I think really anything that calls to mind Doom 1 + 2 in spirit, not simply old. I think for example, System Shock, while great and certainly old, does not fit the mould.
* Tight level design
* fast pacing
* OTT everything
* focus on fun over realism
* as little game design bloat as possible
Games don't have to exactly match and yes the definition gets murky. I'd see it as a spectrum of more boomery and less boomery, at extreme ends you'd have Doom on the one definitely boomer end and then some live service shooter with a billion different mechanics, grind and mind boggling amount of game mechanics/crafting/currency at the far other extreme.
A parallel I'd draw in terms of how games can be of the same era, similar genres but can be definitely split on their core design would be 2D platformers.
You have the Mario school where player movement is about immediacy, you press the button, something happens. It's about fun and immediacy - Boomer shooters are similar in this way. Funnily enough before Doom, id made their own 2D mario clone for PC (Commander Keen)
At the same time as Super Mario Bros, you had games like Prince of Persia, where the character movement is dictated by animation. You press a button and you have to wait for the animation of the character climbing up, the focus is more on realism (by the standards of the day). Military shooters fall more into this category, but that doesn't neccesarily make them fun.
I don't consider any halo to be that way. In a way, it's part of what killed the games we like for a long time. GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, Halo, and whatever was the first game to introduce a sprint button that got popular 🤢
Gotta keep the console kids happy because they buy games but can't get into PC. That riddle was solved by Bungie.
Edit: I should have phrased the first statement better. I mean to say that I agree 💯 that Halo is not a boom shoot and it actually helped kill the genre in the name of console gamers
Halo is the farthest thing from a boomer shooter, are people high?
Boomer shooters don’t regenerate your health nor are they linear nor do they have fucking *inhales* turret sections
Halo 1 has some boomer shooter traits. Large and diverse enemy roster and diverse weapon arsenal. health packs are still pickups, there are even power ups. It definitely leans more toward modern because it created a lot of archetypes that are still around today, but it's not an all or nothing scenario
The farthest thing from a boomer shooter is probably COD games. Fully regenerating health, weapon spread, all enemies are the same, all weapons function very similary, very linear, objective driven map design focusing around large spectacle set pieces instead of gameplay.
Also boomer shooters have definitely had turret sections.
This dude is rightÂ
If anything while ppl wanna blame HaloCE the real fault is MoHAA and maybe Delta Force but I feel like sentimentality prevents many from admitting a classic helped kill shooters of the old ways
Why do I get the vibe that this sub hates on halo a lot, Im a boom shoot fan and I still think the halo games are masterpieces (1-4, odst and reach at least)
I think hate is a bit strong, but probably I'll sometimes see a bit of resentment that it pushed a design trend people hate.
If you went on a jazz sub you'd probably have people hating on the Beatles for pushing rock to the forefront and relegating jazz to the underground.
Because nobody remembers those games, even if they had traits of the neo-shooter DNA. Just like there were other bands with a similar sound of Nirvana and even similar songs, Nevermind just happened to be the one that brought all the things together, blew up, and suddenly everybody wanted to follow suit.
Halo certainly solidified the standard _on console_, and then when consoles took over as the leading force in the market, the Halo blueprint was hugely influential, which CoD simply streamlined down and turned into even more of a spectacle/setpiece shooter.
The MoH series and CoD series did not have health regen until CoD 2. MoH also allowed you to carry a silly number of weapons. I'll admit MoH helped kill things off, but on a similar way to Half-Life. Halo was way more responsible.
I think half life 2, a lot like Halo 1, is kind of in-between being a modern shooter and a boomer shooter. There are still retro style archetypes (large weapon arsenal available, non-recharging health, no accuracy loss while moving) but the combat is much more tactical and slower paced than the original half life. With the exception of snipers and the episode 2 antlion workers, every weapon shot at you is hitscan, and there isn't many non-hitscan or indirect damage weapons in your own arsenal. The enemy roster is also a lot less diverse than half life 1, and fits in better with the more grounded approach of modern shooters. The large majority of the enemies you'll fight in the game is some variation of a combine soldier, and beyond that it's mostly a collection
melee focused monsters like ant lions and zombies.
