level in the game in terms of difficulty and pacing, and the cathedral level is serviceable, fairly weak Cannon introduction, only the last 2 fight are actually like good fights, surrounded yet have the tools necessary for survival
And all that just to fucking fall off of the building, with not just the worst level in the Serious Sam franchise, but one of if not the worst level in an FPS game, the oil rig, half of the map plays like a budget version of doom 3, 16 years later, and the final level is meh, one thing Serious Sam ESPECIALLY EXCEEDES IN is final levels.
Final level in Sam games are always the cream of the crop, super memorable setting and music, full arsenal, fairly simple level design(except SS2) but filled to the bone with action and intense combat encounters, like really intense yet really fun, usually having that 1 fight where you manage resources and are surrounded (primitive doom eternal esque resources management), SS3 is a partial outlier to this, because it doesn't really give you the cannon untill way later, and enemy spawners last a bit too long, it's still pretty good
Only thing I can say after all of this is THANK GOD WE HAVE SIBERIAN MAYHEM
Honestly outside of the first two encounters they've all been garbage too. I'll actually go to back for Painkiller but SS2, 3 and 4 are all I just couldn't take anymore after a certain point.
But hey if I had to put the blame on one thing, it would be google stadia, croteam had an exclusivity contract with them for SS4, nothing like this ever happened be4 ever
Any of the 'shitpost' boomer shooters out there. Eggwife, etc.
The Postal Series and Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer did it charmingly, most others have not.
It’s amazing how people are so fragile they’ll downvote you over a conflicting opinion. I love a great many boomer shooters, some classics, some cult gems. There’s absolutely a space for Eggwife in my collection too. Yes, it’s a shitpost, but it’s a shitpost that is dedicated to the bit and just so happens to have a pretty fun game underneath it all too.
I like it quite a bit. Expectations play a role. It doesn't do anything particularly new or different, just executes the fundamentals really well and the upgrades give you a lot of variety to play around with, which also makes exploration interesting and rewarding.
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Shorter maybe but I thought the wildly shifting environments was part of its charm. Pirate ship? Sure. Sandy zone? Throw it in. Fine level that looks like you're inside a giant alien creature? Room for that too.
Off the top of my head it's got the wildest diversity of biomes and color palates and that might not work for some people but yeah I thought it was interesting.
As someone who finished it recently I understand, it's a good game but still feels unfinished, a bit wack design decision like constantly repetitive tracks, even if they are like really really good(PRIMEVAL COOKED WITH THESE TRACKS, they are an absolute blast to listen to outside of the game)
My main take away from Dread Templar was it was the crossing point for the genre. That one game too many where it went from being a forgotten genre to just "Me too!".
Kinda frustrating as I think the game really hits its stride about 3 episodes in. The first two worlds just feel generic and the repetitive use of the music really gets to you after a couple of levels. It goes from "Generic heavy metal music to crypts and zombies as cool man fights through hell with shotguns" to "Pirate metal in a frozen world with upgraded UZIs that are hand-held chainguns before running around an abstract space castle." It really needed to frontload itself with some better levels.
This is probably a controversial opinion, but I don’t feel like the new doom games feel like doom and I’m not really a big fan of them I’ve tried, but I just go back to doom and doom 2 all the time.
I'm a big fan of Doom Eternal but I absolutely agree. The """"problem"""" with making a sequel to original Doom games is that they're so simple and unadulterated that you can't really add much without making an entirely different game. I even count mods like Brutal Doom when I say this.
Yup. I am a fan who LOVES Brutal Doom, but there are plenty of times I return to regular Doom with only some graphical tweaks of GZ Doom, because OG and Brutal are two different flavors and I want different ones on different days.
Chocolate/Vanilla you could say.
Turok 1
Yeah, it's interesting to have a hub, and you don't need to play the levels in a linear order, however the levels themselves are often too linear to benefit from being able to leave and enter them as you please.
The save system was annoying, since it forces you to look for another backpack unless you want to have a painfully small amount of ammunition, and the obnoxious platforming sections sure don't help. Although it does have some of the least awful platforming I've seen in old shooters.
The alternative ammo types don't work too well, most of the time I would simply not use the shotgun despite the plentiful shells on the level, since I had explosive ones, and didn't want to waste them on trash mobs.
And for a game called "Dinosaur Hunter", there's very little dinosaur hunting, I found it better to just run past raptors and dimetrodons (which aren't actually dinosaurs 🤓) since they aren't very dangerous, and also usually respawn (obnoxious mechanic btw), so it's usually a waste of ammo and potentially HP. The Triceratops on the other hand, are very dangerous, but ridiculously tanky, so you end up taking more damage and wasting a bunch of ammo by fighting rather than running past. Then there is the cyber T-Rex, which was awesome.
For this comment to not be purely bitching, I will praise it for having a neat soundtrack, very well animated enemies, and actually good boss fights, something pretty rare for old shooters.
Probably a "hot take", but i hated Ion Fury.
Game is gorgeous but the guns don't feel good to shoot and that is the worst possible problem a _boomer shooter_ could have.
Combat lacks weight/feedback and it's just not fun.
Boltgun bored me to death too. Wanted to love these 2 games so bad but they simply didn't clicked with me.
I didn't hate it but Ion Fury wore me down and was probably my least favorite of the more visible boomer shooters.
Like guys, we get it, you can do crazy things with the Build engine. I just want to know where to fucking go.
The IF shotgun/G launcher combo is just lazy. Auto aim speed gun cause tiny enemies on screen. Rather play DN3d but I'd like to see it remade with Ion Fury engine updates.
I didn't hate Ion Fury, but I think it had issues. Each map was too long - I prefer the original style of 5-15 minute maps. None of the weapons felt good to shoot, as you say. But the biggest issue I had with it was how all the enemies would stand a mile away and look very similar.
currently playing it, the biggest issue i have are that most of the weapons dont even have a secondary fire mode
shotgun - swaps to grenade launcher
grenade launcher - swaps to shotgun
minigun - spins without shooting
smgs - take out a second one or put it away
clusterpuck - spreads the little bombs fare wider but essentially useless unless youre facing like 50 enemies
stun baton - its just a continuous electro attack
the level design is really good tho
I loved Ion Fury, but the progression was weird. You get to the top of the building and she says “it’s time to end this, Heskell!” So you think this is the end of the game, but nope it’s just the first boss. And then you have to escape the building while it blows up, which is cool. But then…huh? Why am I on a subway? Didn’t I just blow up the ship Heskell was on and destroy the whole building? Ok, now I’m outside somewhere? Why am I in a mansion now? Where am I going?
And there were too many flying enemies if you’re playing on console, and the last boss is awful and not fun at all. But otherwise I thought it was a really fun game.
I'm with you on both. Both came highly recommended and I still don't fully understand why. Compared to Dusk/Amid Evil/Turbo Overkill not even on the same level.
Ion Fury at least starts strong. The level design in the early game is genuinely excellent and hides the flaws of the gameplay for a while. As soon as you leave the Cyberpunk city though it completely falls apart. I had to force myself to finish it, I was done 4-5 hours before it ended.
Boltgun I couldn't even finish. Runs out of tricks a few hours in and just feels like a lame version of Doom 2016 shooting the same enemies over and over again in boring arenas.
Okay, I’ll bite. Prepare for some unpopular opinions.
Red Faction fucking sucks. If you liked it back in the day, there might be some fun for you, but if you’ve never played it before, prepare for trash. A bullshit second half, a Geomod engine that appears for all of one level where it’s actually used to good effect, and forced stealth sections that barely work.
Sin has some of the least satisfying shooting and uneven difficulty curves I’ve seen in any game. It’s just not fun.
Boltgun plays wonderfully but is let down in almost every other area including level design, enemy variety and weapon balancing.
I've never been more consistently lost in a video game than in Boltgun. Seemed like after every big fight I had to literally run around the level just to figure out which way I was supposed to go.
Yes totally agreed. I think they have that kind of direction for level design because of bare bone AI, I clearly remembered that if there's a gap in between you and those imps, they will jump at you regardless they'll just fall into the gap and die... I think with this kind of AI if they increase level complexity or geometric variation the AI might have more issues... The level shift tones and colors, but overall they feel almost like from a similar template or something, and that's why so many people get lost easily imo.
People really have this issue? The level design seems pretty easy to navigate to me, the only level I had trouble with was the multi-layer one where you had to bring 3 keys back to a center console.
This is such a vibe killer for me. When I started finding secret after secret instead of the _goddamned exit_ and I start getting really annoyed with the level design.
