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One of the 0.5% of RetroFPSes to actually show some potential including an aesthetic "theme" and some actual "design" is in Early Access...
https://store.steampowered.com/app/964800/Prodeus/ Cheers vigil for linking it on Discord. https://twitter.com/tdDaz/status/1326638392361226240
Gotta say, those shots show things like "theme" "atmosphere" "architecture" "harmony of aesthetics" and other such rarities. Even the hud is pretty tasteful. I've decided that Hard Reset, as minor and limited as it is, is a true retro-FPS.
Does it blend old skool simple / fast gameplay with modern production values?? Does it actually have a theme, purpose, design, satisfying weapons and a decent bestiary?? Yes to both. It has many issues: Movement is a bit sluggish, enemies are a bit bullet-spongey, almost all the cool architecture is a pure un-visitable backdrop, it's very arenay in places and quite 2-D in others, and if you care about such things the inter-mission story / dialogue is beyond terrible, it's also pretty damn short including the DLC. But I had fun with it. The double weapons and their plethoric upgrades are actually nicely done and fun, the enemies at least have a theme, the backdrops are really cool and the overall graphics are good. https://store.steampowered.com/app/407810/Hard_Reset_Redux/ it's dirty cheap now on gog: https://www.gog.com/game/hard_reset_redux
Here's some utter TURD that has been ruining poor viewers' eyes on Discord recently:
https://youtu.be/BIOJ6QURT5k Nail And Crescent aka we have one torch model and one SNG ripped off from Quake Chumps or somewhere and think that a load of box rooms and plain pillars are enough to make a game BECAUSE RTX. Minecraft HD-textured box-cow ahoy! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9F6I4gpeaEGcPDIvFC82pA/videos Psymmetry aka all the effects and none of the level design whatsoever. Snapmap ahoy! https://store.steampowered.com/app/807900/Hellver/ Hellver aka a pre-alpha test for devil fucking daggers being played on the gameboy or a pocket fucking calculator. Eye prolapse of horror ahoy! Nail and Crescent is claiming to be still WIP and really just a pack of content to make quake1-style levels in Quake2RTX. So, it makes sense that they don't have much content to show yet and also that they don't have any real level design. Maybe it's not ready to make a whole trailer, though.
Wow, that Hellver looks like it has EGA graphics or something.
Nail & Crescent looks like some bad case of everything looking like wet clay, look at those nail ammo boxes, it's like they are oily or greasy, oh god. What do you say about Core Decay? https://store.steampowered.com/app/1260940/Core_Decay/ Although it doesn't present itself as some Doom/Quake "romeric" shooter for "true warriors". And gameplay wise it seems different. Seem to recall enemies looking pretty naff tho. Haven't been following it closely. Feel free to post the latest media links if it seems worth it.
Last thing that was released is the the announcement trailer below. Not seen much since.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjAvdzQhPQc This is before Ivar got the publishing deal but lot's of info.
https://quakecast.podbean.com/e/quakecast-47-ivar-hill-core-decay/ Core Decay looks interesting, but from that footage, it also appears to have a mild case of what I call OCRUD (Obsessive Customization Requiring Upgrades Disorder) which is what most modern games suffer from (including a lot of retro-wannabes.)
In my opinion, if an FPS has OCRUD, it fails the "retroness" test due to "simple, streamlined gameplay" being ruined by upgrade point systems. And as someone who first got into FPS games back in those "retro" days, I can tell you that, contrary to what many devs seem to think, the fun of it didn't come from managing an entire bloody economy of upgrade currencies, or customizing your character to look like a damn unicorn... But to be fair, Core Decay looks like it's trying to be a bit different, not explicitly "retro" or a "revival of the good ol' shooters." Is perfectly valid IMO, I think we're already at the point where the market is now getting saturated with retro fps games (like back in the 90's), and in order to stand out we're going to see some games needing to innovate on the fps standard so they can stand out from the competition (again, like in the 90's).