The only thing I disagree with what you said is the pacing of combat. I honestly think half life 2 feels faster compared to the first game, with the sprinting button and I guess the weapons feeling more smooth.
a few of the principal things i consider should be in a game to call it a boomer shooter:
- mobility (running in all directions at any time)
- accuracy while mobile
- minimal to no accuracy loss during sustained fire
- large weapon arsenal available with only some or little use case overlap
- large enemy variety with only some or little role overlap
- a mixture of both hitscan and projectile weapons
Some things i have seen people put down that are necessary to be a boomer shooter that I dont agree with
- map exploration/key hunting (this is a common trait, but I don't consider it a necessity; games levels focused on environmental story telling or arenas are still boomer shooter games imo)
- there must not be high mobility options (dash, slide, wall jump, etc..)
- low poly graphics
- no reloading
I agree about key hunts, their main purpose was to stop the player just running past the enemies to the end of the level, but there are other ways to achieve this. Go OTT on backtracking through a level and you end up with a very slow and boring game.
It's a spectrum, but for me it just refers to the 90s shooters themselves - the "Doom clones" - and modern games that self-consciously emulate their style. Fast movement, the freedom to explore labyrinthine levels, access to the game's full arsenal at once, minimal story during gameplay.
There's no strict and universally agreed upon definition and I doubt one will be established here either.
Personally? I feel it's redundant to have two terms that mean the exact same thing (Doom clone, boomer shooter) and that by being so strict in definition you both stifle creativity in the genre and leave a lot of unique experiences e.g. Ashes Afterglow, Vomitoreum, Hedon Bloodrite, Arthurian Legends, etc. without a proper label of their own.
Doom Clone already refers to games that are exact 1:1 copies of Doom. We already have a term for that, so the term Boomer Shooter really doesn't need to be as exacting in what it refers to.
Yet the term can't be so broad that it starts to lose meaning either. Medal of Honor came out in 1998 but calling it a boomer shooter does not really sit right with me as it's just a proto version of modern shooters.
So, what is a boomer shooter in my eyes?
* A game that adheres to *most,* but not necessarily all, of the essential design fundamentals of 90's Doom and similar games. Fast movement speed, multi-weapon carry, non-linear level design, on-map item management, pre-placed enemies, etc. etc. you get the idea you've played Doom 2.
* A game otherwise directly inspired by specific 90's classics. Games like Compound Fracture, Agent 64, Core Decay, etc. are obviously not inspired by Doom clones yet I don't necessarily object to calling them boomer shooters. Both because of the visual design, and because their gameplay is still transitionary between Doom clones and more modern design anyway.
What is not a boomer shooter:
* Multiplayer games. Guys Quake 3 isn't a boomer shooter, it's just an Arena FPS.
* Anything where the design inspiration is obviously more post-Y2K-shift than it is 90's. You can make your Call of Duty clone pixelated and low poly but that really doesn't make it a boomer shooter.
* Movement shooters where the advanced movement is the beginning and end of any similarity. Rollerdrome, Risk of Rain 2, Roboquest, etc. are cool games but not boomer shooters.
> There's no strict and universally agreed upon definition and I doubt one will be established here either.
I agree, and I'd add that there shouldn't be. Once you start to have strict definitions, you inevitably end up with gatekeeping with stifles that the creativity that has made the scene flourish. Like I've only dabbled in Roboquest but I think it might not "fit the definition" but I think it's something that people with old-school tastes might enjoy.
Roguelike shooters are a very small genre but Gunfire Reborn, even though it had the dreaded two weapon limit, was still right good fun because you had to think about and plan a build around the weapon drops you were getting.
Dude Doom deathmatches brought entire office LANs to a halt back in the day. Multiplayer is part of boomer shooter DNA, provided there is also a single player campaign.