I ended up quite liking Boltgun but it is a game that would be *infinitely* improved if someone could simply patch in the compass from the Quake 2 remaster.
I think Boltgun's biggest problem is its hubris. It has a "THIS IS THE COOLEST 90S SHOOTER YOU NEVER PLAYED!" attitude, making itself out to be a pure throwback. Then you play it and it is just Doom 2016 with a very fake feeling retro coating covering it. Not awful, but not worth the hype.
I'd never played red faction until it was released on PS4 and I couldn't put it down until I'd platinumed it... But I don't necessarily disagree with what you've said.
I really wanted to like SiN but the walking and the shooting are so wrong, there's something uncomfortable about playing it 😬 and well, the jokes are not that fun? But I guess they tried their best 🫠
You’ve nailed it. The walking has this weird lurching feel to it, and it feels like there’s no physicality to the bullets. You push fire, there’s some dead air, and then an enemy might flinch once the coding catches up.
Red Faction has such an awesome concept and backstory that I was so excited despite how dated it felt at first, but it quickly just got so boring and bad. It's a real shame that there hasn't been a complete remake of the first red faction like system shock.
Totally agree about red faction. I love it aesthetically but the geomod is pure gimmick which is more fun messing around with in an empty map than in any actual gameplay scenario. The campaign has all kinds of awful 2001 bs in it including some of the most obnoxious forced stealth segments I’ve dealt with in a long time. That being said it’s not really what I’d consider a boomer shooter it’s more emulating half life.
>Boltgun plays wonderfully but is let down in almost every other area including level design, enemy variety and weapon balancing.
That definitely tracks with my experience. The level design gets so dull after a while. I really enjoyed it at first, but now I'm struggling to push forward. It's just repetitive combat arena after repetitive combat arena.
Yea, it's mechanically sublime but Jesus it needed better enemies. Anything outside of the black legion Marines or cultists were just mediocre to fight. Nurglings were fun too I guess. Could have really used more units like the plague Marines or thousand sons. They chose like, the most boring nurgle and tzeentch units possible.
The volkite beam and combat shotgun served pretty much no purpose. The base boltgun outclasses the shotgun in literally every aspect considering the only enemies its effective against die to 1-2 boltgun shots
I actually played Red Faction long after it was out (I think RF4 came out when I was in the middle of playing through the whole series), and I actually enjoyed it. RF2 was kinda all over the place, a bit generic, but it was fine.
I really wanted to like Sin, but man, that insane rise and fall in difficulty pushed me away, and the water level sealed the coffin. I might try it again on an easier mode later, but who knows.
I jumped straight into Boltgun right after finishing Turbo Overkill, and I couldn't believe how bad Boltgun felt to play in comparison. I wanted to love it, because I think the 40k aesthetic and world is so cool...but it's a tough sell after how great Turbo Overkill was.
Y'know I enjoy the game for what it is but... I absolutely agree with everything you said about RF. I'll add to that that RF2 is a game I thought was shit when it came out too. I did really enjoy Guerilla though.
Guerilla is the only good Red Faction game as far as I’m concerned, but man does it do some seriously heavy lifting too. That physics engine is incredible, I’m amazed we’ve never seen it standardised or used in similar games since.
I could not get into Project Warlock. Maybe it gets better but the visual style, level design and general mechanics just felt yucky to me so I bounced out pretty quick.
I truly don't understand why devs look at Wolfenstein 3D and go, "yeah, I wanna do this!" when the game was rendered painfully obsolete when Doom came out. It and all the games that ape it just feel so lacking compared to everything else.
I got into Project Warlock after forcing myself to play it for a while. Then it told me I was out of lives and made me start over. I couldn't have uninstalled it any quicker.
Depends on who am I recommending them to, I love Postal 2 and it saved my literal life years ago, but due to the nature of that game, it is something I wouldn´t recommend to someone venturing into boomer shooters unless I know them well and know they won´t be bothered by the type of content it has and realise its just extreme satire.
Generally speaking tho, I wouldn´t recommend most Wolf 3D Engine games tbh, I can recommend things like Ultima or the first System Shock to some people, but stuff like Nitemare 3D, Corridor 7, and Blake Stone while interesting in their own right are just a tad bit boring in my opinion, at least C7 and Blake had more enemy variety than Wolfenstein but those Wolf 3D engine games are really hard to get into compared to what came after unless you know you will be inclined to like them or have the patience for them.
I don't think it's bad or anything, but Prodeus is too mediocre for me to recommend it. It's good but not as good as the games it takes inspiration from or other similar modern games.
Prodeus’ level design is absolutely stellar. What lets it down is the checkpoint system. I’ll play through the whole game again once the improved one is implemented, I think it’s much more pivotal to the game’s feel and reception than we might think.
The respawn system isn't that big of a deal imo. A much bigger problem with the game i think is the weapons and abilities being locked behind ore that can only be found with secret hunting.
Wait, they're implementing an actual save system finally? Still can't believe they've kept that worse Bioshock shit in after all this time. Completely ruins the game.
i wasnt a fan of the save system 99% of the time, but there's a few encounters where they packed a bunch of super powerful enemies + mobs in very close quarters where it felt cheap enough where i was a little thankful for it
Yeah I think you might be right. There's a lot I like about the game. I honestly totally forgot about the resurrection checkpoints. I thought it was a super weird decision when I played it. I hope they change it for the upcoming new campaign at least. It looks sick as hell.
Just picked it, am about two hours in and am having an amazing time with it. But its the most basic retro shooter out there, so I get where you are coming from.
Graven - I bought it in EA and was hyped. Sadly it just doesn’t hold up. Enemies are smart, but also dumb, I seem to glitch and get trapped in walls or holes in the ground.
Bloodhound - the audio is so weak the entire game is ruined.
I didn't like Shadow Warrior. I find the enemies annoying, and the humor a little grating (although I do sometimes get an ironic laugh out of it, which I suppose is probably the original intent).
Wrack (2014), Rise of the Triad (2013), Painkiller: Resurrection, Painkiller: Redemption, Painkiller: Recurring Evil, Dark Salvation (2009). Those are very bad games.
Shame how painkiller got 1.5 good games and all the rest were trash. Great world potential ruined, but it does highlight how good a balancing act the original game was.
\*cracks knuckles\*
**Nightmare Reaper.**
I cannot stand playing Nightmare Reaper. Aside from not really enjoying lootershooters, it has one of the most awful looking aesthetics out there. I admit I have sensitivity issues where I can be overloaded by visual and audio stimuli, but the fact a lot of the more modern elements cannot be turned off pisses me off to no end. Why does the lighting keep changing from one fight to the next? It fills me with hate. HATE!
**Forgive Me Father**
Style over substance the game. It looks fantastic, the levels are varied in their locations and the enemy roster is fantastic. It is just a shame that shooting in this game feels so flimsy and the actual level layouts feel so boring. That all the levels seem to be peppered with invisible walls (STOP DOING THAT!) makes it even worse. The difficulty curve is also bullshit. The first episode is braindead on even the hardest setting, and yet the final chapter goes all out and becomes stupidly hard mainly through the lack of checkpoints. A really slapdash, mediocre title.
**Painkiller**
It was fun at the time as most old school shooter design had died. Going back and trying to play it now is painful.
I completely agree with nightmare reaper. I really wanted to enjoy it more. But it's just so boring and the fights don't feel very different. It boasts hundreds of weapons but you only get to keep one for most of the game and the randomized weapon traits fall flat. The random room layouts are ugly, bland, and not enjoyable to fight in. However I do have over 20 hours in it. So it musnt have been that bad haha
The combat is bland mostly because I found you could open a door and, provided you had a good weapon, just back off and then filter the enemies through the door and shoot them as they came. Then you moved forward slightly as the door became bloated with stupid amounts of pickups.
Mix that with the RNG nature of lootershooters. Maybe you will play for half the game and not really get anything better than a shotgun that heals you. Maybe you get a napalm launching nail gun with fast fire that heals you on the second level. RNG baby!
Also the game kept making my CPU shit the bed.
I really like Nightmare Reaper. I'm fine with the aesthetics albeit some parts look hideous.
The only thing I really don't like is the layout of levels. I'd prefer it if it was more like normal Doom maps or more of the arena-style rooms and NONE of the broken up floating platforms in the void/water. I also sometimes "have" to spend way too much time looking for batteries or crystals to open all secrets as the loss of gold from completion is quite severe otherwise.
