On your review list, 'The Precursors' links to the RS: Vegas 2 review. 

cheers mate, just fixed that 

Given your appetite for obscure and possibly horrible FPS's, have you played or reviewed Marine Sharpshooter? I bought it on impulse (very rare for me) seven years ago or so. For me this was a $20 case of buyer's remorse as I didn't even tolerate it for more than 2 minutes off the start in a dark camp getting shot by unseen enemies that I was trying to spot over a huge and overly bright HUD. Just curious as to whether or not it ever got any better. 

Possibly horrible, lol. Nah I passed on Marine Sharpshooter. There was a bunch of them actually, I was possibly going to get Marine Sharpshooter 4, but the screenshots looked really bad, even for 2008, and even for me. There's plenty better (but still horrible) Russian shooters to play ahead of it.

I just tried to play Steam Slug, a German shooter that looks very similar to Painkiller gameplay-wise. Except it's all in steam punk 90s style level design. Couldn't re-map the mouse buttons though, and I don't use wasd.

Looks like I'm playing Dreamkiller next
http://www.gamespot.com/dreamkiller/videos/dreamkiller-alice-trailer-6232743/ 

the last part of your review makes it sound like a horrible (AND consolified) game! 

And now I've finished Dreamkiller :P
Review http://www.etherealhell.com/etherealhell/reviews/2012/dreamkiller.php

5.5/10. Wasn't that bad, but only if you liked Painkiller and want more of it. 

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/04/30/wrack-doesnt-ruin-doom-hopefully/

Reminds of RetroBlazer quite a bit. 

Looks like it has really REALLY boring level design.

A lot of developers seem to confuse "old-skool" with "crap". 

I honestly couldn't watch much of the video. The fight with those large robots after they hit the red button almost put me asleep. I've never seen such a dull shotgun before. The lack of feedback/flnching or such from the mentioned fight and later doesn't exactly help either.

Many people do seem to miss the point with this 'old skool' thing with FPS. Just because the game doesn't play like COD and you run around in various square rooms fighting enemies like in the 90s doesn't mean it's 'like Doom' and going to be fun.

It's the level layouts (and then design) which tend to fall short. :/ 

most "old skool shooters" made these days tend to be arena shooters with waves of dumb enemies. The level design is dull and generic typically.

I never really understand why this is, if you look at the real old-skool shooter games, ie. most of the older id games, they are nothing of the sort. Either these developers are incredibly lazy or incredibly uninspired.

Wracked will have it's own level editor on release however, it looks very similar to worldcraft. Just fyi. 

shit level design, even shitter enemies and combat. cell shading as always looks kind of cool, but it's only hiding a pretty shitty game. that needs a lot more work.

when, for the love of god, are developers going to stop putting fucking spiders in their levels? Daikatana should have permanently ended developers love affair with insects. 

"Feel" is the hardest thing to nail in a game. They have the basic mechanics - fast movement, guns, enemies, pick ups - but it doesn't have any feel. There's no kick. It's all very sterile and meh... 

Looks so bland and not fun. As Willem points out, the weapons seem to lack oomph. The shotgun looked like it was spraying buckshot everywhere but killing enemies regardless of the awful spread. Plus it had a crappy sound (youtube video fault maybe?) and animation.

Daikatana might have had crappy little spiders, but it actually had some fucking awesome weapons. Shotcycler was the best shotgun ever. The RL was pretty nice in dkt too. Don't really remember the other weapons because I deleted the game after a bug with the shitty "AI" "helpers" prevented me from finishing a level.

Also, if you're going to throw 200 crappy mechanical spiders at me, give me some explosives, not a lame sword.

Among us, we could probably make a nice old skool fps, but Quake already exists so I'm not sure there is much point. What was the last really good old skool fps anyone played that isn't Quake? 

 

Painkiller was pretty oldschool.

Also: A lot of developers seem to confuse "old-skool" with "crap".

Yes.

"No, no, it's supposed to be shit, it's oldschool!" 

Defines old school as a lot of these developers seem to want to emulate. But instead they emulate the dearth of shit Doom clones that came afterwards and nobody wanted. 

Some modern developers seem to think that oldschool means that they just threw the game together, that they didn't work hard for months on end and impose crunch of themselves (before that term was coined) in order to make a great game.

So they do a half-arsed job without any soul or proper balancing, then slap the name old school on it when all it deserves is 'poor'. 

Soldier of Fortune 1 

"Oldschool" is used quite freely in certain contexts, as if the term was a definte concept, while in reality it closely relates to feelings of nostalgia, which differ from person to person and over time. If there was a new game that's 100% like Doom, it might still not get the same love and everything, simply because it's judged from a different context (now vs. 17 years in retrospect). I was actually going to make a discussion thread about this topic for some time... 

And I'm not going to attempt to define it because I don't think you can. I think most FPS's stopped being oldskool after Half-Life 1 - suddenly it was all about coherent stories, and a coherent progression through a convincing environment. A lot of the abstract and arcadey elements seemed to vanish. Yeah, you had stuff like Painkiller that ignored all that, but Painkiller sadly forgot to add any interesting gameplay. 

I enjoyed Painkiller, but as a game, Serious Sam is far, far better. Serious Sam doesn't have the level design complexity of Doom or Quake, either, but it does have even greater monster variety and uses that variety well, and becomes it's own game.

Really the level design and variety is a key thing always missed. I think a lot of people, especially in reviews, haven't actually played Doom, or played it years and years ago and don't actually remember what it's really like.

Having said this, comparing the default maps of Doom to Quake's maps or modern user made wads like Scythe or Speed of Doom is pretty amazing. You see how unfocused and tedious a lot of Doom maps were, and how refined the craft has become :) 

PS The idea that 'arena combat' is oldschool is pretty funny really, because that's exactly what a modern shooter level does. Stick you in a fixed area and spawn stuff for you to kill, move to next area, repeat. 

DNF felt a little old skool to me, in that the gameplay was not really all that complicated by the awful plot, and it really seemed that it was an anything goes kind of game. Almough many of the levels were super generic, there were a few gems in there such as the one set in the fast food restaurant where you are shrunk down and have to navigate many obstacles for whatever reason...

Then again, due to its ridiculous development, I think DNF also showed the difference between pre and post half-life fps games, since it seemed like they started off as a classic shooter with a few crazy elements, then later toned things down and tried to match what hl and later hl2 had done.

I id make a new Quake, I doubt it will lack a story or obviously linear levels, but I hope id at least look at why we are still making levels for it 16 (argh!) years on.