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Warhammer 40k finally gets the [BOOMER SHOOTERS] treatment
TOGSolid
Drunk sailorSeattle, WashingtonRegistered User regular
Drunk sailorSeattle, WashingtonRegistered User regular
This thread was written while drinking. Lol. I'm sorry 
Welcome to the home of cancerous mice, high speed run and gun action, and nobody giving two flaming fucks about immersive narratives.
Welcome to:
Welcome to the home of cancerous mice, high speed run and gun action, and nobody giving two flaming fucks about immersive narratives.
Welcome to:
What the fuck is a Boomer Shooter?
Back in the day, before Half-Life, before the dark times, shooters weren't about tactical experiences, or narrative, or big set pieces. They were about action and atmosphere and occasionally just being blatantly trolled by the developers. Fuck your sympathetic protagonist, you were here to go as fast as the game engine would allow (maybe even faster if you found some truly dumb shit), blow up everything with thematic, increasingly off the wall weapons, find secrets, and get that coveted 100% level complete score. But then Half-Life happened and upended the industry. Suddenly it was about narrative and set pieces and everything we now understand to be the concept of the modern shooter.
However...
The chosen one returned.
Our lord and savior.
Our ripping and tearing messiah: Doom Guy.
2016's Doom showed a whole new generation the sheer joy of just chainsawing a motherfucker in half without needing some grand, involved story and it had an interesting knock on effect. It inspired all the people pushing/past 40 to get back in the game and it inspired a whole new generation to tap into the sensibilities and aesthetics of the old ways while using the modern engines and lessons learned to forge them into new, refined experiences thus giving birth to the Boomer Shooter renaissance. Because back in our day we got our shit via shareware disks and when the internet started it played the song of our people and Pizza Hut personal pan pizzas were a fucking gourmet experience you'd get for participating in the Book It Club and now we're getting nervous about retirement and chugging Monster Ultras because they don't have sugar and insulin is fucking expensive so don't get the beetus.
A boomer shooter is about speed, movement, quick aiming, tactical gun swapping, atmosphere, and once you get into the Build Engine era, an INCREDIBLE amount of shit talking. But we're not here to talk about the old shit, we're here to celebrate the new. So please allow me to introduce y'all to some of my favorites and hopefully we can help draw new people into this incredible resurgence of old school concepts married to new school tech and sensibilities.
Our Lords and Saviors
Ok, first off, this thread will be incomplete without a mention of Civvie 11's channel. I'd link GManLives but that guy is a fucking scrub who somehow played The Darkness and never figured out you could just bop the lights with your tentacles so I trust his opinion about as much as I trust John Carmack not to be a fucking hyper intelligent space alien.
https://www.youtube.com/c/Civvie11/
Here's his most popular video all about Doom 2016 if you need a taste of the delights within:
https://youtu.be/HCzOXAdwS9cThis guy is a great, hilarious, and thank fuck never edgy resource for old shooter discussions and roundups of new boomer shooter fun. If you're new to this genre this guy will learn you some good shit. To put it simply, he's such a voice for the community that people have started actively trolling him by including sewer levels in their new games to annoy him specifically and one of his characters has shown up in a few new games. Good dude, highly recommended.
The major champion of the renaissance, however, is Big fucking John himself, owner of everyone's favorite Twitter shitposting gaming company New Blood Entertainment, Dave Oshry. This guy first popped up in the Rise of the Triad reboot and then founded New Blood as a home for wacky shooter shit, wasting money on shitpost domain names (see: http://www.wehate.money ), posting about his good boi doggo, and actively promoting new boomer shooters he thinks are rad that aren't even produced by New Blood. I mention Oshry and New Blood because they were my start and I wanna use them as a segue to:
Literally just me drunkenly listing classics while I think about Modern Major General badly and drinking
Wolfenstein 3d, Doom, Duke Nukem 3d, Blood, Shadow Warrior, Blake Stone, Dark Forces, Heretic (Hexen sucks shit, avoid it!), Catacomb Abyss 3d, Rise of the Triad, Quake 1+2, lemme know what I missed while drinking!