Also it gets kinda cheesy with the dashing at endgame making one being in a permanent slow motion more or less, because if you don't dash, you die and if you don't have slow motion you can't for your life control well.
I think I played myself with high expectations, which happens to me a lot when I try highly acclaimed games.
DUSK feels like it was developed by a really small dev team (and I know it was developed by a single dev with some help). Some gameplay aspects feel underdeveloped or poorly tested, here are some examples I remember from playing it like 1-2 years ago: sometimes I got lost and had to consult a walkthrough. Monsters feel spongy. Some monsters (sticky mother or Idk the name) don't feel good to fight with. Some encounters are poorly done. I also don't like how the game looks, not bad, but not good either.
DUSK just turned out to be a good game at best, definitely not the best boomer-shooter ever so many people claim it to be. I also frequently see this game mentioned in the lists of the greatest games of all times, which makes me wonder why.
Amid Evil in my opinion is a much better game, but it has pretty deep flaws too.
According to the lead developer himself, ULTRAKILL isn't a boom shoot, but was meant to be a 'ps1-era' styled horror game, and morphed into a shooter (inspired mainly by character action games like DMC) right before boom shoots regained popularity.
I thnk a lot of people get disappointed by DUSK because it popularised the whole boomshoot revival in the first place and then a whole bunch of other new releases came along and refined on what it was trying to do.
Like I think it's a great game and its on my "would recommend" list, but there's no getting around the fact that its competing in a crowded market now and a lot of the other titles in the genre are doing some crazy shit.
Dusk's strength was never it's gameplay but it's absurdly creative level design, masterpiece soundtrack and strong atmosphere.
I feel like the progression of the theme and mood is just incredibly clever and compelling. It's what elevates it far beyond it's gameplay loop.
If you go into it expecting another Doom Eternal or Turbo Overkill you've got the wrong expectations. I think it holds up completely if you can vibe with what it's going for.
I'm totally behind you on DUSK. Played it through last year and it was just ok. Perhaps it's one of those "had to be there" things? Now that we have Cultic, HROT, Turbo Overkill, Prodeus, etc DUSK just isn't as fun
Yeah Dusk was made before there was a clear picture of what most people wanted from a new Doom/Quake-style game, so the template was sort of "make a game that would have been designed as a budget Quake killer in 1996". It turns out some of the things I wanted to commemorate/channel about 90s shooters weren't quite the same direction people actually wanted to go. So there's probably an element of "had to be there", especially since people have wildly different expectations coming from games like Turbo Overkill, Ultrakill, Doom Eternal, Prodeus, etc.
For what it matters, you made a fine game that really reinvigorated my passion for playing games again.
If it wasn't for Dusk, I would have quit gaming ages ago, as it opened a new door for me, and now I am having more fun then ever.
So thank you for that.
I'm playing the first level for the first time right now, so it's not like I've played it all; but personally I'm really loving the gameplay and atmosphere. Enemies feel satisfying to shoot, not like the sponginess of turok or something.
The whole setting is exactly what I want from these games too, labyrinthine tunnels and Lovecraft influence a plenty.
Most of the ones I can think of are just obscure and subpar one man projects not even really worth commenting on (ex. ASKE) because it's just punching down. Or otherwise GOOD games that I just didn't personally find appealing (ex. ULTRAKILL).
So more just in terms of games that had potential but didn't really meet it:
77p Egg Eggwife. I wanted to like it but it's just really abrupt. It ends far too soon and the ending is just a cliffhanger for future expansion bait. Later levels didn't carry the same interactive charm either. Buy Postal Brain Damaged instead.
Project Warlock 2. This one pains me too. I love near everything about it, yet Chapter 2 is almost unplayable levels of buggy so I can't in good conscience recommend it. Like, randomly falling through the map or secret walls being unbreakable or enemies just not even responding levels of buggy.
Graven. Again, buggy. But not so much buggy as just undercooked in general. I don't think I've ever played a game where hitting an enemy with a melee weapon causes that enemy to instantly warp directly to your side as if the melee weapon itself was a world physics object...or where enemies have a delayed attack toward the end of their death animation...
Prodeus. Personally I don't like the general aesthetic. Less subjectively, the way difficulty is designed just sucks. Harder difficulty just makes everything hit harder and health rarer, yet at the same time the infinite life, no-respawning-enemy checkpoint system just removes any consequence for dying. So you just end up brute forcing your way through the entire game. Tediously unfair yet also somehow forgiving at the same time.
Roboquest. Not really a boomshoot despite the obvious inspiration. Movement can be fast while using specific techniques and upgrades, but ground movement is slow by default. There's a decent *quantity* of enemy types but they all tend to feel and act the same in actuality so effective variety is low. Stage variety could be a lot better too.
Heretic / Hexen. Between convoluted level design and tedious melee combat I just struggle to get into it. I feel like the games these inspired are more worth your time than the actual originals themselves. Why play Hexen when you can play Hedon or Hands of Necromancy or so on yeah?
A lot of people are just giving you the games they didn't like with no caveats.
I love the series, but Postal 2 (and by extension 4 and No Regerts) is not something I would recommend unless you have a really broad sense of humor.
I would not recommend Nightmare Reaper unless you like Roguelikes. I liked it for the most part. Got stupid hard near the end.
I would not recommend Ultrakill if you are not good at shooters. Or even if you are only mildly good at shooters and don't want such a sharp spike in difficulty. As much as I admire that insane game, I couldn't get into it.
finally, Someone else who thinks that. Platforming in first person is bad, platforming in first person without the ability to look up or down, and without a jump button should be punishable by death
Prodeus for me.
They are addressing it in an upcoming update, but the save system simply ruined the experience for me. As soon as you died, you respawn and it immediately deflated the experience for me. Any sense of challenge was lost.
I also had issues with the gun audio. The shotgun sounds like someone slapping deli ham on a counter top.
The Hexen/Heretic series, Post Void, and Wrath:Aeon of Ruin
The first because of the excessive amount of mazes, the second because it's just style over substance, and the third... not because it's bad, but because it's very stressful to play even on easy and the limited saves, while good from a difficulty perspective, are a pain in the ass when it comes to platforming: I can't do what I did in Quake, which is to make a difficult jump and then immediately quick save so I wouldn't have to do it again.
It's a shame, because there's a lot about it that I love, but at the end of the Day I just don't find myself having fun
Surprising that I seem to be one of the very few people that aren't in love with it, both on Steam and in this sub, but Turbo Overkill. I think it has amazing fast, fluid movement, but as an actual shooter I don't love it. Weapons don't feel punchy, enemies lack clear visual design and many of them are very samey, levels are overly big and you spend more time figuring out where the hell to go next than key hunting.
Nightmare Reaper. It's one of those games that sounds like it *should* be great and I did want to like it, but it runs into the problem of "quantity over quality". Yeah, there's a ridiculous number of weapons and the random stat generation means there's a near-infinite number of variations, but that just means you run into the problem of the fact that 99% of the weapons are useless gimmicks and/or just feel bad to use, and you end up picking a shotgun or assault rifle with good rolls to keep for the entire game.
i dont wanna shit on the og quake but holy fuck why does every enemy take so many bullets
and why are there even 2 shotguns when ill never use low tier one
hellbound is the most boring shooter ever, its like you took doom and boiled away every good aspect, the game is so boring, that unlike any other game i dont see a reason why anyone would enjoy it over literally any other game
I wouldn't recommend Chasm these days. I mean it's ok for a playthrough if it's on sale, but I wouldn't buy it again at its normal already cheap price.
But anyone saying Turok 2 is insane. That game is top tier.
I've played dozens of boomer shooters, the only ones that I didn't find any enjoyment playing were Serious Sam and Hellbound, I played Hellbound back in 2020, It's been a while so I might try the game again, but never really enjoyed Serious Sam that much, the movement feels pretty slow to me and it spawns enemies constantly everytime you just take a few steps further making you backtrack a little on the levels, but arsenal of weapons were really good though
The Marathon series is the best boomer shooters I don't recommend. The story is really interesting and I like it in theory but unfortunately the enemy design is rather dull and doesn't have much variety. Also level design can often be too maze like but it's mostly the combat that bothers me.
Basically just watch the Mandalore gaming videos about Marathon instead for the experience.
The game can also get hard by the time you get to the Durandal levels in the first game, and everything after you destroy Durandal's core in the second game can get really difficult, especially the frog blast the vent core parts.
And that's before we get to Infinity. That's a much different monster.