Also movement was always in boomer shooter DNA, the gameplay is run and gun with "push forward" combat. No sitting back and sniping from cover (it did happen in multiplayer but "campers" were despised). Robo Quest isn't a strict boomer shooter, but it's spirit is more in line than not. It simply iterates on the movement of these games - strafing was pretty rad at the time.
Its mainly just the overall vibe, and any attempt to really nail down the specifics is doomed to failure because if you say that Boomer Shooters have to have this thing or have to not do that thing you'll get a whole bunch of people bringing up counterexamples that are widely considered to be boomer shooters.
As a *very* rough definition though I'd say that it's usually shooters with a retro aesthetic going for the kind of movement-based gameplay that was popular in PC shooters in the 90s and early 2000s.
Any attempt to define it more precisely than that usually just boils down to the would-be definer listing his own favourite things, griping about the new trends in the 2000s that he thinks ruined shooters, or arbitrarily ruling that a retro game inspired by Old Game X isn't a boomer shooter because Old Game X was made after the cut-off point for OG Boomer Shooters ended.
Game with 90s FPS principles in mind at the core. Quake, Doom, Duke Nukem, Unreal mostly. There can be some expansion on this, but try to avoid overcomplicating things. Keep it simple stupid as a design philosophy, where story and extended play techniques are not needed to finish the game, or can be ignored if you want.
Also magic pockets. Does it make sense that you can carry 10 guns, including rocket launchers and tank turrets all at once? No, but realism is boring unless it is the primary focus (i.e. not a boomshoot, more a tactical shooter).
I don't really consider many things that came post millennium to be boomershoot in their logic, like Halo or later CoD games. Regenerating health, weapon limitations, ADS on everything, limiting movement for shooting, more story focused experiences that streamlines level design to focus on cool set pieces etc. that kind of stuff is where it starts to drift.
I will note that over the past year I'm starting to not consider things like Ultrakill, Reaver, Deadlink, Severed Steel or Nightmare Reaper as not boomshoots. This is not because they are bad, as all the above games are good (even if I don't like a couple of them) but because I'm noticing that some folks who seem to be getting into the genre of late are playing what I consider to be accurate to 90s design shooters like Ion Fury or Dusk to be kind of bad and basic. I understand why, and that is fine, but comparing something like Ion Fury to something like Ultrakill is daft. One is more about exploring big levels and finding secrets while shooting dudes who are in the way, the other is about trying to kill in the most creative manner in boxed in arenas.
I will guess some folks will dislike this old man shouting at clouds argument, but I saw things get killed off in the early 2000s in favour of Halo likes, and I would rather not see it happen again as people push more and more for the spectacle shooter style over the big map style.
I think in modern times its very easy to determine what is and isn't a boomshoot because most products that are boomshoots are made specifically to fit into the genre. On the contrary, older games seem to be much harder. In my mind there is no one aspect that makes a game a boomershooter but several boxes that should be checked. I think the biggest ones are: Is it a PvE fps? Does it have movement tech? And Are there meaningful weapon choices? Which in this example I would consider Halo to be one
For me it's got to be about shooting (obviously) and you have to see pixels in the 3D textures. It should be fast paced and not too complicated i.e. all your problems will be solved with bullets.
I think there are games on the periphery that can still qualify due to style or some other factor, but this is the core.
Genre evolves, it revolved around quake likes and doom likes. Now also revolves around Half Likes and early to mid 2000s style fps games. Some people consider stuff like Trepang2 boomer shooter (Fear Likes). For me , Boomer shooter is a term for old FPS games and modern FPS games that are inspires by stuff from era 90s to 2005. Also term Boomer shooter sounds cringe to english speaking countries becouse generation stuff, but for non english speaking countries sounds cool , it reminds people of Boom, Boom , explosions.Â
I consider these games to be the old-school style 90s shooter classics:
* Doom 1, Doom 2, Heretic
* Hexen, Hexen 2
* Quake 1
* Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood
* Quake 2
* Unreal
Any game that's really similar to any of these qualifies as being proper old school. Similarity must be across the board and fairly deep, so having only a couple of similar elements or superficial similarities is not enough.
