- A retro shooter doesn’t require a team of 80 people working on it.
- Define "shitty". A lot of people actually prefer Quake, for example, with big fat pixels instead of clean HD textures. Also, low-rez textures are usually patiently hand-crafted pixel by pixel vs. hi-rez textures generated from a set of params. How's that for laziness?
- Plain levels? If you're referring to Strafe, that may be the procedural generation, which often produces bland results. Play Arcane Dimensions and see just how plain a retro shooter's maps can be... 

90% of them look like fucking gash, not just GFX-wise but more prominently theme and design wise. The other 10% is killpixel's thing in the works.

If any of these retro-bandwagon-jumping-bullshit-a-thons had the tiniest fraction of AD's theme and design qualities, they would be a lot more appealing. 

The other 10% is killpixel's thing
You cracked me up with that line!

Have you played all/most of them? Which ones are the less shitty for you? 

I want something that looks this inspiring as a retro style:

http://quaketastic.com/files/jam9.png 

Ion Maiden is the most promising project by far tbh. 

Tried googling it but can't seem to find anything related to a game called Ion Maiden, and spelling it IRon Maiden only returns results for the heavy metal band's Legacy of the Beast game. Do you have a link? 

https://twitter.com/voidpnt 

Not much info on that Twitter page but found more by googling the studio's name. Sounds interesting! 

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cyy1MjZVIAAGd79.jpg:large

vs.

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/screen_shots/lpqsp2b2.png

Still not convinced. 

like Duke3D, Doom, ... 

 

 

Duke3d hasn't aged well, due to it's main competition being proper 3d. That duke3d lookalike game just looks like duke3d. Quake nowadays looks much better.

I guess I'm not a duke fan though. I played the original game but once Quake came out, Unreal, Half-Life, Sin, SOF, all the other FPS' that were actual 3d, they made duke3d look a bit shit imo. 

That duke3d lookalike game just looks like duke3d.
Except that it runs in eDuke32/Polymer, so no more distorted perspective. Also, it is set in the world of Duke, so it's quite normal that it looks like it. 

The main differences in the shots you linked are the lighting and the texture filtering. The Build engine doesn't use lightmaps. 

looks good IMO.

I think the key is that it's being built in an actual retro engine rather than being faked using something modern. This makes it feel far more authentic as a result.

I have no problem with build engine games. I think they look good. Blood is an especially good game and has aged much better than Duke or Shadow Warrior IMO. Although that could just be a subjective bias since it's darker in theme like Quake. 

http://www.pcgamer.com/17-years-after-rune-human-head-studios-announces-an-open-world-sequel-rune-ragnarok/#comment-jump 

Finally! I loved Rune back in the day and always regretted that there was no sequel. Hope it'll be good. Human Head have just made my day :D 

Now that is a very worthy sequel / reboot / whatever. I wasn't blown away by Rune but it was definitely good and solid and on point and old enough that a more expanded sequel gets two gnarled thumbs up from me.

Wheel Of Time next?? 

 

https://www.twitch.tv/megmn

But probably at some later point! 

I liked the bit where it was offline tho. 

I didn't get on with the first one as the combat was stupid hard and there was so much bollox to try to understand in the first village I got bored. This has a nicer intro anyway.

TBH I'm more after an evening chillout Grim Dawn style RPG at the mo but I figure it's worth a shot... 

I guess the four times we played 1 were fun. But a sequel... Is this L4D/2 all over again?