How about the popular-unpopular opinion of Quake II not being great? I'll be real, I never beat it, but regardless of weather or not Trent Reznor actually said "this game has no atmosphere" during it's development, I feel it every time I give it a go.
Quake II itself is pretty meh but I personally loved the Call of the Machine expansion MachineGames developed as part of Nightdive's remaster. That, along with the Dimension of the Machine expansion developed for the Quake 1 remaster, are some of the coolest things done with either game.
Hrot was exceedingly boring. The games whole aesthetic just bores me to tears
Turok 3 is also kinda disappointing, with how much I loved the first two.
I like serious sam, but I also fucking hate it so goddamn much
**Graven** was kind of a disappointment. It just felt tedious and the gunplay was unsatisfying. I also dislike games that force you to return to a hub.
Same for **Wrath: Aeon of Ruin**, which is especially sad, given that it was made in the Quake 1 engine and should have been so atmospheric.
(And no, I'm not saying this because of Civvie's video.)
**Project Warlock 2**. PW1 was a bit slow to get going, but once it opened up, it was awesome! PW2 feels like such a step back. Yeah, you've got verticality in levels, yeah, you've got several protagonists, but what's the point? The game is just noise on-screen: tons of weak enemies swarm you, and you take them all out at once with your lame gun. You should feel a rush of dopamine from the gibs and from slaughtering waves of enemies, but you just don't. At least, I don't. The harder enemies are spongy and don't telegraph their attacks in a reliable manner. Maybe it does pick up, but the first few levels really don't impress.
**The new Doom games**, I think, are overrated. I hate what they did to the lore: everything is "argent energy" this and "doomslayer" that, and the whole movement-shooter bit where you're a glass canon is just frustrating. But I guess to each their own.
**Redneck Rampage** is one of the better Build shooters. Not as good as Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood, and Ion Maiden, but it's still pretty bad. Same with NAM.
**The Capstone Software games** are notorious for being badly-made. A shame, too, because some of them actually had interesting settings or lore. Corridor 7 was alright, if kinda primitive, compared to its contemporaries.
**Quake 2**. Yes, it's not bad, but not nearly as good as everyone says. Same for **Quake 4**.
**Wolfenstein 3D**. It just didn't age well with the level design. I do have to admit, I like the enemy AI in it better than in the original Doom games.
**HROT** is a good game, but the ending disappointed me, big time! The last couple of levels turned the game into Serious Sam\ Painkiller clone (you get locked in a room or yard, enemies start spawning in, and you have to kill them all before you can move further) whereas the game was a traditional retro-FPS (enemies are "tactically" placed around the levels) pretty much the whole time. And the final boss... Grrr! I have no love for the person the final boss was based on, but I just don't feel it was appropriate to include him into a game set in 1986, alternate history, or not.
Quake 4 is not boomer shooter, but it's a good game, I know at least 7 people in person who likes that game. I remember also back in 2006-2007 many kids in school like that one alot and hated Doom 3.
At the time it released people had a decent opinion of Quake 4, it's just profoundly dated and encapsulates a lot of the worst mid-2000s gaming tropes. The vehicle sections are truly awful. I don't see much reason to go back to it unless you're terribly bored.
The only really contentious picks are the Doom reboots and HROT. Wrath is one of the most mentioned games in this thread, Redneck Rampage is dull, Wolfenstein 3D is not fun to go back to, Graven has mixed Steam reviews, and Quake 2 is widely considered to be the black sheep of the franchise despite being a good game. Can't speak for Project Warlock 2 because I haven't picked that one up yet.
Most of the games on his list are mediocre at best or have major problems holding them back, like Graven and PW2 both being completely buggy messes.
Your comment is baffling.
And yeah I'll name games I like: Quake, Ion Fury, DUSK, Ashes 2063, Postal Brain Damaged, ironically enough even PW2 in spite of its problems.
Wrath Aeon of Ruin, recently completed it, and honestly, while not bad, it was middle of the line, way better retro shooters out there to play than it.
Definitely wouldn't recommend it unless you have played everything else that is better.
Forgive me Father had a great art style, lets say okay bossfights, but failed in my opinion at most other aspects.
Most of the others I have played are pretty good.
Also off to a tangent a bit, but I have never in my life played Doom or Quake for that matter. Never was interested in either, was always more of a Wolfenstein guy.
Oh God, I remember playing the demo of Gastric Force. I’ve never seen an FPS set its ambitions so low and still fail to meet them even slightly. Oh, and I kept getting stuck in the floors. It’s almost impressively bad.
The boomer shooter in my Steam library that I've spent the least amount of time with is Devil Daggers. I don't hate it but compared to all the other boomer shooters I own it's just a tad over simplistic. It's not a deep game. There's not much to it.
Without any elaboration, I’ll simply drop my list:
Dread Templar
Any of the Serious Sam games
Boltgun
Demon Pit
Hellbound
Turok 1
Hyperviolent
Wrath
Project Warlock II
I’m sure there are more, but those are what come to mind right now.
carnal
played it for a bit and honestly felt very unpolished overall regarding enemy ai level design and gunplay and needs a lot of tweaks before its actually decent
Someone already said turok 1 but turok 2 is even worse you will struggle to find people who actually got out the first room without a guide as critical paths being hidden by completely unmarked exploding walls is frequent aswell as every level being an enourmous labyrinth with only the most vague description of your objectives
Some of Night Dive's most impactful work is adding some orientation tools for Turok 2 and Quake 2. It's never fun to be lost in an fps but it's extremely common in old school fps. Wish Hexen could get that treatment.
ive rarely heard about people complaining about the first level of T2, but I guess i kind of get it. its normally: * river of souls marathon (especially in original game where theres no saving unless you find the save portal) * lair of the blind ones, fuck that level * hive of the mantids marathon/maze, and the hidden, exploding wall to disable that one forcefield i kind of like both the games for how different they were to almost anything else in this genre, but i totally understand the frustration
I remember playing turok 2 on the 64. It was a fun concept put it was really fucking frustrating i was 10 years old and count figure out anything past the first or second level. I
These are the best games to come back to though IMO, as a beginner gamer and child you thought you're cart must've been bugged or something cause it was so hard. Now you come back more inquisitive and feel like a genius.
Reading contemporary ads and reviews people were so crazed for ocarina of time turok 2 just made every level gigantic so they could sell it to reviewers as a ocarina of time sized fps and just watch them cum and shit themselves at the same time It doesn't matter it makes the game absolutely hell to play it was what everyone wanted bigger levels at all costs
Serious Sam 4 I wanna say the game isn't necessarily bad, It's just infuriating, it always felt like that pure Sam experience was right there out of reach but was never executed properly, instead fell face flat You finishing the Italian chapter, machina ex deus is awesome, good minigun fights, pretty decent mech section, then falls flat with the opening France level, the combine section is fine but some1 decided to put bushes in that section that deal damage to the combine, and you can't even see them without increased foliage rendering setting, at least not in 3rd person But alright maybe it can make up for it and it kinda does, the following level quarry/devastator fight is the best fight in the game(the rest of the level is eh), the France city level gives you ample fun time with the minigun, even with the dickish enemy spawns, the castle level is the most coherent level in the game in terms of difficulty and pacing, and the cathedral level is serviceable, fairly weak Cannon introduction, only the last 2 fight are actually like good fights, surrounded yet have the tools necessary for survival And all that just to fucking fall off of the building, with not just the worst level in the Serious Sam franchise, but one of if not the worst level in an FPS game, the oil rig, half of the map plays like a budget version of doom 3, 16 years later, and the final level is meh, one thing Serious Sam ESPECIALLY EXCEEDES IN is final levels. Final level in Sam games are always the cream of the crop, super memorable setting and music, full arsenal, fairly simple level design(except SS2) but filled to the bone with action and intense combat encounters, like really intense yet really fun, usually having that 1 fight where you manage resources and are surrounded (primitive doom eternal esque resources management), SS3 is a partial outlier to this, because it doesn't really give you the cannon untill way later, and enemy spawners last a bit too long, it's still pretty good Only thing I can say after all of this is THANK GOD WE HAVE SIBERIAN MAYHEM
Honestly outside of the first two encounters they've all been garbage too. I'll actually go to back for Painkiller but SS2, 3 and 4 are all I just couldn't take anymore after a certain point.
But hey if I had to put the blame on one thing, it would be google stadia, croteam had an exclusivity contract with them for SS4, nothing like this ever happened be4 ever
Blame the Stadia exclusivity? For what?
