So “boomer” just means anything that’s older than the person viewing it now? Boy they’ve sure killed off any power that word ever had lol
Its especially annoying in this case since it was the boomers who actively were trying to get DOOM/Quake/whatever banned. It is the GenX/older millennials who got off on shooters with any sense of urgency or movement.
It is on the level of deciding Taylor Swift’s sub-genre of music is “Kanye-core” because Kanye was a dick to her in the past.
It is the GenX/older millennials who got off on [that].
Doomer Shooters? /s
Certified zoomer here to explain. This boomer games tag is not about old games. It’s about games that match what a boomer thinks of as an FPS (as viewed probably by a zoomer). The top 3 most popular games are made in 2020, 2023, and 2023.
Basically if the game play for the game was the style of a pre 2000 shooter it would qualify for the tag. But it could have come out yesterday.
Boomers didn’t and still don’t think of video games at all unless they’re trying to moralise it and outlaw it.
Jack Thompson Is the perfect example of a boomer and their relationship with video games.
“Boomer” has changed meaning to “old” which I view as fine. Like the popular phrase “okay boomer” started out intentionally aimed at actual boomers and now it just refers to an outdated opinion or view. I don’t think anyone who says “boomer shooter” thinks that boomers played these.
So “in the style of” ?
I do think it’s interesting that the almost fundamental definition of being a boomer would be the significant dividing line of having access to video games growing up or not, but alas, culture is what culture is.
Can you give a longer form description?
Would this be like a “fixed perspective” fps ( like of doom or quake or Wolfenstein)?
A strict definition is hard. The first thing that came to my mind was ‘like quake’.
Fps games have come in phases. Most recently looter shooters, before that battle royals, before that hero shooters. And quite early in that chain you had boomer shooters.
Fixed pov would certainly be a step down that path but I wouldn’t call it a requirement. If Quake got a faithful remake with all the advancements of 2024 and non of the industry trends that’d be a boomer shooter.
If you made a brand new arena shooter with no classes and an array of ~8 distinct weapons (think one rocketlauncher, one SMG, one pistol etc.) laid across the map focused on something like TDM or KotH, that could be a boomer shooter.
It’s kind of like porn, you know it when you see it.
Would this be like a “fixed perspective” fps ( like of doom or quake or Wolfenstein)?
That’s what “first person” means in the context of videogames lol. That’s the FP in FPS
From my comment to the first guy:
They’re just shooters that are mechanically similar to old shooters like Quake and Doom, so you’re typically gonna have a mix of these traits:
- A wide range of weapons with unique uses (think rockets, railguns, shotguns, machine guns…)
- Chapters that you can complete in any order but the levels in them are completed linearly
- Colored keys to open colored doors
- A level-end screen when you reach the end of a level that tells you your completion time and what % of items/enemies are left
- And my favorite part, a lot of them have advanced movement techniques, which are usually identical to Quake (if not Quake 2/3) like bunnyhopping and rocket-jumping
It’s about games that match what a boomer thinks of as an FPS.
Can you give me an example?
I can’t think of anything in the last three years that have massively changed what an FPS looks like.
I think it is more just general trends.
Assume all dates are wrong because time has no meaning and what little grasp I had was destroyed by 2020-2022.
DOOM (1994? and especially Quake) era FPSes were very much about running into a room and murdering everything. Health was a resource and it was about combining reflxes with resource management skills. Also, the average game speed was actually really fast. I think someone did rough math and DOOM Guy was sprinting at like 90 MPH? Arena Shooters like Unreal Tournament came out of this where it was about different players seeing who can react fastest while managing those resources and the item spawns. And the level design was generally “a whole level of enemies” as it were.
Then, in the early 00s we started seeing a heavy rise in third person shooters. In large part because it was a way to show off character models and minimize the fine grain details on consoles. This, combined with REALLY shitty AI in FPSes like Iron Fist or whatever the alternate reality WW1 g ame was, very much birthed the “cover shooter” gameplay. Advance to a choke point, snipe enemies and funnel them, then hide. Lather, rinse, repeat. Which, like Half-Life before it, very much turned level design into " a series of rooms".
Which… led to Call of Duty (and, to a lesser extent, Medal of Honor before it) where the gameplay was exactly what. Stop, take out every enemy you can, and advance. Which also was because of greatly shortened time to kill and an emphasis on leaning and going prone. And multiplayer followed suit with generally much slower gameplay and a focus on “pre-firing” and “camping”. And level design became “a series of set pieces”
And… that more or less gets us to where we are today. Something like Infinite Warfare or even Titanfall are “fast” relative to Soap waiting in a shitter for the enemy to run past, but they are still REALLY slow relative to the “boomer shooters”.
In recent years (I guess since 2016?), we have seen a rise in something “else”. I like to think of them as “puzzle shooters” (and Bulletstorm was one but Bulletstorm was shit so let’s ignore it) and they are a lot closer to Hotline Miami. You are still treating every room as its own encounter, but those encounters are very frantic and more about adapting your plan depending on RNG and explosions.
Whereas the modern “boomer shooter” are almost exclusively quake-likes masquerading as doom-likes. But they are w hat we remember Quake to be, as opposed to Quake itself. Movement isn’t necessarily as fast as it used to be but it is still a LOT faster than a Call of Duty and is more about whole level encounters.
And as an aside, take a look at the Rise of the Triad remake like ten-ish years ago. That is the game which broke me and realized how slow CoD et al had become. That game is fast even compared to DOOM 2016 (and most DOOM Eternal encounters, but not all). Shame ROTT was always a mid game though.
