I've been thinking about making this thread for a long time, and the Best of Boomer Shooters Bundle at Humble has pushed me to do it now:
Previously, I had made a DOOM Classic Complete Mod-WAD-And-Kill-All thread, for explaining to people how to play classic DOOM games with modern source ports, as well as playing modern mods like Brutal Doom.
Lately, I have been on a sustained boomer shooter kick, both the classics and the modern throwbacks.
In the past few months, I played through the entirety of Duke Nukem 3D + expansions, Shadow Warrior + expansions, DUSK, Amid Evil, and the new Quake remaster. I'm currently playing through Blood + expansions, before I jump into Ion Fury.
I have a large backlog of other classic and modern shooters to play through, which I'll share in this thread. (Especially setup steps for running old ones on modern systems).
If there's enough interest, I've considered doing a Boomer Shooter Club, similar to the CRPG, JRPG, and Adventure game clubs we have around here.
If you like boomer shooters and you have never watched Civvie 11's YouTube Channel, you should probably rectify that.
Ooh, project warlock looks interesting. I loved Hexen back in the day.
I really enjoyed Project Warlock. Mostly great map design and fun weapon variety. They got the ammo scarcity balance perfect as well.
Ooh, project warlock looks interesting. I loved Hexen back in the day.
I enjoyed Heretic but never got far in Hexen, with its incessant switch hunting puzzles.
Finished my playthrough of Blood + expansions on Well Done, 100%-ing the Steam Achievements.
Man, is Cryptic Passage a step down from the Monolith developed campaigns. I mean that should be obvious from the other Sunstorm expansions, but it never bothered me in the other games. Maybe because Blood on Well Done difficulty is brutal, and cheap stuff like monster closets hits harder than in Duke.
With that, I've now 100%'d all three of the remasters for the Build trinity (Duke 3D, Blood, Shadow Warrior).
Jumped into Ion Fury and played through about 1/3rd of it today. Playing on Ultra Viscera (ie. "Hard"), which feels like a cake walk after Blood. Starting to think I should have gone for Maximum Fury, but the blurb in the difficulty settings made it sound like an unfair difficulty, like DOOM's Nightmare or Blood's Extra Crispy.
I'm enjoying IF so far, but damn, does everything have to be so dark? The render distance seems unnecessarily short, and targets feel small and easily blended into the background. I had to lower the default FOV because spotting targets was just too hard.
Finished up Ion Fury. Will definitely play on Maximum Fury next time, really didn't find myself in too many precarious positions. Spent most of the game maxed out with 4 medkits, bypassing extra ones that I couldn't carry. I think the game could have used with a little bit of tightening up - at least one of the underground/sewer chapters could have been cut entirely and the game would have been better off overall for it. The game threatened to be a bit of a slog during those sections, but then would open back up nicely after a scene change.
As far as I'm concerned, Ion Fury sits right alongside the Build engine "big three". I will absolutely be picking up the Aftershock expansion when it releases. (Speaking of which, I see that expansion is adding a new, 5th difficulty level, which I take as admission that the hardest difficulties in IF weren't as hard as their descriptions portrayed them to be).
Still wish the IF draw distance wasn't so short. It was really in those underground areas where it was the worst, although some of the big open outdoor sections were second worst. Inside buildings, though, the sight lines were rarely long enough to run too far afoul of the draw distance limit.
On to some more retro FPS action. I see Nightmare Reaper just left Early Access, but first, I'm going to give Project Warlock a shot.
I didn't know if Project Warlock, a Wolfenstein-style, 90-degree wall, no-verticality shooter could measure up after playing all those Build engine games.
It does. It really really does. It is way more fun than it looked.
I'm playing on Hard difficulty, which I gather was a post-launch addition, ie. "Hardcore difficulty but with more than one life". The fast monsters are what make the game shine even with the simplified level structure. You have to react fast, and the feedback feels really good. I imagine the game would be boring on the lower difficulties, unless that's the level of your reaction times.
Finished Project Warlock. Fun game that did not outstay its welcome.
Hard difficulty is definitely a must for FPS veterans. It never really got all that hard. In fact it wasn't until the last episode until enemies made me actually need to use the higher tier weapons. I played almost the entire Egypt episode using only the crossbow with the piercing upgrade. I just picked up the bolts after each combat encounter and never had to worry about ammo.
The final boss took a stupid amount of ammo to take down. Most of that fight was just me running for ammo. Although now that I sit here, I realize that I never used the "BFG" style gun in that fight. I bet that would have helped!
Didn't really use spells except the one that replenishes some ammo, which came in handy in the final episode.
The perk where dead enemies drop mana-replenishing souls was useless, because the souls disappear so fast that it's hard to ever collect them. I wish the perk had mentioned that, I would have taken something else.
The speed perk was a must-have. Definitely for the final boss.