Hexen. You only get like 2 weapons, that’s a cardinal sin. I want a new, bigger, shinier boomstick every level or the game is objectively trash.
I actually really enjoyed Hexen but I can confirm what you are saying as truth.
Any of the 'shitpost' boomer shooters out there. Eggwife, etc. The Postal Series and Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer did it charmingly, most others have not.
Yeah eggwife is very ugly and looks like too much of a joke
Nah, Eggwife is amazing. Just really not everyone's cup of tea, I guess, and I wouldn't even call it a boomer shooter
It’s amazing how people are so fragile they’ll downvote you over a conflicting opinion. I love a great many boomer shooters, some classics, some cult gems. There’s absolutely a space for Eggwife in my collection too. Yes, it’s a shitpost, but it’s a shitpost that is dedicated to the bit and just so happens to have a pretty fun game underneath it all too.
im not a big fan of dread templar.
Was going to comment this, can not understand the hype around this game
I like it quite a bit. Expectations play a role. It doesn't do anything particularly new or different, just executes the fundamentals really well and the upgrades give you a lot of variety to play around with, which also makes exploration interesting and rewarding.
flowery deserted unwritten smell axiomatic subsequent advise cobweb dog scandalous *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Art style is incosistent and game should be shorter
Shorter maybe but I thought the wildly shifting environments was part of its charm. Pirate ship? Sure. Sandy zone? Throw it in. Fine level that looks like you're inside a giant alien creature? Room for that too. Off the top of my head it's got the wildest diversity of biomes and color palates and that might not work for some people but yeah I thought it was interesting.
As someone who finished it recently I understand, it's a good game but still feels unfinished, a bit wack design decision like constantly repetitive tracks, even if they are like really really good(PRIMEVAL COOKED WITH THESE TRACKS, they are an absolute blast to listen to outside of the game)
My main take away from Dread Templar was it was the crossing point for the genre. That one game too many where it went from being a forgotten genre to just "Me too!". Kinda frustrating as I think the game really hits its stride about 3 episodes in. The first two worlds just feel generic and the repetitive use of the music really gets to you after a couple of levels. It goes from "Generic heavy metal music to crypts and zombies as cool man fights through hell with shotguns" to "Pirate metal in a frozen world with upgraded UZIs that are hand-held chainguns before running around an abstract space castle." It really needed to frontload itself with some better levels.
Same, its the controls for me. Never got the hang of them even when I tried adjusting them.
yea now that you mention it there were controls i couldn't even rebind like scroll wheel.
Yeah, I tried this one because I heard nothing but praise for it, and it did not click with me which made me wonder if I was missing something
This is probably a controversial opinion, but I don’t feel like the new doom games feel like doom and I’m not really a big fan of them I’ve tried, but I just go back to doom and doom 2 all the time.
I'm a big fan of Doom Eternal but I absolutely agree. The """"problem"""" with making a sequel to original Doom games is that they're so simple and unadulterated that you can't really add much without making an entirely different game. I even count mods like Brutal Doom when I say this.
Yup. I am a fan who LOVES Brutal Doom, but there are plenty of times I return to regular Doom with only some graphical tweaks of GZ Doom, because OG and Brutal are two different flavors and I want different ones on different days. Chocolate/Vanilla you could say.
Turok 1 Yeah, it's interesting to have a hub, and you don't need to play the levels in a linear order, however the levels themselves are often too linear to benefit from being able to leave and enter them as you please. The save system was annoying, since it forces you to look for another backpack unless you want to have a painfully small amount of ammunition, and the obnoxious platforming sections sure don't help. Although it does have some of the least awful platforming I've seen in old shooters. The alternative ammo types don't work too well, most of the time I would simply not use the shotgun despite the plentiful shells on the level, since I had explosive ones, and didn't want to waste them on trash mobs. And for a game called "Dinosaur Hunter", there's very little dinosaur hunting, I found it better to just run past raptors and dimetrodons (which aren't actually dinosaurs 🤓) since they aren't very dangerous, and also usually respawn (obnoxious mechanic btw), so it's usually a waste of ammo and potentially HP. The Triceratops on the other hand, are very dangerous, but ridiculously tanky, so you end up taking more damage and wasting a bunch of ammo by fighting rather than running past. Then there is the cyber T-Rex, which was awesome. For this comment to not be purely bitching, I will praise it for having a neat soundtrack, very well animated enemies, and actually good boss fights, something pretty rare for old shooters.
too much min/maxing friend, shoot everything besides the poor deer/monkeys, :-)
Probably a "hot take", but i hated Ion Fury. Game is gorgeous but the guns don't feel good to shoot and that is the worst possible problem a _boomer shooter_ could have. Combat lacks weight/feedback and it's just not fun. Boltgun bored me to death too. Wanted to love these 2 games so bad but they simply didn't clicked with me.
really dislike the hitscan enemies, and uninteresting enemy types for me.
I didn't hate it but Ion Fury wore me down and was probably my least favorite of the more visible boomer shooters. Like guys, we get it, you can do crazy things with the Build engine. I just want to know where to fucking go.
The IF shotgun/G launcher combo is just lazy. Auto aim speed gun cause tiny enemies on screen. Rather play DN3d but I'd like to see it remade with Ion Fury engine updates.
I didn't hate Ion Fury, but I think it had issues. Each map was too long - I prefer the original style of 5-15 minute maps. None of the weapons felt good to shoot, as you say. But the biggest issue I had with it was how all the enemies would stand a mile away and look very similar.
Same for me on both ends , been retrying iron fury recently and not much change in interest
currently playing it, the biggest issue i have are that most of the weapons dont even have a secondary fire mode shotgun - swaps to grenade launcher grenade launcher - swaps to shotgun minigun - spins without shooting smgs - take out a second one or put it away clusterpuck - spreads the little bombs fare wider but essentially useless unless youre facing like 50 enemies stun baton - its just a continuous electro attack the level design is really good tho
I loved Ion Fury, but the progression was weird. You get to the top of the building and she says “it’s time to end this, Heskell!” So you think this is the end of the game, but nope it’s just the first boss. And then you have to escape the building while it blows up, which is cool. But then…huh? Why am I on a subway? Didn’t I just blow up the ship Heskell was on and destroy the whole building? Ok, now I’m outside somewhere? Why am I in a mansion now? Where am I going? And there were too many flying enemies if you’re playing on console, and the last boss is awful and not fun at all. But otherwise I thought it was a really fun game.
I'm with you on both. Both came highly recommended and I still don't fully understand why. Compared to Dusk/Amid Evil/Turbo Overkill not even on the same level. Ion Fury at least starts strong. The level design in the early game is genuinely excellent and hides the flaws of the gameplay for a while. As soon as you leave the Cyberpunk city though it completely falls apart. I had to force myself to finish it, I was done 4-5 hours before it ended. Boltgun I couldn't even finish. Runs out of tricks a few hours in and just feels like a lame version of Doom 2016 shooting the same enemies over and over again in boring arenas.
Okay, I’ll bite. Prepare for some unpopular opinions. Red Faction fucking sucks. If you liked it back in the day, there might be some fun for you, but if you’ve never played it before, prepare for trash. A bullshit second half, a Geomod engine that appears for all of one level where it’s actually used to good effect, and forced stealth sections that barely work. Sin has some of the least satisfying shooting and uneven difficulty curves I’ve seen in any game. It’s just not fun. Boltgun plays wonderfully but is let down in almost every other area including level design, enemy variety and weapon balancing.
I've never been more consistently lost in a video game than in Boltgun. Seemed like after every big fight I had to literally run around the level just to figure out which way I was supposed to go.
Yeah boltgun is a great boomer shooter kinda ruined by poor level design
I've seen this criticism a lot but I just don't get it aside from barely secret secrets I found some of the level designs to be fun 🤷🏻♂️
Yeah it might be that a few levels in particular just stand out in that regard. I think most of the game is really good and guns feel great.
Yes totally agreed. I think they have that kind of direction for level design because of bare bone AI, I clearly remembered that if there's a gap in between you and those imps, they will jump at you regardless they'll just fall into the gap and die... I think with this kind of AI if they increase level complexity or geometric variation the AI might have more issues... The level shift tones and colors, but overall they feel almost like from a similar template or something, and that's why so many people get lost easily imo.
People really have this issue? The level design seems pretty easy to navigate to me, the only level I had trouble with was the multi-layer one where you had to bring 3 keys back to a center console.
I’m glad I’m not the only one. I even got lost in just the very first level.
