Best "boomer shooters" you have played?

Hyperion 2.0

Hyperion 2.0

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I've been going on a bit of a retro FPS (or "boomer shooter") binge lately, and I was looking for more recommendations, or just some general discussion on the subgenre. I know boomer shooter is a vague and kind of annoying term, but meh, it's what we have. Some of the recent ones I've played and really enjoyed are Dusk, Turbo Overkill, Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal (they count right?). Anyone else?
 
You must absolutely play Ashes 2063. It's awesome, and it's free on ModDB.

Selaco looks amazing for all that it's not actually out yet.

CULTIC is awesome, can recommend.

Zorch is really good, and also just five Euros. What else do you get for five Euros, a couple of chocolate bars?

The Last Exterminator is another that just has a demo, but what's there looks exceptionally good.

Hedon is a bit iffier. It's really good, but has a heavier focus on navigating mazelike maps and solving intricate puzzles which gets to be kind of a lot.

Supplice is pretty cool, though I'll admit I've only played the demo.

Beyond Sunset isn't finished, but what's there is pretty decent.

Fashion Police Squad is pretty funny, and also really good.

Hopefully at least one of these will be to your taste.
 
Damn, Selaco comes recommended by John Romero himself! I'll definitely check out the demo, and the others also.
 
Hyperion 2.0 said:
Damn, Selaco comes recommended by John Romero himself! I'll definitely check out the demo, and the others also.
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As well it should, considering the obvious exceptional quality presented by the demo. The fact that it's made in GZDoom is almost unbelievable. Definitely check out Ashes 2063; it's a much better game than a lot of AAA releases and is completely free.

CULTIC and Zortch are the standouts among the rest, but I think that the others are also worth looking at.
 
I'll say that Selaco, which has significant inspiration from FEAR, is a lot less of a boomer shooter than, say, Doom Eternal or Turbo Overkill. Very impressive and fun game, but ranging a lot further in style.

A couple that haven't been mentioned yet:

Warhammer 40k: Boltgun is, unsurprisingly, a 40k-themed boomer shooter. It's kind of shocking we never got one of these back in the day! It's fast, fun, and extremely nice looking. It runs the risk of getting repetitive, in large part because it didn't really crack the code of making bosses a fun break in the gameplay, but it's a blast for a while and outside of those encounters. Despite a lack of boss variety, the range of regular enemies is great, with several that hit notes I've not seen in other boomers.

Prodeus is a gorgeous voxel visual feast. Gameplay-wise, my knock on it is that it hews too close to Doom 2. The majority of the enemies can be mapped one-to-one with a Doom equivalent, which makes it feel more like a mod than some actual Doom mods. On the other hand, the weapon selection is great, the official levels are (mostly) great -- very secret heavy, which I love -- and it's the only one of these I've seen that really embraces the mapping community. It held mapping contests even in early access and continues to do so, with great results.

Project Warlock is more of a Wolfenstein clone than a Doom clone, which makes it feel weird and cramped, but within those confines it's good fun. Not sure if 2 opened up verticality at all; I haven't had the chance to try it yet.
 
Great recs! Another one I've tried, and which is widely recommended, is Ultrakill. It's fun but to be honest I'm monumentally bad at it - I can play Doom Eternal on Ultraviolence but I have to play Ultrakill on the lowest difficulty setting. It just requires way more precision aiming and twitch reflexes than I'm used to.
 
Unreal Tournament (i.e. UT1999) or original Unreal.

Edit: Maybe not quite as boomer shooter, but i enjoyed Binary Domain greatly. Which could be described as follows, what if author of Yakuza series made a dystopian Gears of War like shooter.
 
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Binary Domain looks really cool, but when I tried the demo I found that it apparently requires that you use a live microphone while playing, which I don't have.
 
Ion Fury is the GOAT but the DLC, Aftershock, was fucking abysmal.

I wanted to like Boltgun a lot more than I did but it was pretty rad overall.

Forgive Me Father was good but very, very poorly optimized and lagged a lot.
 
I... think the most recent one I've played was Perfect Dark? On an actual N64, better than twenty years ago. If it counts? I think it counts. The farsight was a hoot.