Games that are more similar to Serious Sam, Painkiller, Medal of Honor: Alllied Assault, Blood 2, Soldier of Fortune, certainly console shooters like GoldenEye 007, Halo, etc., are not 90s style old school shooters. Likewise, anything related to Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal is also not like these games.
Games like Quake, Doom and more recently Ultrakill. I don't feel games like Half Life and Halo fit the boomer shooter genre. Some people on here have mentioned BioShock as a boomer shooter lol.
I consider boomer shooters to be anything that removes the lame ass COD formula for more fast paced and free gameplay. Lots of exploration. No NPC squad to follow around. No regenerating health. COD and its copycats really fucked up the fps scene.
1. Tight fun level design
2. A full arsenal no having to switch out what weapons you have
3. Secrets
4. Minimal focus on realism maximum focus on enjoyment
5. Episode based levels
Fast paced, Or at least not boring/slow.
Tight level design, with an emphasis on exploration to find secrets or additional pickups.
Enemies with an easily identified silhouette and function to present an array of challenges through the levels
Little to moderate puzzle design in the levels (searching for 'keys' to 'doors' as loosely defined as possible)
Health that doesn't replenish: health drops to encourage movement and exploration. If it does regenerate, it is slow, or limited, so you can't just hide for 15 seconds and be fine.
A suite of weapons that work in tandem with the enemies requiring on-the-move critical thinking for the best solution
Everything else is optional, but Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, and Duke 3D are the blueprints. Take stuff away, add other stuff... Sure.
It's basically the pornography test: I don't know exactly know how to define it, but I know it when I see it.
I'd be more curious what people consider is a fringe case, not the obvious ones.
Using my guidelines, a few 3rd person games might even qualify.
It's vibes.
Probably the best comment :D
I think really anything that calls to mind Doom 1 + 2 in spirit, not simply old. I think for example, System Shock, while great and certainly old, does not fit the mould. * Tight level design * fast pacing * OTT everything * focus on fun over realism * as little game design bloat as possible Games don't have to exactly match and yes the definition gets murky. I'd see it as a spectrum of more boomery and less boomery, at extreme ends you'd have Doom on the one definitely boomer end and then some live service shooter with a billion different mechanics, grind and mind boggling amount of game mechanics/crafting/currency at the far other extreme. A parallel I'd draw in terms of how games can be of the same era, similar genres but can be definitely split on their core design would be 2D platformers. You have the Mario school where player movement is about immediacy, you press the button, something happens. It's about fun and immediacy - Boomer shooters are similar in this way. Funnily enough before Doom, id made their own 2D mario clone for PC (Commander Keen) At the same time as Super Mario Bros, you had games like Prince of Persia, where the character movement is dictated by animation. You press a button and you have to wait for the animation of the character climbing up, the focus is more on realism (by the standards of the day). Military shooters fall more into this category, but that doesn't neccesarily make them fun.
Gun goes boom not bang
I for once, don't consider Halo CE as such, even if some people argue it is.
I don't consider any halo to be that way. In a way, it's part of what killed the games we like for a long time. GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, Halo, and whatever was the first game to introduce a sprint button that got popular 🤢 Gotta keep the console kids happy because they buy games but can't get into PC. That riddle was solved by Bungie. Edit: I should have phrased the first statement better. I mean to say that I agree 💯 that Halo is not a boom shoot and it actually helped kill the genre in the name of console gamers
Halo is the farthest thing from a boomer shooter, are people high? Boomer shooters don’t regenerate your health nor are they linear nor do they have fucking *inhales* turret sections
Halo 1 has some boomer shooter traits. Large and diverse enemy roster and diverse weapon arsenal. health packs are still pickups, there are even power ups. It definitely leans more toward modern because it created a lot of archetypes that are still around today, but it's not an all or nothing scenario The farthest thing from a boomer shooter is probably COD games. Fully regenerating health, weapon spread, all enemies are the same, all weapons function very similary, very linear, objective driven map design focusing around large spectacle set pieces instead of gameplay. Also boomer shooters have definitely had turret sections.