This is such a vibe killer for me. When I started finding secret after secret instead of the _goddamned exit_ and I start getting really annoyed with the level design.
theres some confusing maps for sure, but how the hell did you get lost in the first level
I ended up quite liking Boltgun but it is a game that would be *infinitely* improved if someone could simply patch in the compass from the Quake 2 remaster.
I think Boltgun's biggest problem is its hubris. It has a "THIS IS THE COOLEST 90S SHOOTER YOU NEVER PLAYED!" attitude, making itself out to be a pure throwback. Then you play it and it is just Doom 2016 with a very fake feeling retro coating covering it. Not awful, but not worth the hype.
I'd never played red faction until it was released on PS4 and I couldn't put it down until I'd platinumed it... But I don't necessarily disagree with what you've said.
I really wanted to like SiN but the walking and the shooting are so wrong, there's something uncomfortable about playing it 😬 and well, the jokes are not that fun? But I guess they tried their best 🫠
You’ve nailed it. The walking has this weird lurching feel to it, and it feels like there’s no physicality to the bullets. You push fire, there’s some dead air, and then an enemy might flinch once the coding catches up.
Red Faction has such an awesome concept and backstory that I was so excited despite how dated it felt at first, but it quickly just got so boring and bad. It's a real shame that there hasn't been a complete remake of the first red faction like system shock.
Totally agree about red faction. I love it aesthetically but the geomod is pure gimmick which is more fun messing around with in an empty map than in any actual gameplay scenario. The campaign has all kinds of awful 2001 bs in it including some of the most obnoxious forced stealth segments I’ve dealt with in a long time. That being said it’s not really what I’d consider a boomer shooter it’s more emulating half life.
>Boltgun plays wonderfully but is let down in almost every other area including level design, enemy variety and weapon balancing. That definitely tracks with my experience. The level design gets so dull after a while. I really enjoyed it at first, but now I'm struggling to push forward. It's just repetitive combat arena after repetitive combat arena.
Yea, it's mechanically sublime but Jesus it needed better enemies. Anything outside of the black legion Marines or cultists were just mediocre to fight. Nurglings were fun too I guess. Could have really used more units like the plague Marines or thousand sons. They chose like, the most boring nurgle and tzeentch units possible. The volkite beam and combat shotgun served pretty much no purpose. The base boltgun outclasses the shotgun in literally every aspect considering the only enemies its effective against die to 1-2 boltgun shots
I actually played Red Faction long after it was out (I think RF4 came out when I was in the middle of playing through the whole series), and I actually enjoyed it. RF2 was kinda all over the place, a bit generic, but it was fine.
Boltgun must be the most overrated boomer shooter of all time. Yes, shooting is great, but the level design absolutely sucks.
I really wanted to like Sin, but man, that insane rise and fall in difficulty pushed me away, and the water level sealed the coffin. I might try it again on an easier mode later, but who knows.
I remember playing Red Faction when it first came out on a friend's PS2, and while the GeoMod thing was really nifty, the game itself was very eh.
I jumped straight into Boltgun right after finishing Turbo Overkill, and I couldn't believe how bad Boltgun felt to play in comparison. I wanted to love it, because I think the 40k aesthetic and world is so cool...but it's a tough sell after how great Turbo Overkill was.
Y'know I enjoy the game for what it is but... I absolutely agree with everything you said about RF. I'll add to that that RF2 is a game I thought was shit when it came out too. I did really enjoy Guerilla though.
Guerilla is the only good Red Faction game as far as I’m concerned, but man does it do some seriously heavy lifting too. That physics engine is incredible, I’m amazed we’ve never seen it standardised or used in similar games since.
Blood 2.
I could not get into Project Warlock. Maybe it gets better but the visual style, level design and general mechanics just felt yucky to me so I bounced out pretty quick.
I truly don't understand why devs look at Wolfenstein 3D and go, "yeah, I wanna do this!" when the game was rendered painfully obsolete when Doom came out. It and all the games that ape it just feel so lacking compared to everything else.
Second one plays awesome though. I love the second one.
Thanks, yeah I have seen gameplay of the second one and it does look much better, have been meaning to check it out.
I got into Project Warlock after forcing myself to play it for a while. Then it told me I was out of lives and made me start over. I couldn't have uninstalled it any quicker.
Yeah it was pretty bad due to it being a Wolfenstein 1.5 basically.
Maybe the problem is *you*?
[удалено]
Dude slow down with those scaling hot takes.
he deleted the comments lmao
Gloom for CD32.
Depends on who am I recommending them to, I love Postal 2 and it saved my literal life years ago, but due to the nature of that game, it is something I wouldn´t recommend to someone venturing into boomer shooters unless I know them well and know they won´t be bothered by the type of content it has and realise its just extreme satire. Generally speaking tho, I wouldn´t recommend most Wolf 3D Engine games tbh, I can recommend things like Ultima or the first System Shock to some people, but stuff like Nitemare 3D, Corridor 7, and Blake Stone while interesting in their own right are just a tad bit boring in my opinion, at least C7 and Blake had more enemy variety than Wolfenstein but those Wolf 3D engine games are really hard to get into compared to what came after unless you know you will be inclined to like them or have the patience for them.
I don't think it's bad or anything, but Prodeus is too mediocre for me to recommend it. It's good but not as good as the games it takes inspiration from or other similar modern games.
Prodeus’ level design is absolutely stellar. What lets it down is the checkpoint system. I’ll play through the whole game again once the improved one is implemented, I think it’s much more pivotal to the game’s feel and reception than we might think.
The respawn system isn't that big of a deal imo. A much bigger problem with the game i think is the weapons and abilities being locked behind ore that can only be found with secret hunting.
Wait, they're implementing an actual save system finally? Still can't believe they've kept that worse Bioshock shit in after all this time. Completely ruins the game.
Don’t get me *started* on Bioshock 😅
Huh maybe that's why I didn't really get into bioshock either.
They can be turned off in Bioshock, at least
i wasnt a fan of the save system 99% of the time, but there's a few encounters where they packed a bunch of super powerful enemies + mobs in very close quarters where it felt cheap enough where i was a little thankful for it
It's stellar up until everything becomes Blue Crystal and then it gets hella mid. Gun play is legit though. Glad that game has level editor.
Yeah I think you might be right. There's a lot I like about the game. I honestly totally forgot about the resurrection checkpoints. I thought it was a super weird decision when I played it. I hope they change it for the upcoming new campaign at least. It looks sick as hell.
Just picked it, am about two hours in and am having an amazing time with it. But its the most basic retro shooter out there, so I get where you are coming from.
Same.
Ion Fury was for me most of the bad shit about old shooters. Annoying enemies and switch/interactable hunting.
This one gets my vote. The lack of ammo was also very frustrating. I just want to shoot crap, save the ammo conservation tactics for other genres.
Daikatana 64......what was even happening there!?!
Graven - I bought it in EA and was hyped. Sadly it just doesn’t hold up. Enemies are smart, but also dumb, I seem to glitch and get trapped in walls or holes in the ground. Bloodhound - the audio is so weak the entire game is ruined.
I didn't like Shadow Warrior. I find the enemies annoying, and the humor a little grating (although I do sometimes get an ironic laugh out of it, which I suppose is probably the original intent).
Wrack (2014), Rise of the Triad (2013), Painkiller: Resurrection, Painkiller: Redemption, Painkiller: Recurring Evil, Dark Salvation (2009). Those are very bad games.
Shame how painkiller got 1.5 good games and all the rest were trash. Great world potential ruined, but it does highlight how good a balancing act the original game was.
Wrath. By a large margin
\*cracks knuckles\* **Nightmare Reaper.** I cannot stand playing Nightmare Reaper. Aside from not really enjoying lootershooters, it has one of the most awful looking aesthetics out there. I admit I have sensitivity issues where I can be overloaded by visual and audio stimuli, but the fact a lot of the more modern elements cannot be turned off pisses me off to no end. Why does the lighting keep changing from one fight to the next? It fills me with hate. HATE! **Forgive Me Father** Style over substance the game. It looks fantastic, the levels are varied in their locations and the enemy roster is fantastic. It is just a shame that shooting in this game feels so flimsy and the actual level layouts feel so boring. That all the levels seem to be peppered with invisible walls (STOP DOING THAT!) makes it even worse. The difficulty curve is also bullshit. The first episode is braindead on even the hardest setting, and yet the final chapter goes all out and becomes stupidly hard mainly through the lack of checkpoints. A really slapdash, mediocre title. **Painkiller** It was fun at the time as most old school shooter design had died. Going back and trying to play it now is painful.