Probably would say Doom 2 is still the best I've played, for what it matters considering I haven't played anything too young to drink :V

NobodyImportant said:
I've been trying to play the original Unreal, do you know how I could? My understanding is that the developer's removed it from storefronts
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Yeah, from a quick lookabout, if there's a legal way to get it (Unreal Gold, probably more preferably) outside of old CDs off ebay or whatev', I can't find it. Trivially accessible through other means, though, heh.
 
Grey Rook said:
Binary Domain looks really cool, but when I tried the demo I found that it apparently requires that you use a live microphone while playing, which I don't have.
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It does not require a microphone per se, since you can give your team mates canned responses, those are pretty standard and obviously limited, but it does get a job done.
Having a mic lets you talk to your teammates, game recognizes quite a lot of phrases and every teammate has a unique response to them.
 
ULTRAKILL is amazing - get it if you can. It's the lovechild of Doom and DMC, with the best of both worlds. It's still early access too - so there's even more content yet to come
 
Flay_Wind said:
It does not require a microphone per se, since you can give your team mates canned responses, those are pretty standard and obviously limited, but it does get a job done.
Having a mic lets you talk to your teammates, game recognizes quite a lot of phrases and every teammate has a unique response to them.
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I thought more of the assorted chats that happen between fights where you have to respond within like three seconds and I could never figure out what button I was supposed to push. Eh, no matter.
 
I highly recommend Blood. It's one of the Big Three Build Engine games from back in the day (the other two being Duke Nukem and Shadow Warrior). Protip: don't start out on "Well Done" difficulty. Go with "Lightly Broiled". Blood: Fresh Supply has a custom difficulty option (Made To Order) that also allows you to tweak stuff as you like.

VOMITOREUM is a GZDoom game, but it's more of a first-person Metroidvania than a boomer shooter. I enjoyed it, but it's very much a niche thing. Soft recommend from me.

Project Warlock is also great fun. Has limited RPG elements, and a weapon upgrade system that is basically choosing between two specializations for the gun. They tend to be pretty awesome, the double barrel shotgun upgrades are a choice between a double barrel flaming flak cannon and a quad-barrel shotgun. It's dope. Strong recommend.
 
I'm not sure I'd recommend Ion Fury. From what I hear, the gameplay is great, but the developers might be pieces of shit - transphobic and homophobic. They apparently had a bunch of shit in the game they'd promised to remove, but after getting review bombed for 'censorship' by The Gamers, walked back their promise and kept it in. They'd promised to donate $10,000 to an LGBTQ anti-suicide charity as well, but I can't find out if they did or not.

Ultimately, it's up to you if you want to reward actions and companies like that with your business.

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Onto less shitty topics;

Dusk is a very good game in the style of Quake. Very much cream of the crop. The only downside I'd say it has is a couple of the weapons look too similar and there's no BFG equivalent to round out the arsenal. Aside from that, great, fluid movement, good combat, escalating challenge and visuals.
No hitscanners either, which tend to be personal bugbears of mine.

Hedon was enjoyable, and they added a whole nother game length to it after I bought it, though admittedly I never finished that. It's good, making more realistic locations, I guess, that aim to feel more like places where people actually lived and worked - which adds something, even if it means as pure game levels they might not be quite so smooth. Also lots of orc women with sixpacks for those inclined.

MoogleEmpMog said:
Warhammer 40k: Boltgun is, unsurprisingly, a 40k-themed boomer shooter. It's kind of shocking we never got one of these back in the day! It's fast, fun, and extremely nice looking. It runs the risk of getting repetitive, in large part because it didn't really crack the code of making bosses a fun break in the gameplay, but it's a blast for a while and outside of those encounters. Despite a lack of boss variety, the range of regular enemies is great, with several that hit notes I've not seen in other boomers.
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To add on to what MoogleEmpMog is saying, Boltgun is closer to Serious Sam in its gameplay still than Doom.
Does Serious Sam count as a boomer shooter? It only came out... jesus, 23 years ago.

I enjoyed it, but I never felt any inclination to replay it once I finished it, and some of the bosses are more frustrating than fun to be honest - it doesn't have any unique bosses, they're all reused, and the Lords of Change have a LOS attack that hits constantly and instantly with not much warning. The guns are fun, but the armour system never seemed all that meaningful for the enemies.
A solid 6/10 IMO.
 