Literally just me linking cool shit I've played
MANKIND IS DEAD
BLOOD IS FUEL
HELL IS FULL
WELCOME TO FUCKING ULTRAKILL
https://youtu.be/3WXPTXfuo3II ain't even gonna try and explain this fucking nonsense. All I'm gonna say is you can parry your own shotgun blast to make the blast go faster and fucking explode. YOU CAN PARRY YOUR OWN SHOTGUN BLAST TO MAKE IT GO FASTER AND EXPLODE. Do you like the idea of DMC Gunslinger style on every upper known to mankind simultaneously as a FPS? Do you like the idea of being healed by literally getting bathed in the blood of your enemies? Play fucking Ultrakill. It's prolly the most exciting of all the Boomer Shooters out there and I can't wait till the full release.
Demo is on the Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1229490/ULTRAKILL/
https://youtu.be/Jf77Zql2ZVMProject Warlock is so fucking retro it reverts back to Catacomb Abyss 3D/Wolf 3D territory only it has SO MANY GOD DAMN WEAPONS AND HIGH SPEED DUMB SHIT. It was literally made by an 18 year old wrapping up high school in case you're a newbie game designer and wanna feel inadequate. What's rad about this game besides every gun feeling like a thermonuclear bomb that somehow stays relevant to end game is that it's weirdly a great game for shooter newbies as well as boomer vets. I beat it first try on hard and had a great time but because it's more of a Catacomb/Wolf throwback it means totally new players can learn tactics and weapon switching the way we learned as kids. Now, if you can't pick out the obvious upgrades you might struggle a hair more but, I mean, come on, because this is a literal high schooler's project so it's honestly fine. But it's still damn fun and visually great if you're into that super old style. There's a demo on Steam and the full game is only 12 bucks. You seriously can't go wrong here.
Demo is on the Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/893680/Project_Warlock/
They've got Project Warlock 2 in the oven that takes PW1 and refines it heavily while also moving the style up a bit in the shooter lineage. Demo available at https://store.steampowered.com/app/1640300/Project_Warlock_II/ and might be more your jam!
https://youtu.be/LbqNRDPd5_kImagine if Quake was actually interesting and that's Dusk. Go fast, shoot mans, and try not to die in this rednecky culty hellhole with a huge easter egg at the end if you're a Blood fan. It starts simple but...goes...places. You'll see and I ain't gonna spoil shit.
Literally just 20 bucks on Steam and is currently one of the pinnacles of the Boomer Shooter resurgence: https://store.steampowered.com/app/519860/DUSK/
https://youtu.be/JBlTTW3RRtwYO DAWG I HEARD YOU LIKED WEIRD HERETIC SHIT
Amid Evil is a game where you're a wizard or some shit like that that needs to save a bunch of very diverse worlds. Did I mention this genre isnt't terribly narratively complicated? Also you have a staff that shoots whole ass planets and when supercharged shoots stars because fuck you that's why. Another major player in the Boomer Shooter resurgence and also the third New Blood Interactive game in this thread. Plz notice me Oshry sempai
Demo and game is available on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/673130/AMID_EVIL/
Conclusion
This thread is sloppy as shit, at least to my standards, but hopefully ya'll are interested. I have more recommendations but I'll refrain from crowding the OP with waaaay too much stuff. Let's here what you've been playing and what your recommendations are! I've got waaay more I can throw y'alls way if anyone is interested!
TOGSolid on
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I would think a boomer shooter would be more like asteroids or Galaga.
As far as classics go, if Quake era games still count - purposefully cutting things off at the release of Half-life, because while there were still probably games that qualified after most either went full arena shooter or focused more on single player with half-life like elements by that point:
Hexen 2
Heretic 2
Unreal
SIN
Shogo: MAD
Jedi Knight
3d movement / six degrees of freedom games:
Descent
descent 2
Forsaken
I grew up too young late and Mormon-y to experience the true good ol days but I did get my hands on Chex quest as a young one, IT COUNTS, LAY OFF.
I grabbed doom, doom 2 and quake for switch because portable and this semester has a real fucked schedule, so here’s hoping I can see what that shits all about soon.
And FUCK YEAH amid evil, love that shit. Excited to see what the upcoming dlc is all about.
They're called boomer shooters 'cause it's fun and funny.
Getting hung up on the term and its accuracy is both missing the point and also really boring.