Also, games like this did exist in the day, like Strife for example. I personally don't mind RPG-lite upgrades / customisation as long as it's fairly simple / streamlined. But for a shooter it shouldn't get in the way of the...Core gameplay.
If, say, you've got character upgrade runes, character upgrade crystals, armour upgrade tokens, weapon alt-fire upgrades, and then extra upgrades for those alt-fire modes, oh and ship upgrade things....that might be far too much twatting around. Especially when half of those upgrades usually relate to tinkering with 3 off-hand weapon additions, 3 melee modes, or the 3 additional movement options. THAT would be a whole lot of unnecessary bloat. For a game about a "Doom Slayer," in some ways it feels more like "Demonic Invasion Defense Management Simulator"... though I doubt even most manager sims are as over-complicated. It gets really tiring to keep track of all that BS. That's why I've spent so little time playing Doom Eternal this past year and FAR more time playing Quake mods from this fine community.
As for Strife, it's not representative of most FPS's in the '90's, since it was an RPG. It probably wasn't until Bioshock that OCRUD became popular in FPS games, though Bioshock was also an RPG. Mixing genres isn't necessarily what I'd call "innovation," but Bioshock was popular, so I guess the money talked. A lot of people like the RPG genre, and that's fine. But it's never been my cup of tea... Ultima Underworld convinced me of that. I love exploration and non-linear environments, but I don't like spending huge amounts of time on tedious/boring/non-shootery stuff (like talking to NPC's, "grinding," character customization, etc.) For an FPS, especially a "retro" one, I think that stuff should be left as window-dressing at most, not a core gameplay element. Apocryph would've been a great retro-esque FPS in the vein of Heretic, if only it had been released in a more finished state, and with better level design and animation. https://selewi.itch.io/aske
Experience once again the first person shooter feeling in the same way you experienced it back in the '90s. A creation inspired by classics of the genre like Quake, Hexen, Unreal, and many others. Gameplay video courtesy of some edgelord YouTube cretin. Some more choice quotes from the developer: Some of the models and textures took me more than 20 hours to make There's a lot of love and effort in the project and it wasn't rushed at all. The demo took almost a year to be developed ASKE is NOT a low effort project, and there's a lot of research behind the scenes in order to make it feel welcoming to retro enthusiasts without sacrificing the benefits of modern tech. Opinions??? Even the usual """boomer shooter""" audience is beginning to catch on:
On the one hand we have maps like Tears of the False God for free, on the other hand we have levels that look like the first test map done in Trenchbroom, that they (eventually) want money for... Explosive meatballs that emit red smoke...
Overall, a little too Minecrafty for my tastes. Textures lack detail, monsters look like they were modelled by a kid with Blender. Doesn't look low-poly in a "we were constrained by 90's tech limits" but more in a "we just didn't give a f---" way. But hey, at least it's not an "asset flip," right? Let's say that if it were a custom map for Blood of similar it wouldn't be too bad with some work on layout. It seems that the guy lacks a bit in mapping experience as the design gets a bit better the further in. By the end of the video it could equal to 1997's average Quake custom maps if the ranged enemies did not behave so much like turrets or were placed better.
The ''good'' points would be that it is not close to the worst we have seen around here and that even has some verticality. The textures are a bit weird in that they are sharper than expected from that resolution. The player in that video should stop trying to act cool while sniping from afar and put a difficulty he can manage so we can actually see things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH0uxLpzJfU
1 full hour of derping, getting lost, and finally dying to an epic "never seen before in 1000s of hours of playtesting" bug, with commentary, critique, analysis, approval, and ranting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5FPRbAk5A4 detailed critique and feedback for the devs (and still loving all the cool stuff).
Forgot to put this here. It is not exactly about the game but interesting nonetheless. https://www.mapcore.org/forum/51-prodeus-official-mapping-contest/
Being Mapcore maps will be decent for sure and there is still time to join. Not seen this one posted before. It's more of a Blood-alike than a Quake-alike, but it seems to have a nice aesthetic, and doesn't fall into the trap of creating intentionally shitty graphics and calling it retro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an_mub_zfy0
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