MoogleEmpMog said:
Warhammer 40k: Boltgun is, unsurprisingly, a 40k-themed boomer shooter. It's kind of shocking we never got one of these back in the day!
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... y'know, I missed this earlier, but just to check, is this oblique commentary on quality or just being unaware Fire Warrior existed? Boltgun wasn't the first 40k game of that style, but it's pretty certainly the best, ha.
 
Flay_Wind said:
Maybe not quite as boomer shooter, but i enjoyed Binary Domain greatly. Which could be described as follows, what if author of Yakuza series made a dystopian Gears of War like shooter.
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Binary Domain is definitely not a 'boomer shooter' ... however it is really good and everyone should play it, especially now that that it's 80% off on Steam.

Frumple said:
... y'know, I missed this earlier, but just to check, is this oblique commentary on quality or just being unaware Fire Warrior existed? Boltgun wasn't the first 40k game of that style, but it's pretty certainly the best, ha.
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It's actually kind of funny, Fire Warrior was considered something of a throwback even when it was new. I remember a review at the time that basically called it quaint because it had colour coded card key based gameplay.

Anyway my recommendation is Devil Daggers, which also maybe stretches the definition a little but which I think is a very enjoyable pure experience, especially if you just like to challenge yourself.
 
Turbo Overkill is awesome, but the last few levels kind of drag and Maw isn't as compelling a villain as Syn. And I still don't understand how you're supposed to counter the Maw clones that start showing up in the third act. But that aside, yeah, it's very cool and I can recommend it.

Fire Warrior is kind of crap, to be honest. The guns lack impact, the art direction is muddy and directionless, the enemies don't really react to being shot until they drop dead, and while you have a shield, it can only take a few shots before breaking and leaving you with just your (admittedly fairly robust) health to take hits. It's a Halo clone which isn't nearly as good as what it's copying, and Halo wasn't that great to start with.

Dusk is cool. Good guns, enemies are instantly recognizable and have distinct ways of fighting, the art and level design works, the music is good... it's just a good game, and well worth checking out if you're into that kind of gameplay.

Hedon is really cool. Very well done, especially for something that apparently began as a worldbuilding exercise for the author's OC. The enemies are distinct and recognizable, the guns are memorable and effective, the level and art design are really good, the writing is... okay. The first arc is great. The second is a major improvement in most ways. But the puzzles ultimately caused me to give up on the game because I could not keep track of where I was supposed to go or what I was supposed to do when I got there. If your memory is better than mine (which doesn't really take much) and you're better at solving the game's puzzles, you'd probably enjoy it more than I did.
 
Grey Rook said:
Turbo Overkill is awesome, but the last few levels kind of drag and Maw isn't as compelling a villain as Syn. And I still don't understand how you're supposed to counter the Maw clones that start showing up in the third act. But that aside, yeah, it's very cool and I can recommend it.
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Yeah, by the time you're fighting Superior Maw, then Ultimate Maw, then super duper duper duper Maw I started to wonder if the game was just fucking with me, lol.
 
For me, the big standout is Amid Evil, which did get a passing mention in here earlier. I'm a huge fan of its general aesthetic, both with its out-there fantasy stylings and the way it melds modern lighting and particle effects with chunky textures and models. At first glance it looks like well-executed if fairly straightforward fantasy fare, but sitting in its back pocket are some really staggeringly creative and gorgeous environments. (Not to mention I generally consider it to be one of Andrew Hulshult's best soundtracks.)

It's also got an expansion that was...honestly one of the best things I played in the year it released? I loved the base game but it definitely feels like a game that went through a long early access period, with a gradual but noticeable increase in quality as the episodes progress where you can notice that the dev team got better at making the game. The Black Labyrinth just maintains the standard of quality from base game's later episodes throughout, and comes with some fantastic new vistas and setpieces.

I can also pretty easily recommend Wrath: Aeon of Ruin, which itself just left early access pretty recently. That game's main draw is that it's made using a modified Quake engine, and in terms of both tone and design it feels a lot like a followup to the original Quake. Its levels are huge, which could be a bit of a sticking point if you prefer your shooters quick and snappy, but personally I'm loving the way your path tends to circle back on itself through a central hub in each level. It's also got some fun movement, with a melee weapon that gives a huge horizontal boost to your speed when you do a charge attack.
 
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