I love oldschool FPS’s, but somehow the whole boomer shooter resurgence just passed me by. I just finished Boltgun on the hardest difficulty and had a great time, would love to hear some other suggestions
I fondly recall Strife. It’s a bit like if you wrote an actual story in the Doom engine.
It’s been a while since I played it, but Sauerbraten / Cube 2 had a very old-school FPS vibe to it. It’s open source, so just download and play.
Dread Templar was great fun, and a very smooth experience. It even has melee weapons that aren’t crap.
Wrath Aeon of Ruin was a mediocre experience for me. The shooting was fun, but there was a real lack of enemy diversity. I remember the checkpoints being funky somehow?
Og games like Quake, Doom and Unreal hold up really well. They can be modded to your hearts content too. Brutal Doom is just way too much fun
Blood is super fun, but unfairly difficult on the highest difficulty. It kicks your head in, until you learn, but every minute of the experience is fun. Until the maze-like levels and actual mazes make you dizzy.
Cultic is like a modern Blood, but an even more deliberate version. The demo is good fun and the game is cheap.
Poweslave Exhumed is something I remember enjoying as a kid. Iron Maiden themed romp through mummies. It kinda reminds me of…
Amid Evil and Hexen//Heretic. Both feature mystical weapons, mana for ammo and fantastical locations and monsters to kill. Amid Evil is a great shooter with survival modes, a full campaign and all Heretic and Hexen are older, more dated games that will hurt you. But I love them for it.
Dusk was rhe first new retro shooter I played, and it’s fun. It’s slick, has a nice deathmatch mode and the campaign doesn’t overstay its welcome. I hear it has been surpassed by Hrot.
Blood West tricked me hard. It’s not a boomer shooter, but more like a single player version of Hunt, or a wild-west monsterhunting Dishonoured? It’s fun and unforgiving, but not a boomer shooter, even if it has guns.
EYE Divine Cybermancy could qualify, I guess. It’s a trippy grimdark warhammer inspired rpg shooter. Very boomery in it’s visuam style and lack of handholding, but definitely more modern than Quake.
Black Mesa is Half-Life, and it’s good. Nuff said.
Haven’t played enough of Hedon, Project Warlock, Ion Maiden, Incision, Prodeus, Graven or Rise of the Triad to say more than they exist.
Alright, I did go on a boomer shooter and arena shooter romp a while back and found quite a few gems, although most of these answers will probably sound obvious.
-DOOM classic, of course. Also try with mods, like Brutal DOOM
-DOOM 2016 and DOOM Eternal are also really good, modernized takes on the formula
-Quake is still really good, the remake is really nice.
-Unreal Tournament '99 and 2004 might be officially dead, but they still have players if you follow the player maintained master servers
-Blood:Fresh Supply on GoG
-Hexen/Heretic is a classic
-Dusk
-Amid Evil
-ULTRAKILL, really, all of the New Blood shooter projects are really good
-Prodeus is one that flies under the radar of most, but it has a kickass soundtrack and vibe, and a gameplay that is between DOOM and Quake. Probably my favorite of the new bunch.