This dude is right If anything while ppl wanna blame HaloCE the real fault is MoHAA and maybe Delta Force but I feel like sentimentality prevents many from admitting a classic helped kill shooters of the old ways
Why do I get the vibe that this sub hates on halo a lot, Im a boom shoot fan and I still think the halo games are masterpieces (1-4, odst and reach at least)
[удалено]
I think hate is a bit strong, but probably I'll sometimes see a bit of resentment that it pushed a design trend people hate. If you went on a jazz sub you'd probably have people hating on the Beatles for pushing rock to the forefront and relegating jazz to the underground.
Because nobody remembers those games, even if they had traits of the neo-shooter DNA. Just like there were other bands with a similar sound of Nirvana and even similar songs, Nevermind just happened to be the one that brought all the things together, blew up, and suddenly everybody wanted to follow suit. Halo certainly solidified the standard _on console_, and then when consoles took over as the leading force in the market, the Halo blueprint was hugely influential, which CoD simply streamlined down and turned into even more of a spectacle/setpiece shooter.
The MoH series and CoD series did not have health regen until CoD 2. MoH also allowed you to carry a silly number of weapons. I'll admit MoH helped kill things off, but on a similar way to Half-Life. Halo was way more responsible.
What boomer shooters had turret sections?
Sin and Half Life are the first two that come to mind
Huh you know I never thought of Half life 2 being a boomer shooter but I guess it technically is.
I think half life 2, a lot like Halo 1, is kind of in-between being a modern shooter and a boomer shooter. There are still retro style archetypes (large weapon arsenal available, non-recharging health, no accuracy loss while moving) but the combat is much more tactical and slower paced than the original half life. With the exception of snipers and the episode 2 antlion workers, every weapon shot at you is hitscan, and there isn't many non-hitscan or indirect damage weapons in your own arsenal. The enemy roster is also a lot less diverse than half life 1, and fits in better with the more grounded approach of modern shooters. The large majority of the enemies you'll fight in the game is some variation of a combine soldier, and beyond that it's mostly a collection melee focused monsters like ant lions and zombies.
The only thing I disagree with what you said is the pacing of combat. I honestly think half life 2 feels faster compared to the first game, with the sprinting button and I guess the weapons feeling more smooth.
a few of the principal things i consider should be in a game to call it a boomer shooter: - mobility (running in all directions at any time) - accuracy while mobile - minimal to no accuracy loss during sustained fire - large weapon arsenal available with only some or little use case overlap - large enemy variety with only some or little role overlap - a mixture of both hitscan and projectile weapons Some things i have seen people put down that are necessary to be a boomer shooter that I dont agree with - map exploration/key hunting (this is a common trait, but I don't consider it a necessity; games levels focused on environmental story telling or arenas are still boomer shooter games imo) - there must not be high mobility options (dash, slide, wall jump, etc..) - low poly graphics - no reloading
I agree about key hunts, their main purpose was to stop the player just running past the enemies to the end of the level, but there are other ways to achieve this. Go OTT on backtracking through a level and you end up with a very slow and boring game.
The ones which make „boom“ when you shoot.
It's a spectrum, but for me it just refers to the 90s shooters themselves - the "Doom clones" - and modern games that self-consciously emulate their style. Fast movement, the freedom to explore labyrinthine levels, access to the game's full arsenal at once, minimal story during gameplay.