My weapon upgrade choices were largely the right ones. The magnum (more pistol damage), autoloader (semi-auto shotgun), fire lance (flamethrower becomes a fire beam weapon that does STUPID levels of damage, best weapon in the game), and the railgun (sniper-style laser gun) were all invaluable, and I don't think their counterparts would have been as good. The quad-barrel for double shotgun was really great for a while, but it lacked enough punch to be useful in the endgame. Spamming the auto-shotty to clear lower tier enemies was a better use for that ammo.
I finished the game with 20-some lives in reserve. The only time I died more than once was the very first boss, whose final form gives him too much speed to just chase you down and do contact damage. If I were to play again, I would take the speed perk as soon as possible. My only death in the final episode was falling into lava - had to be careful with the running speed in that episode.
On to Nightmare Reaper!
Started and finished DUSK this month mainly because this thread got me hankering for one of these types of shooters.
I almost bailed on it. Multiple times. Admittedly, the graphical style didn't appeal to me even before playing it, but playing DUSK, which seemed to be running on an engine halfway between id tech 1 and Duke 3d era Build (or maybe TekWar era?), with many of the weaknesses that implies, didn't help much. The early enemies didn't interest me, and the "took damage" sound is just awful. The gameplay was fast though, especially when I wasn't stuck on the environment, and the game was highly praised. In fact, it was decent enough to keep me playing.
And then, halfway through episode 2, you meet the Infernal Machine. It feels like this is the point when some top tier level designers came into the office, took the reigns and pumped out some top rate stages. Among those that left my jaw on the floor were The Escher Labs, Blood and Bone, Blasphemy, Homecoming, and As Above So Below. I loved the unique puzzles many of them introduced, and the new (and fun!) abilities and weapons really improved my opinion of things as well.
Especially in the third episode is when the story, which up until this point has been paper-thin, suddenly really gets fleshed out. I wouldn't call it great overall, but it does have a surprise or two up its sleeve.
I'm certainly glad that I stuck with DUSK, as it turned out to be a pretty good game overall. I just can't shake the feeling that it might be an even better game if most of the first half of the game had either been reworked or just outright cut.
I have a hard time relating to that, because I'm one of those people that hold DUSK in extremely high regard.
but playing DUSK, which seemed to be running on an engine halfway between id tech 1 and Duke 3d era Build (or maybe TekWar era?), with many of the weaknesses that implies, didn't help much.
DUSK runs on Unity. So it's a modern engine. I think if you go fire up TekWar right now, the difference would be much more obvious. 
They scuffed it up a bit to make it feel more like a Quake-era engine, but even still, it feels like a Quake source port engine rather than the old 1996 Quake engine release. Playing Quake with non-interpolated enemy animations... is rough. One of those things I blocked out of memory.
I wouldn't really want anything cut from DUSK. The first episode is the weakest, but it was still strong enough to hook me.
DUSK only took me about 9 hours to finish, so nothing stuck around long enough for me to really get tired of it. It's a different story compared to Nightmare Reaper, which I'm playing now. I have about 18 hours of playtime, and I'm still finishing up episode 2 (of 3). It's fun... but it's a lot, and there's a lot of optional content that I haven't engaged much with (the Pokemon minigame, the space shooter minigame, the arenas, etc). There are definitely chunks of this that could have been removed that I wouldn't miss.
I played a bunch of Fashion Police Squad tonight and had a great time. Not much of a boomer shooter guy but the theme caught my eye and I personally find it hilarious. On the "medium" difficulty it got pretty challenging by the end of the seventh mission. Not sure how long it's supposed to be but there are optional challenge missions, and you can replay missions to find secrets, enemies you missed, etc.
I have Fashion Police Squad (FPS, I see what you guys did there) on my wishlist. Looking forward to picking it up sometime.
Not sure if this is the right thread, but I just watched the first three sections of this video on an incredible DooM II map/mod.
Probably the most impressive thing I've ever seen in that engine!
Absolutely the right thread. This video has been popping up in my YouTube recommendations for at least a week. I'll have to sit down and watch it.
Warhammer 40k: Boltgun is out and I'm enjoying it so far.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2...
The beginning is pretty easy and then the difficulty ramps up when you get into huge waves of enemies in arena set pieces. I'm less than 2 hours in and have died a few times during these cleansing waves.
The experience is similar to Project Warlock - old graphics but a polished feel overall. I'm looking forward to playing more.
I played some HROT a few months ago then shelved it to play other things. Recently I got back into it and finished it. Really good. Maybe not as good as Dusk but in the same ballpark.
Please tell me the end boss was supposed to be a Putin reference because it seemed like one
Some others on my Boomer Shooter backlog I have installed and will try next:
- Deadlink
- Nightmare Reaper
- Viscerafest
- Forgive Me Father
- The Citadel
- Impaler
- GRAVEN
- Ion Fury
I tend to play ones that work well on Steam Deck first.
I played a lot of Project Warlock on Steam Deck but haven't finished it. Not sure I'll go back. It overstayed it's welcome.
I've tried Hedon Bloodrite and couldn't get into it but I suspect it's worth another try when I'm in the right headspace.
Warhammer 40k: Boltgun is on my wishlist but I haven't jumped because my backlog is still so long.
