fu otp.x 

Are the real spiritual successor to Quake. 

Another contender (haven't played it): Midnight Ultra http://store.steampowered.com/app/731590/Midnight_Ultra/

Got a few thoughts on theme/atmosphere at least... will put those in a separate post. 

While I haven't played or heard of everything on that list, there seems to be two main flaws that most of the 'new wave of retro shooters' always hit. The first is name-dropping every old school shooter they can think of, by name specifically, in the game's trailer- Doom, Quake, Heretic, and Hexen, primarily- but playing much more like Serious Sam instead, full of large but enclosed arenas with waves of identical enemies for the player to mow down. The second is a graphical complaint- either making the game too dated looking, worse than the actual FPSs of the time, or trying to make it look like Quake 1-era graphics but ignoring palette limitations, texture scaling, etc. so it looks like a typical ugly Darkplaces mod.

Also, controversial opinion: these types of games rely very heavily on good level design, this site still existing being an obvious testament to that, and using procedural/random generation for your levels (no matter how many rooms you've made) immediately makes them crap. 

The style of old school shooters was the way it was not due to artistic styling, but hardware limitations.

This notion is completely ignored in the surge of "retro-style" shooters. 

Skipping mechanics chat for a minute:

By coincidence I was thinking about Quake atmosphere this morning, as a result of poking around in some of the Quake Champions maps recently. Those maps are impressive in many ways, but don't have a Quake (1) atmosphere despite I think some intentions in that direction.

Quake had some weird worlds. Partly because it was made by a weird group of dudes, partly because of technical limitations (e.g. low polygon count, and restricted color set because of so many palette indices dedicated to lighting shades). But for whatever reason, it was all a bit "off-model" compared to more well-worn themes and settings.

Not to pick on the OP, but it's not really Gothic. It's also not Giger, or hell-and-demons, or Lord of the Rings fantasy, or Doom 3 style "future base with pipes and wires". It's a little sparse, low-tech, brutalist, swampy. It has spaces that seem to be waiting for something (the player, maybe). It's a little bit Lovecraftian and eventually downright abstract.

For an Actual Quake Sequel I'd want to see good takes on the specific Quake settings (base, runic, etc.) although I'm afraid that a modern game's art team wouldn't be able to get away from making them overly "busy" and overly more-like-this-other-familiar-thing.

For a retro shooter I'd really just like something that has the balls to go off-model like that. (Which is why I want to give Midnight Ultra a look when I have a chance.) And to ease back on the explanations and guides and interruptions that get in the way of letting the gameworld breathe.

Actually the thing that most tickled my retro-shooter-feel in the past couple of years might have been Teleglitch, although it's not an FPS. 

Looks great. Looking forward to this one. http://www.gibhard.com/ 

Because it's actually made on fucking Build. 

Minimized
Monument
Revulsion

Keeping my fingers crossed for Ion Maiden. 

That's the only one I care about. Coincidentally I think it's the only one on that last made by someone with extensive mod + game industry experience 

last = list 

Before it's a first person shooter. Anyone who manages that has it nailed. 

 

Also less listing games, more discussing whether this trend can work, whether the games you list can hit the mark, etc.