When I think of a classic shooter the main things I think of are fast player movement, robust players (typically not one shottable or only one shottable only with sniper weapons) and an emphasis on pickups rather than recovering weapons or health directly from killed enemies.
Also, Dusk rules like nobody's business. I haven't beaten it, but it's a real joy discover all of its hidden intricacies and string them together into speedrunning strats.
Also for those that don't know Dave Oshry is the CEO of New Blood Interactive who produced Dusk and Amid Evil which did a lot to supercharge the shooter resurgence. Hence, the OP's title where I'm also poking fun at myself for being just shy of 40 and talking about old school style shooters and actual old school shooters.
ANYWAY
BACK TO THE SHOW
*assorted carnival music*
This is one of the ones I'm most excited about:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/964800/Prodeus/
Just, holy fuck that's gibby and chunky as shit and looks like the sort of run and gun gorefest I absolutely love. I don't really like to buy Early Access games tho so I've just been staring at Ultrakill and this one like PLZ GIB NAOW
I've been seeing these, for some unearthly reason, explode in popularity as of late. I mean I love em, just out of all the things I thought would become a sub-genre this is not one of them.
Another one I've been excited about is Cultic. It's pretty much selling itself as "what if Blood took itself a tiny bit more seriously" and the demo that was released for the steam demo-fest this summer was outstanding:
It could use a little more zazz for the final release (enemies are notably quiet, for one thing) but that demo was a grand ol time.
That and also the game autosaved me while I was taking killing damage gunfire and that's not on.
In classic Doom, and for that matter, Doom II, an entirely viable strategy is to familiarize yourself with a level layout, find a point where you can have your back against the wall and a convenient escape route, and just shoot the shit out of a wave of a couple dozen demons as they spawn in/pop up from concealed platforms, etc. There are exceptions, but there are always exceptions (a boss arena that is only one large area, and your own spawnpoint is in the middle of it, for example).
It's absolutely a way to play Doom, especially if you were only using a keyboard, in 1993. Not the best way, and it basically doesn't work on Nightmare, but for the rest of us mere mortals in Hurt me Plenty and Ultra-Violent, it's definitely feasible with a little planning in the large majority of maps, especially given how much architecture boils down to "patterned corridors".
You can't do this that often in Doom 2016. There's too much "Oh, here's a bunch of platforms you need to double-jump across," and the rooms are larger in general (by comparison, you literally could not jump in Doom without rocket assistance). You can't do it at all in Doom Eternal, or at least it feels that way, with the game adhering much more dogmatically to a specific number of engagements with a group of enemies, and virtually nothing in between them (unlike classic Doom, where you can always expect to run into an imp or two just moving through a corridor). I know some people prefer that change, but it was one of my biggest complaints about DE.
Quake, quite obviously, is very different. It plays completely differently than Doom did, or at least it feels that way to me.
In a lot of modern shooters you couldn’t have an enemy like the ogre that gets spammed like it is in quake because you just don’t move fast enough to reliably dodge area of effect attacks. In old doom you can sit and turret at times, quake thats a big no-no, but in old doom you do have the tools to play it quake-style with dodging and running around if you need to. I felt like doom 2016 it was harder to do that even if it was fast pace because you are still very limited by player speed which is very low compared to old doom and quake.
Dusk is great and Amid Evil legit has some of the best weapons I've ever seen in a shooter and a campaign structure that does not wear out it's welcome. Can't wait for that DLC. Project Warlock was simple but loads of fun and the sequel looks impressive in that it's translating the 2D art to 3D very faithfully.
The recent Quake remaster was also very good. The changes they made to Nightmare mode were interesting and add a bit of challenge to the game, and the slightly updated 3D models look great without looking like they don't belong. Insanely good value for $10, especially given it includes both original expansion, the map pack put out by Machine Games a few years back, and a whole new campaign.
The Doom/Doom II/Doom 64 re-releases are pretty solid too, and include a lot of fan releases, including John Romero's new Doom episode, Sigil. John Romeo is apparently working on Sigil II for Doom 2, so that should be awesome.