Greetings!
Going down boomer shooter checklist in my Steam account is my only way lately to at least symbolically decrease my pile of shame. I've completed two in the last year: Dread Templar and POSTAL Brain Damaged.
I am currently slogging through Deadlink... I think like it...
It has fairly well worked out mechanic, but I just don't appreciate the luck-dependent random boost and trait system between the areas. I'm a creature of habit and I prefer predictable outcomes. But, such is life with rogue-lites...
I made it to what I think (hope?) is the final boss tonight for the first time, and failed of course. I am certain I'll beat it eventually, but it will take a bit more time.
I am getting a bit long in the tooth for this level of snap-aiming...
I played a lot of Project Warlock on Steam Deck but haven't finished it. Not sure I'll go back. It overstayed it's welcome.
I had this problem with Nightmare Reaper.
I knocked out Project Warlock in 8 hours. I'm 21 hours into Nightmare Reaper and still have most of Act 3 to go through.
It's so bad, the game was updated with Redux mode, which cuts the game length to about a third, and ramps up the progression to compensate. It's meant for re-plays, but IMO that's probably the way the game should be played now. The game gets so tedious after a while. Especially since we're talking about procedurally generated levels.
pandasuit wrote:I played a lot of Project Warlock on Steam Deck but haven't finished it. Not sure I'll go back. It overstayed it's welcome.
I had this problem with Nightmare Reaper.
I knocked out Project Warlock in 8 hours. I'm 21 hours into Nightmare Reaper and still have most of Act 3 to go through.
It's so bad, the game was updated with Redux mode, which cuts the game length to about a third, and ramps up the progression to compensate. It's meant for re-plays, but IMO that's probably the way the game should be played now. The game gets so tedious after a while. Especially since we're talking about procedurally generated levels.
Younger me liked long games. Older me hates them and wants every game to be no longer than 10 hours but good enough that I’d replay it. I’ve replayed many of my favorite games multiple times.
Maybe I’ll put off Nightmare Reaper for a bit and only do the redux mode. Thanks for the heads up.
Are there any good boomer shooters that are more than just run-real-fast-and-kill-everything-that-moves?
Something with a story and some light puzzles? Think Dark Forces instead of Doom.
Are there any good boomer shooters that are more than just run-real-fast-and-kill-everything-that-moves?
Something with a story and some light puzzles? Think Dark Forces instead of Doom.
Hedon and, to a lesser degree, Nightmare Reaper both come to mind.
Also, Dark Forces itself, which recently finally received a source port, making it no longer stuck in the DOSBox world. I have been waiting for this for a LONG time, but haven't fired it up yet.
The Turok remasters also bear mentioning. Being unshackled from the N64 controller made those games come alive IMO.
The immersive sim genre is having a resurgence, but when they go that far in the story/puzzles/mechanics direction, they no longer really qualify as boomer shooters. But I see the boomer shooter and the immersive sim revivals as two sides of the same coin.
Hedon maybe?
Legion beat me to it.
If you read this thread, you should probably play MyHouse.wad, the DOOM II level released earlier this year.
Refrain from searching for stuff about it, at least before you try it. The link above is to the original forum post releasing the WAD. But you can explore the stuff in the Google Drive link from the forum post, particularly the Journal
EDIT: Somehow I missed AUs_TBirD's post above, when scrolling through to check if it had been posted before. I knew I had seen it somewhere around here.
Has anyone played Severed Steel?
Has anyone played Severed Steel?
It's been on my wishlist for a while, and I know they added a roguelite mode post-launch.
Alright, I've cracked and purchased it.
Has anyone played Severed Steel?
Yup, very chaotic and fun!
Thanks both. It does feel like my kinda thing.
Edit: I just realised this said doesn’t instead of does! Corrected.
Finally getting around to throwing myself into Prodeus. I've played the first level like a half-dozen times, due to savegames getting lost for one reason or another (I truly don't understand their cloud saves, and it seems like the prompt for creating a cloud vs. a local save doesn't even appear anymore when starting a campaign).
I've said before that DOOM 64 feels like it was an alternate timeline's DOOM 3. Prodeus (so far) feels like the 4th game in that lineage.
Quake II has now received a Nightdive remaster, similar to the Quake one a year ago... wait, two years ago, how is that possible?
Anyway, it's been released on consoles as well as PC game stores and Game Pass.
Just like with Quake, if you already owned Quake II on Steam or GOG, your license has been updated to the new release.
I've never played more than a few levels of the Quake II campaign. I played a ton of Quake II back in 1997/98, but it was almost all multiplayer. Quake II is one of my favorite deathmatch games ever, and I loved playing the Rocket Arena and Action Quake 2 mods.
I still got it.
Cool!
I despised QII's multiplayer back in the day but I thought the campaign had promise. Didn't actually play through it until more than a decade after its release and thought it was pretty decent.
I'll try to find time to check out the Q2 remaster. It was great fun playing DM and Q1ctf with actual people again for the few weeks that there were actual populated servers around thanks to that remaster.
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