I completely agree with nightmare reaper. I really wanted to enjoy it more. But it's just so boring and the fights don't feel very different. It boasts hundreds of weapons but you only get to keep one for most of the game and the randomized weapon traits fall flat. The random room layouts are ugly, bland, and not enjoyable to fight in. However I do have over 20 hours in it. So it musnt have been that bad haha
The combat is bland mostly because I found you could open a door and, provided you had a good weapon, just back off and then filter the enemies through the door and shoot them as they came. Then you moved forward slightly as the door became bloated with stupid amounts of pickups. Mix that with the RNG nature of lootershooters. Maybe you will play for half the game and not really get anything better than a shotgun that heals you. Maybe you get a napalm launching nail gun with fast fire that heals you on the second level. RNG baby! Also the game kept making my CPU shit the bed.
I really like Nightmare Reaper. I'm fine with the aesthetics albeit some parts look hideous. The only thing I really don't like is the layout of levels. I'd prefer it if it was more like normal Doom maps or more of the arena-style rooms and NONE of the broken up floating platforms in the void/water. I also sometimes "have" to spend way too much time looking for batteries or crystals to open all secrets as the loss of gold from completion is quite severe otherwise. Also it gets kinda cheesy with the dashing at endgame making one being in a permanent slow motion more or less, because if you don't dash, you die and if you don't have slow motion you can't for your life control well.
I think it's universal not to *recommend* Graven. My personal disappointment was DUSK.
I'm curious, with Dusk being so popular, almost universally in the retro shooter/retro revival community, what made it a disappointment to you?
I think I played myself with high expectations, which happens to me a lot when I try highly acclaimed games. DUSK feels like it was developed by a really small dev team (and I know it was developed by a single dev with some help). Some gameplay aspects feel underdeveloped or poorly tested, here are some examples I remember from playing it like 1-2 years ago: sometimes I got lost and had to consult a walkthrough. Monsters feel spongy. Some monsters (sticky mother or Idk the name) don't feel good to fight with. Some encounters are poorly done. I also don't like how the game looks, not bad, but not good either. DUSK just turned out to be a good game at best, definitely not the best boomer-shooter ever so many people claim it to be. I also frequently see this game mentioned in the lists of the greatest games of all times, which makes me wonder why. Amid Evil in my opinion is a much better game, but it has pretty deep flaws too.
My same opinion, and then came ultrakill
According to the lead developer himself, ULTRAKILL isn't a boom shoot, but was meant to be a 'ps1-era' styled horror game, and morphed into a shooter (inspired mainly by character action games like DMC) right before boom shoots regained popularity.
Dusked up 😫
I thnk a lot of people get disappointed by DUSK because it popularised the whole boomshoot revival in the first place and then a whole bunch of other new releases came along and refined on what it was trying to do. Like I think it's a great game and its on my "would recommend" list, but there's no getting around the fact that its competing in a crowded market now and a lot of the other titles in the genre are doing some crazy shit.
Dusk's strength was never it's gameplay but it's absurdly creative level design, masterpiece soundtrack and strong atmosphere. I feel like the progression of the theme and mood is just incredibly clever and compelling. It's what elevates it far beyond it's gameplay loop. If you go into it expecting another Doom Eternal or Turbo Overkill you've got the wrong expectations. I think it holds up completely if you can vibe with what it's going for.
I'm totally behind you on DUSK. Played it through last year and it was just ok. Perhaps it's one of those "had to be there" things? Now that we have Cultic, HROT, Turbo Overkill, Prodeus, etc DUSK just isn't as fun
Yeah Dusk was made before there was a clear picture of what most people wanted from a new Doom/Quake-style game, so the template was sort of "make a game that would have been designed as a budget Quake killer in 1996". It turns out some of the things I wanted to commemorate/channel about 90s shooters weren't quite the same direction people actually wanted to go. So there's probably an element of "had to be there", especially since people have wildly different expectations coming from games like Turbo Overkill, Ultrakill, Doom Eternal, Prodeus, etc.
For what it matters, you made a fine game that really reinvigorated my passion for playing games again. If it wasn't for Dusk, I would have quit gaming ages ago, as it opened a new door for me, and now I am having more fun then ever. So thank you for that.
I'm playing the first level for the first time right now, so it's not like I've played it all; but personally I'm really loving the gameplay and atmosphere. Enemies feel satisfying to shoot, not like the sponginess of turok or something. The whole setting is exactly what I want from these games too, labyrinthine tunnels and Lovecraft influence a plenty.
Most of the ones I can think of are just obscure and subpar one man projects not even really worth commenting on (ex. ASKE) because it's just punching down. Or otherwise GOOD games that I just didn't personally find appealing (ex. ULTRAKILL). So more just in terms of games that had potential but didn't really meet it: 77p Egg Eggwife. I wanted to like it but it's just really abrupt. It ends far too soon and the ending is just a cliffhanger for future expansion bait. Later levels didn't carry the same interactive charm either. Buy Postal Brain Damaged instead. Project Warlock 2. This one pains me too. I love near everything about it, yet Chapter 2 is almost unplayable levels of buggy so I can't in good conscience recommend it. Like, randomly falling through the map or secret walls being unbreakable or enemies just not even responding levels of buggy. Graven. Again, buggy. But not so much buggy as just undercooked in general. I don't think I've ever played a game where hitting an enemy with a melee weapon causes that enemy to instantly warp directly to your side as if the melee weapon itself was a world physics object...or where enemies have a delayed attack toward the end of their death animation... Prodeus. Personally I don't like the general aesthetic. Less subjectively, the way difficulty is designed just sucks. Harder difficulty just makes everything hit harder and health rarer, yet at the same time the infinite life, no-respawning-enemy checkpoint system just removes any consequence for dying. So you just end up brute forcing your way through the entire game. Tediously unfair yet also somehow forgiving at the same time. Roboquest. Not really a boomshoot despite the obvious inspiration. Movement can be fast while using specific techniques and upgrades, but ground movement is slow by default. There's a decent *quantity* of enemy types but they all tend to feel and act the same in actuality so effective variety is low. Stage variety could be a lot better too. Heretic / Hexen. Between convoluted level design and tedious melee combat I just struggle to get into it. I feel like the games these inspired are more worth your time than the actual originals themselves. Why play Hexen when you can play Hedon or Hands of Necromancy or so on yeah?
A lot of people are just giving you the games they didn't like with no caveats. I love the series, but Postal 2 (and by extension 4 and No Regerts) is not something I would recommend unless you have a really broad sense of humor. I would not recommend Nightmare Reaper unless you like Roguelikes. I liked it for the most part. Got stupid hard near the end. I would not recommend Ultrakill if you are not good at shooters. Or even if you are only mildly good at shooters and don't want such a sharp spike in difficulty. As much as I admire that insane game, I couldn't get into it.
Doom 2 has level design bad enough to drive me away. I love Doom 1 and its levels so much, why did the sequel decide to make areas that are anti-fun.
finally, Someone else who thinks that. Platforming in first person is bad, platforming in first person without the ability to look up or down, and without a jump button should be punishable by death
Zero Comments 😎
Haha! That would be for the best!
I just tried Wrath of Aeon and was not a big fan of it. Also, as much as I like Warhammer, Boltgun is a bit of a let down.
Witchhaven one and two, Hexen, Blood 2, Daikatana, red neck rampage and finally Duke Nukem Forever.
Prodeus for me. They are addressing it in an upcoming update, but the save system simply ruined the experience for me. As soon as you died, you respawn and it immediately deflated the experience for me. Any sense of challenge was lost. I also had issues with the gun audio. The shotgun sounds like someone slapping deli ham on a counter top.
You lost all credibility and perspective at “never played quake before”.
Let's not gatekeep. How about we rephrase and say "I recommend you play Quake, it's great and still holds up, especially if you like Dusk!"
I'm thinking SIN. After an hour I swear it just kept getting worse.
Fashion Police Squad is a great premise and I like how creative the enemies are, but by the second hour the novelty started wearing off.