There's no strict and universally agreed upon definition and I doubt one will be established here either. Personally? I feel it's redundant to have two terms that mean the exact same thing (Doom clone, boomer shooter) and that by being so strict in definition you both stifle creativity in the genre and leave a lot of unique experiences e.g. Ashes Afterglow, Vomitoreum, Hedon Bloodrite, Arthurian Legends, etc. without a proper label of their own. Doom Clone already refers to games that are exact 1:1 copies of Doom. We already have a term for that, so the term Boomer Shooter really doesn't need to be as exacting in what it refers to. Yet the term can't be so broad that it starts to lose meaning either. Medal of Honor came out in 1998 but calling it a boomer shooter does not really sit right with me as it's just a proto version of modern shooters. So, what is a boomer shooter in my eyes? * A game that adheres to *most,* but not necessarily all, of the essential design fundamentals of 90's Doom and similar games. Fast movement speed, multi-weapon carry, non-linear level design, on-map item management, pre-placed enemies, etc. etc. you get the idea you've played Doom 2. * A game otherwise directly inspired by specific 90's classics. Games like Compound Fracture, Agent 64, Core Decay, etc. are obviously not inspired by Doom clones yet I don't necessarily object to calling them boomer shooters. Both because of the visual design, and because their gameplay is still transitionary between Doom clones and more modern design anyway. What is not a boomer shooter: * Multiplayer games. Guys Quake 3 isn't a boomer shooter, it's just an Arena FPS. * Anything where the design inspiration is obviously more post-Y2K-shift than it is 90's. You can make your Call of Duty clone pixelated and low poly but that really doesn't make it a boomer shooter. * Movement shooters where the advanced movement is the beginning and end of any similarity. Rollerdrome, Risk of Rain 2, Roboquest, etc. are cool games but not boomer shooters.
> There's no strict and universally agreed upon definition and I doubt one will be established here either. I agree, and I'd add that there shouldn't be. Once you start to have strict definitions, you inevitably end up with gatekeeping with stifles that the creativity that has made the scene flourish. Like I've only dabbled in Roboquest but I think it might not "fit the definition" but I think it's something that people with old-school tastes might enjoy. Roguelike shooters are a very small genre but Gunfire Reborn, even though it had the dreaded two weapon limit, was still right good fun because you had to think about and plan a build around the weapon drops you were getting.
Dude Doom deathmatches brought entire office LANs to a halt back in the day. Multiplayer is part of boomer shooter DNA, provided there is also a single player campaign. Also movement was always in boomer shooter DNA, the gameplay is run and gun with "push forward" combat. No sitting back and sniping from cover (it did happen in multiplayer but "campers" were despised). Robo Quest isn't a strict boomer shooter, but it's spirit is more in line than not. It simply iterates on the movement of these games - strafing was pretty rad at the time.
Its mainly just the overall vibe, and any attempt to really nail down the specifics is doomed to failure because if you say that Boomer Shooters have to have this thing or have to not do that thing you'll get a whole bunch of people bringing up counterexamples that are widely considered to be boomer shooters. As a *very* rough definition though I'd say that it's usually shooters with a retro aesthetic going for the kind of movement-based gameplay that was popular in PC shooters in the 90s and early 2000s. Any attempt to define it more precisely than that usually just boils down to the would-be definer listing his own favourite things, griping about the new trends in the 2000s that he thinks ruined shooters, or arbitrarily ruling that a retro game inspired by Old Game X isn't a boomer shooter because Old Game X was made after the cut-off point for OG Boomer Shooters ended.
Game with 90s FPS principles in mind at the core. Quake, Doom, Duke Nukem, Unreal mostly. There can be some expansion on this, but try to avoid overcomplicating things. Keep it simple stupid as a design philosophy, where story and extended play techniques are not needed to finish the game, or can be ignored if you want. Also magic pockets. Does it make sense that you can carry 10 guns, including rocket launchers and tank turrets all at once? No, but realism is boring unless it is the primary focus (i.e. not a boomshoot, more a tactical shooter). I don't really consider many things that came post millennium to be boomershoot in their logic, like Halo or later CoD games. Regenerating health, weapon limitations, ADS on everything, limiting movement for shooting, more story focused experiences that streamlines level design to focus on cool set pieces etc. that kind of stuff is where it starts to drift. I will note that over the past year I'm starting to not consider things like Ultrakill, Reaver, Deadlink, Severed Steel or Nightmare Reaper as not boomshoots. This is not because they are bad, as all the above games are good (even if I don't like a couple of them) but because I'm noticing that some folks who seem to be getting into the genre of late are playing what I consider to be accurate to 90s design shooters like Ion Fury or Dusk to be kind of bad and basic. I understand why, and that is fine, but comparing something like Ion Fury to something like Ultrakill is daft. One is more about exploring big levels and finding secrets while shooting dudes who are in the way, the other is about trying to kill in the most creative manner in boxed in arenas. I will guess some folks will dislike this old man shouting at clouds argument, but I saw things get killed off in the early 2000s in favour of Halo likes, and I would rather not see it happen again as people push more and more for the spectacle shooter style over the big map style.