I am honestly much less charitable to like everything else in quake. I ended up not really liking quake all that much
Like I really like the quake gameplay but am just tired of the same weapons and enemies over and over. It doesn’t really help that the first few levels of dimensions of the past have felt very paint by numbers. “Here’s a hub with corridors that lead to keys.” “Here’s a doom 2 section with a bunch of enemies in a box across a bridge to shoot at you” etc.
But also not enough that they don't still mesh with the rest of the game.
They're polished up just enough so they look like how you remember them, not what they actually looked like. Although the originals are still available as an option.
Steam | XBL
Now on to dimensions of the machine..
I felt the same until I played it. The movement in the quake series is unreal (ha!). I still remember brain-melting rounds of Q3A with people just flying, shooting and speeding everywhere with milliseconds dividing death and domination.
As a side note while Elite Force 1 did pretty well Elite force 2 was a commercial flop (despite being similar in quality to the first game), as enterprise and Star Trek Nemesis had just come out in the previous two years and killed the Star Trek brand dead. This actually led to Activision sueing paramount with the argument that their shitty treatment of the Star Trek franchise killed the game. They probably had a point. Unfortunately the poor performance of the game (which was actually quite good) also killed Ritual financially as a game developer.
Oh, Q3A was a ton of fun. I've got zero hate for that game and spent a lot of time in it, CPMA, and the general mod scene. I mean just the first Quake.
FINALLY
Time to piss on her grave virtually.
The first quake is basically just quake 3 with no railgun, worse graphics, and single player though?
..man, the enemies in the game are spongy as hell. Or the weapons are weak. Taking 4-5 double barrel shotgun blasts to down a ogre is a bit tiring.
Also Scourge of Armagon is a weird expansion. Like, level-wise is it's a welcome evolution of Quake, but difficulty-wise they just decided to throw hordes of Shamblers and Vores at the player. It's funny two, because while two of the new enemies are definitely more of the "fuck you" difficulty. (They added the fucking drones from Duke Nukem 3D. I see you, former 3D Realms devs.) and the main new enemy, the gremlins, are the least threatening creatures in the entire game, except maybe the dogs. You can mow down hordes of them without taking any damage.
Also the boss was trivially easy to get stuck on a pillar.
To be fair, in 1996 I just moved to Southeast Alaska and internet there was a little....iffy and it took a few years for us to get anything usable for internet gaming so I never got to play Q1 MP. I'm sure that would have been fun but I'm judging Q1 purely on its SP component just cause lolinternet. My bad for not stating that earlier.
The movement is completely different between the two games. Weapon-wise, Quake1 is all about Rocket Launcher/Lightning Gun with other guns having very limited use while Quake3 is rail dominant and the other guns have more use. The shotgun in Quake3, for example, is still fairly useful. The starting gun, the machine gun in Quake3, is ridiculously powerful while the boomstick/single shotgun in Quake1 is nearly useless. Quake1 has instant weapon switch, Quake3 doesn't. Quake1 has a tiered armored system, Quake3 doesn't. In Quake 1, the red armor reduces far more damage (and allows a much higher total armor value) then the yellow, and light blue armors. In Quake3, the only difference in armors is the amount they give you, which is 50 for yellow, 100 for red, 5 for shards (and some mods added the jacket from Quake2 which adds 25). Quake1 you also spawn with 100 health vs. Quake3 which is 125 (i believe), so you can't get insta-killed on spawn by any weapon.
So yeah, there are quite a few differences...
If you think Scourge is bad for Shamblers and Vores I got some bad news about the Dimension levels…
Eventually though you get used to them and they aren’t much harder to put down than ogres and hell knights. I’m a lot more scared of a surprise pair of fiends than a pair of vores.
Archviles can still fuck off tho
EDIT: Mild hint - At some point you're gonna get to a room with no apparent way out. Turns out you need to shoot the flags to proceed.
Beat Thatcher's TechBase:
Overall I had a pretty good time riiight up until the big ending. It's one big map and at one point it double backs in a way you weren't expecting which impressed the hell out of me. The level design was fun with some neat thematic areas and generally the wad was good times just...yeah...that ending:
Only complaint is it would have been nice to either add a new weapon or two or some more enemy types (or even just being in some scorpions and wraiths from the mission packs) but thats really just a quibble.
That Cathedral though…. And a space level that doesn’t suck…. And the boss fight was a cool new take on a classic.