But I agree that awful art direction / lack of any fucking direction is as big a problem as retro-for-the-sake-of-retro. 

Come on. It's not great-looking for sure, but it's still easier on the eyes than Heretic. The color palette in *that* game is eye-gouging. 

What is referenced now as "retro" was at the time cutting edge AAA that pushed hardware to its limits and made for awesome screenshots that people couldn't believe. And it was largely done by amazingly skilled artists, not programmers keeping their team small.

Regardless of the resolution, detail, and technology you use, you need a consistent art direction. Once you enter the world of the game, it should feel like it is made of the same Stuff (this was one of the initial selling points of Doom 3's lighting, it was a unified lighting model between the world and actors within it). I'd wager Torchlight 2 as it looks today will look just as good to me in a decade. 

To me it's not as much about a horrible palette or crappy models/textures as it is about that weird perspective on the weapons in the player view, something I haven't seen since Half-Life 1. It looked like shit then and it looks like shit now. 

That's what happens when they draw a realistically proportioned gun with a quake-style FOV. Quake's guns are fat and stumpy to avoid this problem 

BloodCM is complete up to episode 4. I think the last time it was posted here ep.4 was still beta. Put bind "mouse2" "gamefunc_Special_Fire" in bcm settings.cfg for altfire. get eduke32 here.

Duke Nukem 3D 20th anniversary will be out soon. It has new levels by levelord and allen blum as well as other stuff. the AO in some of the shots seems weird.

IMO, the coolest thing is this new build engine game coming out. It's referred to as the "bombshell prequel", I don't think that's the actual title though. Screens: 1, 2, 3, 4. It's being developed by interceptor along with voidpoint. Really intrigued and excited to see a sprite-based (build engine, no less!) retro fps by a real team. 

First time I hear about BloodCM. That's awesome!
I hope this new Duke3D will be HRP-compatible. 

Maybe the spammers just hate "other PC games". I can understand that, Quake is the one true game after all. But is this really the best way to take out their anger at this thread's existence? really?