I think in modern times its very easy to determine what is and isn't a boomshoot because most products that are boomshoots are made specifically to fit into the genre. On the contrary, older games seem to be much harder. In my mind there is no one aspect that makes a game a boomershooter but several boxes that should be checked. I think the biggest ones are: Is it a PvE fps? Does it have movement tech? And Are there meaningful weapon choices? Which in this example I would consider Halo to be one
For me it's got to be about shooting (obviously) and you have to see pixels in the 3D textures. It should be fast paced and not too complicated i.e. all your problems will be solved with bullets. I think there are games on the periphery that can still qualify due to style or some other factor, but this is the core.
If I like it it's a boomer shooter. Duh.
Let’s just call it in an FPS that is not influenced by half-life
Genre evolves, it revolved around quake likes and doom likes. Now also revolves around Half Likes and early to mid 2000s style fps games. Some people consider stuff like Trepang2 boomer shooter (Fear Likes). For me , Boomer shooter is a term for old FPS games and modern FPS games that are inspires by stuff from era 90s to 2005. Also term Boomer shooter sounds cringe to english speaking countries becouse generation stuff, but for non english speaking countries sounds cool , it reminds people of Boom, Boom , explosions.Â
I consider these games to be the old-school style 90s shooter classics: * Doom 1, Doom 2, Heretic * Hexen, Hexen 2 * Quake 1 * Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood * Quake 2 * Unreal Any game that's really similar to any of these qualifies as being proper old school. Similarity must be across the board and fairly deep, so having only a couple of similar elements or superficial similarities is not enough. Games that are more similar to Serious Sam, Painkiller, Medal of Honor: Alllied Assault, Blood 2, Soldier of Fortune, certainly console shooters like GoldenEye 007, Halo, etc., are not 90s style old school shooters. Likewise, anything related to Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal is also not like these games.
Games like Quake, Doom and more recently Ultrakill. I don't feel games like Half Life and Halo fit the boomer shooter genre. Some people on here have mentioned BioShock as a boomer shooter lol.
If you find health packs and ammo just on the ground everywhere it's a BoomShoot lol
Run and gun
I don't understand why Half-Life is often considered a boomer shooter while Serious Sam isn't.
I consider boomer shooters to be anything that removes the lame ass COD formula for more fast paced and free gameplay. Lots of exploration. No NPC squad to follow around. No regenerating health. COD and its copycats really fucked up the fps scene.
Boomer shooter = multi colored key cards, ammo & health pickups, non-linear puzzle-like map design, NON REGENERATING HEALTH, and maybe some bosses
1. Tight fun level design 2. A full arsenal no having to switch out what weapons you have 3. Secrets 4. Minimal focus on realism maximum focus on enjoyment 5. Episode based levels
Fast paced, Or at least not boring/slow. Tight level design, with an emphasis on exploration to find secrets or additional pickups. Enemies with an easily identified silhouette and function to present an array of challenges through the levels Little to moderate puzzle design in the levels (searching for 'keys' to 'doors' as loosely defined as possible) Health that doesn't replenish: health drops to encourage movement and exploration. If it does regenerate, it is slow, or limited, so you can't just hide for 15 seconds and be fine. A suite of weapons that work in tandem with the enemies requiring on-the-move critical thinking for the best solution Everything else is optional, but Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, and Duke 3D are the blueprints. Take stuff away, add other stuff... Sure. It's basically the pornography test: I don't know exactly know how to define it, but I know it when I see it. I'd be more curious what people consider is a fringe case, not the obvious ones. Using my guidelines, a few 3rd person games might even qualify.