Half-Life is Strange adds rewind powers and teen angst into Valve’s FPS.
- Half-Life is Strange on moddb (no mod release yet, just sample videos)
- “Half-Life is Strange: playable Max Caulfield mod with working time rewind” video on Reddit
Half-Life is Strange adds rewind powers and teen angst into Valve’s FPS.
I was hoping the article would explain what a “boomer shooter” is, but it doesn’t seem to
I think boomer shooters are generally shooters that riff off of aspects of classic first-person shooter games like Quake, Duke Nukem, and Doom. So it could be like gameplay, aesthetics, or a mix of both.
AFAIK it’s just an old school shooter like Quake, UT or Doom.
I didn’t know either, so I searched.
Stolen off Reddit, two years old, so probably not AI:
FPS design changed drastically after the end of the 90’s with the rise of console gaming, more mainstream appeal, and military stuff being in vogue. Shooters started to become more realistic, grounded, slower paced, more focused on cinematics, accessible.
Boomer shooters don’t have a strict agreed upon definition, and not all these traits are required for a game to be one, but what sets them apart:
Fast movement speed. And as that relates to combat, more focus on dodging projectiles / evading melee and less focus on just constantly taking cover from hitscan enemies.
Player is more durable, does not go down in a fight instantly from stepping out of cover. Generally more on-screen enemies at once.
Accurate hipfire shooting, no need to Aim Down Sights.
No need to reload weapons, constant shooting.
Emphasis on action, very minimal in story.
Intricate, non-linear level design full of secrets that benefit the player.
An emphasis on on-map item pickups (ammo, health, armor, powerups) to manage resources.
Carry your entire arsenal of weapons at once, each bound to a specific number key instead of the two-weapon limit most modern shooters have.
Wide variety of weapons and enemy types, weapons generally pretty creative and exotic over just standard military archetypes. Enemies very varied in health, capabilities, function instead of just being infantry.
Generally more fantastical settings and more abstract level design. Fighting demons, aliens, eldritch beings, cultists, robots, etc. instead of just being generic military games.
Most modern shooters are completely lacking in ALL of those traits (ex. Call of Duty ) or only have about half of them (ex. Halo).
Oh so a Quake-like.
Sounds like it. That’s sort of what I figured but I couldn’t figure out if they meant boomers, as in the generation, played them. Well, my dad did!
Yea, I was thinking Unreal, but Quake is even closer.
“Boomer shooter” is an imperfect term that partially arose out of the multiplayer version of this type of game being called “arena fps” and becoming its own confusing insular side genre from singleplayer games of the day.
I prefer “movement shooter” as it emphasizes how core the movement is in either multiplayer or singleplayer types versions of these games. I love Xonotic because of its movement, the AFPS part actually is less interesting to me inherently, but the bunny hopping flow in games like Ultrakill, Xonotic, Quake and others is something 99.9% of modern shooters sadly ignore.
Xonotic is by far and away the best multiplayer movement shooter in my opinion and it is free and open source. This will give you a good feeling for “boomer shooters” on the multiplayer/bot bashing side.
https://xonotic.org/
Cultic is probably the most critically acclaimed singleplayer “boomer shooter” that I would consider at least partially a movement shooter, Ultrakill is also a must play.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1684930/CULTIC/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1229490/ULTRAKILL/
Those games look cool, thanks for the recommendations.
I prefer “boomer shooter” because those games have more boom than boring modern shooters.