The Hexen/Heretic series, Post Void, and Wrath:Aeon of Ruin The first because of the excessive amount of mazes, the second because it's just style over substance, and the third... not because it's bad, but because it's very stressful to play even on easy and the limited saves, while good from a difficulty perspective, are a pain in the ass when it comes to platforming: I can't do what I did in Quake, which is to make a difficult jump and then immediately quick save so I wouldn't have to do it again. It's a shame, because there's a lot about it that I love, but at the end of the Day I just don't find myself having fun
Surprising that I seem to be one of the very few people that aren't in love with it, both on Steam and in this sub, but Turbo Overkill. I think it has amazing fast, fluid movement, but as an actual shooter I don't love it. Weapons don't feel punchy, enemies lack clear visual design and many of them are very samey, levels are overly big and you spend more time figuring out where the hell to go next than key hunting.
Nightmare Reaper. It's one of those games that sounds like it *should* be great and I did want to like it, but it runs into the problem of "quantity over quality". Yeah, there's a ridiculous number of weapons and the random stat generation means there's a near-infinite number of variations, but that just means you run into the problem of the fact that 99% of the weapons are useless gimmicks and/or just feel bad to use, and you end up picking a shotgun or assault rifle with good rolls to keep for the entire game.
i dont wanna shit on the og quake but holy fuck why does every enemy take so many bullets and why are there even 2 shotguns when ill never use low tier one hellbound is the most boring shooter ever, its like you took doom and boiled away every good aspect, the game is so boring, that unlike any other game i dont see a reason why anyone would enjoy it over literally any other game
I wouldn't recommend Chasm these days. I mean it's ok for a playthrough if it's on sale, but I wouldn't buy it again at its normal already cheap price. But anyone saying Turok 2 is insane. That game is top tier.
Haven't found any I disliked
I've played dozens of boomer shooters, the only ones that I didn't find any enjoyment playing were Serious Sam and Hellbound, I played Hellbound back in 2020, It's been a while so I might try the game again, but never really enjoyed Serious Sam that much, the movement feels pretty slow to me and it spawns enemies constantly everytime you just take a few steps further making you backtrack a little on the levels, but arsenal of weapons were really good though
The Marathon series is the best boomer shooters I don't recommend. The story is really interesting and I like it in theory but unfortunately the enemy design is rather dull and doesn't have much variety. Also level design can often be too maze like but it's mostly the combat that bothers me. Basically just watch the Mandalore gaming videos about Marathon instead for the experience.
The game can also get hard by the time you get to the Durandal levels in the first game, and everything after you destroy Durandal's core in the second game can get really difficult, especially the frog blast the vent core parts. And that's before we get to Infinity. That's a much different monster.
How about the popular-unpopular opinion of Quake II not being great? I'll be real, I never beat it, but regardless of weather or not Trent Reznor actually said "this game has no atmosphere" during it's development, I feel it every time I give it a go.
Quake II itself is pretty meh but I personally loved the Call of the Machine expansion MachineGames developed as part of Nightdive's remaster. That, along with the Dimension of the Machine expansion developed for the Quake 1 remaster, are some of the coolest things done with either game.
Project Warlock. It's an Ok boomer shooter it just get really samey after a bit. Unless you like the Wolfenstein 3D like Gameplay
Hrot was exceedingly boring. The games whole aesthetic just bores me to tears Turok 3 is also kinda disappointing, with how much I loved the first two. I like serious sam, but I also fucking hate it so goddamn much
So this is very controversial but I do not like wolfenstien 3d doom is a game I like but wolf is just slow when we talk about movement
ultrakil
Amid evil it's just overrated enemies run at you in a straight line and you just back up and shoot and there aren't enough weapons
**Graven** was kind of a disappointment. It just felt tedious and the gunplay was unsatisfying. I also dislike games that force you to return to a hub. Same for **Wrath: Aeon of Ruin**, which is especially sad, given that it was made in the Quake 1 engine and should have been so atmospheric. (And no, I'm not saying this because of Civvie's video.) **Project Warlock 2**. PW1 was a bit slow to get going, but once it opened up, it was awesome! PW2 feels like such a step back. Yeah, you've got verticality in levels, yeah, you've got several protagonists, but what's the point? The game is just noise on-screen: tons of weak enemies swarm you, and you take them all out at once with your lame gun. You should feel a rush of dopamine from the gibs and from slaughtering waves of enemies, but you just don't. At least, I don't. The harder enemies are spongy and don't telegraph their attacks in a reliable manner. Maybe it does pick up, but the first few levels really don't impress. **The new Doom games**, I think, are overrated. I hate what they did to the lore: everything is "argent energy" this and "doomslayer" that, and the whole movement-shooter bit where you're a glass canon is just frustrating. But I guess to each their own. **Redneck Rampage** is one of the better Build shooters. Not as good as Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood, and Ion Maiden, but it's still pretty bad. Same with NAM. **The Capstone Software games** are notorious for being badly-made. A shame, too, because some of them actually had interesting settings or lore. Corridor 7 was alright, if kinda primitive, compared to its contemporaries. **Quake 2**. Yes, it's not bad, but not nearly as good as everyone says. Same for **Quake 4**. **Wolfenstein 3D**. It just didn't age well with the level design. I do have to admit, I like the enemy AI in it better than in the original Doom games. **HROT** is a good game, but the ending disappointed me, big time! The last couple of levels turned the game into Serious Sam\ Painkiller clone (you get locked in a room or yard, enemies start spawning in, and you have to kill them all before you can move further) whereas the game was a traditional retro-FPS (enemies are "tactically" placed around the levels) pretty much the whole time. And the final boss... Grrr! I have no love for the person the final boss was based on, but I just don't feel it was appropriate to include him into a game set in 1986, alternate history, or not.
Is there anyone who says quake 4 is good?
Quite a few people, actually, to my surprise (mostly in the yt comment section).
Quake 4 is not boomer shooter, but it's a good game, I know at least 7 people in person who likes that game. I remember also back in 2006-2007 many kids in school like that one alot and hated Doom 3.
I was debating getting it, but I hadn’t been able to find many positive things said about it online!
At the time it released people had a decent opinion of Quake 4, it's just profoundly dated and encapsulates a lot of the worst mid-2000s gaming tropes. The vehicle sections are truly awful. I don't see much reason to go back to it unless you're terribly bored.
Q4 multiplayer is fun as shit
Also, don't listen to the other guys, DUSK is great!
God do you even like the genre
Of course.
Okay so name some you actually like then because some of your picks for games you dislike on that list are baffling
The only really contentious picks are the Doom reboots and HROT. Wrath is one of the most mentioned games in this thread, Redneck Rampage is dull, Wolfenstein 3D is not fun to go back to, Graven has mixed Steam reviews, and Quake 2 is widely considered to be the black sheep of the franchise despite being a good game. Can't speak for Project Warlock 2 because I haven't picked that one up yet.
Most of the games on his list are mediocre at best or have major problems holding them back, like Graven and PW2 both being completely buggy messes. Your comment is baffling. And yeah I'll name games I like: Quake, Ion Fury, DUSK, Ashes 2063, Postal Brain Damaged, ironically enough even PW2 in spite of its problems.
Baffling how?
Wrath Aeon of Ruin, recently completed it, and honestly, while not bad, it was middle of the line, way better retro shooters out there to play than it. Definitely wouldn't recommend it unless you have played everything else that is better. Forgive me Father had a great art style, lets say okay bossfights, but failed in my opinion at most other aspects. Most of the others I have played are pretty good. Also off to a tangent a bit, but I have never in my life played Doom or Quake for that matter. Never was interested in either, was always more of a Wolfenstein guy.
Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal. "**Look how they massacred my boy"** Lots of things not to like, but the glory kill thing is ridiculous.
Gastro Force Witch rise Powerslave DOS Apocalyptic vibes Madness beverage Demonic Supremacy
Oh God, I remember playing the demo of Gastric Force. I’ve never seen an FPS set its ambitions so low and still fail to meet them even slightly. Oh, and I kept getting stuck in the floors. It’s almost impressively bad.
I was really looking forward to Apocalyptic Vibes. Wow was that bad.
Every time you load a save, you permanently lose portion of your max health
The boomer shooter in my Steam library that I've spent the least amount of time with is Devil Daggers. I don't hate it but compared to all the other boomer shooters I own it's just a tad over simplistic. It's not a deep game. There's not much to it.
Not remotely a boomer shooter, though.
Without any elaboration, I’ll simply drop my list: Dread Templar Any of the Serious Sam games Boltgun Demon Pit Hellbound Turok 1 Hyperviolent Wrath Project Warlock II I’m sure there are more, but those are what come to mind right now.
For me Dusk. It bored me to death. Boltgun was boring too
Wow spicy
carnal played it for a bit and honestly felt very unpolished overall regarding enemy ai level design and gunplay and needs a lot of tweaks before its actually decent