Strafe looks like one of those games made by people who think that old games looked adorably stupid. I don't like this trope, but it seems that the majority of "retro" shooters are like that. 

'sperg incoming...

is that they are marketing it as being like some shooter from the 90s, whereas everything about it looks mid-2000s except LOOK! PIXELZ!! CHIPTUNES!! - oh and then they stick in 2-color menus from some 80s game.

http://i.imgur.com/JO7C4UL.png

They think they're being cute with it, but it's just kinda cringey. To be honest you can't really walk two steps in the indie game scene without finding a sea of bellends making their 4-colour Mega Man pixel tributes, mixed up with incredibly OTT particle systems and havoc physics. 

 

To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.

I enjoy three kinds of games. Fast paced, action-oriented games (FPS), "Cerebral" games (RTS, some TBS) and... Uh, racing games.

I'm not a big fan of classic adventure games or high APM RTS games, and although I enjoy them I get burned out on puzzle games pretty quickly and end up using a guide.

A good example of the kind of RTS game I enjoy would be the Ultimate General series, which depicts the American Civil War. I really enjoy line battles and planning rather than trying to micro-manage troops to kite etc.

An example of an FPS game I like (that isn't my one true love, Quake) would probably be something like UT99/2k4, or on the more modern side Battlefiseld 4 (multiplayer, fuck that SP crap).
Aside from Quake and Half Life 1/2 I have to admit I struggle to get into singleplayer FPS experiences, at least if that's the focus. I find that if RPG elements are thrown in (elder scrolls, fallout (not 4!), Deus Ex, Dark Messiah) I tend not to get hooked by them.

Racing games I'll take whatever. Lately I've been modding Wreckfest, but before then I've binged on Assetto Corsa and... Well, I've put over 300 hours into racing in GTA online... 

We'll see how it is at the end of the month. The marketing appears to be working for it, although it rubs me the wrong way. In addition to what Kinn said, it seems to lack a certain self-awareness, especially for something so self-referential. I feel like true fans of 90s shooters are the least likely to be persuaded by its 'bombastic 90s shooter' shtick. I also hope they've made some performance optimizations since the demo.

Anyway, you can have your thread back ;) 

Also, the punters will find out soon enough how fucking boring "90s-style" FPS action is when you don't have a progression through properly handcrafted levels.

Imagine Quake with randomly generated levels? It would be boring as shit. Hell, even handcrafted levels, but with randomly generated monster spawning, is boring as shit (see: Quonquer Jam).

The only thing that makes quake work as a game is proper level design and proper monster placement. 

Sounds like you underestimate Quake a lot. 

What is quake, or any other fps, without encounter design and level progression? Hint: it rhymes with boring. 

Sock's "player survey" thread got me thinking about this again, and it seems quite a few people in that thread agree with me that Quake's monsters are just "there" and the interesting part of the game is the journey through the levels.

There would literally be nothing to hold my attention if monsters and rooms were spawned at me according to an algorithm. There would be none of the clever setpieces, gags, or carefully placed combinations of elements that make up 100% of the interesting bits of that game. 

 

I've heard people saying the same thing about Quake's weapons. But simplicity isn't necessarily bad.

In case of Quake, relatively simple and straightforward mechanics make for an entertaining experience. Maybe not as much as in Doom, but still, if the game wasn't fun itself, it wouldn't attract so many level designers.

Besides, the aforementioned Qonquer mod/jam was popular enough, although I think it would benefit from some more thought put into how the waves progress. Which brings me to the next point: absolute randomness might not sound very interesting, but there's usually a fair amount of rules behind the way things operate. The trick is to find a good balance between unpredictability and design.

Easier said than done, of course. 

Kinn didn't say that simplicity is bad. I certainly don't think it's bad. I prefer simple but robust game systems to complex and really badly thought-out ones. Doom and Quake are very simple games but they still require a bit of time to master and to learn all their quirks, and good handcrafted level design, controlled progression (not in a restrictive way in this context) and hand-made monster encounters make the game much deeper than it first appears. Even with the small roster of monsters in Quake, you can have a wide variety of encouters that are crafted with care and not left to randomization.

Procedural generation is good on paper but I seriously don't think it works all that well. Like, I love Diablo and all but some generated levels are sometimes much easier or much harder than usual. I think procedural generation can be good for little details and small things, not whole levels. 

Yeah good point - in fact simplicity is an attribute I should have put on my list - games with simple, elegant mechanics usually score much higher for me than cumbersome feature-bloated games (that are usually the result of design-by-committee, or when you have rival franchises and every time one game introduces [feature X], all the competitors then scramble to shoehorn their version of [feature X] into their next soulless bowel movement that passes as a game).

I often bang on about Shadow of the Colossus but if you want a superb example of how to do minimalist mechanics properly, look no further. 

Yeah, I'm not ragging on quake's simplicity at all - again, simplicity (mechanics-wise) is one of quake's strengths.

One of the things I loved going from doom to quake is how they simplified the mechanics a little bit (removed the map, and the "use" button) whilst at the same time made the environment more immersive, and yet even without the map, you never get lost. 

Maybe "bad" wasn't exactly the right word. More like shallow without the supplement of really good level design. 

the greater you can expand the possibility space with the fewest mechanics the better IMO. I think overdesigning is an easy trap to fall into. complexity =/= depth.

I often bang on about Shadow of the Colossus but if you want a superb example of how to do minimalist mechanics properly, look no further.

+1. I consider Shadow of the Colossus to be one of the best games ever created. It really is a masterfully designed and executed game. 

killpixel really is my spirit animal :} 

 

Didn't the development of Quake suffer time restraints? Because that forced the designers to restrict alot of stuff which they had planned or partially made. 

 

Id Software was trying to make an MMO FPS then they had all the assets made (maps, models, textures etc) but were waiting for Carmack to finish the engine, then they got behind. They then scrapped the original idea of the game and made a doom like fps shooter with doom style weapons. Poof Quake! 

fun gameplay, interesting aesthetics (no matter the tech), a sense of adventure 

Poof Quake

Look, just because there's a screen where you can try out different combinations of shirt and trouser colours... 

Probably most important is a game that doesn't piss me off. 

One thing that sits outside of the gemplay that I do appreciate is menu/interface snappyness and fast loading times.
Granted games like Doom and Quake probably mostly benefit of this due to being x hardware generations removed but nothing gives me more of an uh-oh feeling that sluggish skipping menus first thing, I know the controls will be "laggy" and am right 95% of the time