A game like Tarkov stands in drastic comparison to a game like Quake. Compare the weapon selection (many guns for one role vs distinct but limited) or gameplay loop (enter zone->loot->fight to extract vs spawn->kill->die)
Quake, Battlefield 4, Rainbow 6 Siege, PUBG, and Tarkov are all FPS games but they’re drastically different in design.
The “boomer” in “boomer shooter” refers to the style, not the release date lol. Most games with that tag are actually pretty new. They’re just shooters that are mechanically similar to old shooters like Quake and Doom, so you’re typically gonna have a mix of these traits:
- A wide range of weapons with unique uses (think rockets, railguns, shotguns, machine guns…)
- Chapters that you can complete in any order but the levels in them are completed linearly
- Colored keys to open colored doors
- A level-end screen when you reach the end of a level that tells you your completion time and what % of items/enemies are left
- And my favorite part, a lot of them have advanced movement techniques, which are usually identical to Quake (if not Quake 2/3) like bunnyhopping and rocket-jumping
I recommend Dusk or Ultrakill if you wanna try a really good (and cheap) boomer shooter that came out in the last few years.
It’s shooters in the style that Boomers and Gen X (but no one ever addresses Gen X) played. Like Doom, Wolfenstein, etc. Sure millennials played them too, but they weren’t the target age demographic.
Cultic is a good modern boomer shooter if you want to try one.
Boomer shooter is a real genre that has defined qualities. If you did even a cursory Google search you would see that.
Just because something doesn’t make sense to you at face value doesn’t mean it’s arbitrary/makes the term toothless. You’re just uninformed.
Is Left 4 Dead a Boomer shooter?
I remember shooting Boomers point blank and triggering hordes…
No
Every single time this comes up: We all understand it is a (sub-)genre. Believe us, we know and we love it. We have loved it since the 90s.
The issue is the name. It attributes a genre to a generation that actively fought against it and tried to get it banned.
It isn’t a bad genre. It is a bad name.
I like the name. For me it has the double meaning of a shooter that goes BOOM. Makes me think of what I feel was a better time for shooters. I always think of the rocket launcher in Doom. And I like that it rhymes with Doom.
Just showed my son Doom. He loved it. And he was amazed at how fast Doomguy is. Then he discovered the run button.
It’s not about belief. It’s a thing you can literally search and confirm online right now. I don’t know who “us” is either.
I also didn’t say it was a good or a bad genre. I just said it is one that has a definition.
As for correcting me with “sub” I sort of just rolled my eyes and moved on, until I noticed you then called it a genre at the end of your comment. Kind of funny is all.
Always has been. Nobody was saying “okay boomer” to senior citizens. It was always to Gen X and now it’s being applied to Millennials. If you have songs on your playlist from the 2000s and don’t watch tiktoks, you’ve become a boomer.
Okay boomer was an insult for the baby boomer generation, now it’s being used for anyone older. Both are acceptable.
Yeah it was originally shit like “you sound like a 60 year old trump supporter who hasn’t gotten with the times”. It was “I’m not going to bother fighting with you, so I’m going to treat you like the uncle i only deal with on thanksgiving”
Ah, so it means anyone who you disagree with who happens to be a few years older than you… So it’s pointless?
Boomer shooters never get played by boomers, what a shame
Seriously tho a boomer shooter would be like maze war not DOOM, by the time this genre of games was created (by GenXers) and played by Millenials, they were becoming geriatric but whatever
Yeah, I’m around 40 and I played these games as they were coming out back in the 1990s. I call them either “FPS” or “Retro FPS”…
People born in the 1940s/50s never played them much. Although my dad did play Wolfenstein3D and Doom some, but that was not common for people in his age group.
As a Gen-Xer who used to twitch with the best of the younguns, I can vouch that we’re playing a lot fewer games that require reflexes that can’t be made up for with strategy and treachery (e.g. exploits).
Mostly I play dad games like Satisfactory or Subnautica but do pretty well for my crew in Deep Rock Galactic
If a boomer shooter is a classic run-and-gun shooter (contrast: tactical shooters or first-person survival) I’d still do fine unless its bullet hell or something. Serious Sam had the tendency to teleport in dozens of shooters on a plain with no cover, or send me into a dark place teeming with climbing ninja monkeys.
As the exact target audience for classic shooters (ion fury is gooooooood))
Idk, I find this term lighthearted and endearing, maybe it makes finding that exact kinda game finally easier
Yeah I love the term. It’s funny, unique, and you know exactly what they’re talking about.
I always preferred the term “Arena Shooter” but it may have more specific meaning than any game that vaguely has elements popular in fps games of the 90s that I think “Boomer Shooter” is usually trying to communicate.
I mean… I wouldn’t really say Doom or Duke Nukem or whatever were arena shooters, though? Something like Quake 3 certainly is, but I feel like anything that vaguely has a map that you progress through instead of having a round of a fixed length / kill count in a smaller space doesn’t scream “arena shooter” to me.
I had to look it up because I thought it was about “making boom and shoot”.
Also it’s a bit weird because I don’t know any boomer who played a shooter. Actually I don’t think I know any boomer who played video games, others than mobile word games.
The only people I know who played shooters in the 90’s were Gen X kids like me.
Anyway, I guess I’m a grumpy old man now but it’s a bit annoying that “boomer” has become synonym with “old people” and “millennial” with young people, while Gen X are close to retirement and millennials are clearly no longer young.
Check out a YouTuber named Civvie 11 if you haven’t already. He covers so many good and bad boomer shooters from old school to mkdern while going pretty deep into their history.
Also, dont sleep on turbo overkill. It’s everything right and then some about the genre.
Doom is Gen X if anything. Boomers are pongers.
Cool. I don’t really care about the name if it means that finding games that I like gets a little bit easier.