FPS indie revival underway, similar to the indie CRPG revival?

[Louis_Cypher]

• Dusk
• Amid Evil
• Ion Fury
• WRATH: Aeon of Ruin
  
• Doom 2016

Doom 2016 took modern shooter traits, like trying to emulate Hollywood, having cover, etc, and just ignored them and got acclaim for it. But there have been some really quality indie games too. I'm really looking forward to Wrath: Aeon of Ruin. Is this the start of an indie FPS reaction against an AAA industry that hasn't made a decent one in years?

There was something about stuff like Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Blood and Quake that really appeals to me, maybe the way that the game world was just completely batshit fantasy with arcane guns, set in some imaginative hell dimension full of castles, instead of mundane. Life is better when you live in a thrash metal album cover.

At it's core it should not matter if you are shooting with a gun or a magic trident, yet we haven't had something as imaginative as Heretic or Clive Barker's Undying in years. Like early Star Wars and Star Trek games were programmed by actual geeks, and so were much more faithful pre-2000, I think shooters today are aimed at the no imagination normie crowd.

 

[agentorange]

similar to the crpg revival in that pretty much every one of these supposed revival game is shit then yeah

 

[DJOGamer PT]

• Dusk

• Amid Evil

• Ion Fury

• WRATH: Aeon of Ruin

• Doom 2016

You forgot Project Warlock and Shadow Warrior 2.

similar to the crpg revival in that pretty much every one of these supposed revival game is shit then yeah

DUSK is really fucking good though

 

[Siveon]

While games like Ion Fury and Amid Evil may not hit the mark exactly on what they're trying to emulate, I vastly prefer them to the AAA alternative that we have for several years. Similar to the way CRPGs have been, I like playing something new than having to rely on replaying things of the past.

And with that you get genuinely great things like DUSK.

 

[Lemming42]

There's another one called Hedon which I think runs on the zDoom engine.

I've not been a huge fan of any of these games. They either feel too much like they're just emulating older games (or worse, what the devs *think* older games were like), or they feel like they're struggling against the constraints of older games to the point where you wonder why they bothered marketing themselves as modern successors to Quake/Build/Doom engine games in the first place.

I haven't played Wrath yet, which some people say is trying to do its own thing rather than be a boring Quake homage, so I'm interested to play it.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

similar to the crpg revival in that pretty much every one of these supposed revival game is disappointing then yeah

Fixed to push it closer to my opinion.

 

[luj1]

• Dusk

• Amid Evil

• Ion Fury

• WRATH: Aeon of Ruin

• Doom 2016

Forgot Project Warlock and Arcane Dimensions. Also Prodeus, maybe.

 

[DeepOcean]

None of them on kickstarter and not made by has beens wanting your money so they can use your money to bait and switch to sell to other people, that alone makes the FPS revival better way better.

 

[Carrion]

While most of these games are undoubtedly better than the AAA stuff of the past decade or so, I'd like to see at least one shooter that did something even a little bit original and didn't suck. I just can't muster any interest for this retro stuff. Games like Underrail, AoD or Disco obviously owe a lot to a bunch of classic CRPGs, but they don't outright copy anyone and have lots of original and unique ideas that separate them from other games, even if I don't think any of them is as good as Fallout or Torment. With shooters I haven't really seen that yet. I wish someone took the best aspects of 90's and early 2000's shooters (fast-paced gameplay, complex level design, fun gunplay with lots of different weapons) and turned them into something new and interesting, rather than making pale imitations of superior games from two and a half decades ago.

 

[DalekFlay]

I'm not a storyfag necessarily, but I do like some context and exploration in my shooters, and tend to prefer first-person shooting mixed with RPG or stealth mechanics (Deus Ex, Thief, etc.). I did enjoy Quake and such back in the day, but I have a hard time getting as excited for these revivals because I was much more into games like Half-Life, System Shock, etc.

Still it's very cool to see indie revivals spreading to FPS games, like they had with RPGs, platformers, etc. Hopefully we indie Deus Ex games someday.

 

[warpig]

Overload is the only genuinely good "retro" shooter on par with 90s games imo, though it's a descent clone and not a typical FPS. Dusk and Amid Evil are OK but not really on the same level as oldschool games in my opinion (and Dusk looks ugly AF compared to games from the 90s). NuDoom is a shitty borefest with arenas and spawning waves of enemies and sucky aesthetics to boot - no thanks :/

 

[DJOGamer PT]

I wish someone took the best aspects of 90's and early 2000's shooters (fast-paced gameplay, complex level design, fun gunplay with lots of different weapons) and turned them into something new and interesting, rather than making pale imitations of superior games from two and a half decades ago.

Dusk isn't an imitian and has alot of unique charm.
In fact, when you start messing around with it's mechanics and world it feels more like an immersive sim.

 

[RoSoDude]

• Dusk
• Amid Evil
• Ion Fury
• WRATH: Aeon of Ruin
  
• Doom 2016

Strike Doom 4 from this list. Its design has more in common with Serious Sam or Painkiller than it does with Doom or Quake. It's a series of enclosed arenas with hordes of enemies for you to dispatch with your arsenal of over-the-top weapons, rather than a crawl through mazelike levels with tricks and traps around each corner and tight enemy encounters linked to resource management and hidden secrets. Hunting for keys is a totally vestigial inclusion, as you can't even open doors with them until you've first cleared out all of the enemies in an arena. While all of the iconic weapons and enemies return, only some of the latter are adapted well to the new gameplay style (imps, shotgun guys, pinkies, hell knights), while others are made notably bland by the transition (cacodemons, mancubi, revenants, arch-viles). It's still somewhat entertaining overall, and requires a great deal more player interaction than your average modern shooter, but it's no revival of old-school FPS design principles either.

 

[DalekFlay]

Strike Doom 4 from this list. Its design has more in common with Serious Sam or Painkiller than it does with Doom or Quake. It's a series of enclosed arenas with hordes of enemies for you to dispatch with your arsenal of over-the-top weapons, rather than a crawl through mazelike levels with tricks and traps around each corner and tight enemy encounters linked to resource management and hidden secrets. Hunting for keys is a totally vestigial inclusion, as you can't even open doors with them until you've first cleared out all of the enemies in an arena. While all of the iconic weapons and enemies return, only some of the latter are adapted well to the new gameplay style (imps, shotgun guys, pinkies, hell knights), while others are made notably bland by the transition (cacodemons, mancubi, revenants, arch-viles). It's still somewhat entertaining overall, and requires a great deal more player interaction than your average modern shooter, but it's no revival of old-school FPS design principles either.

I think it's both mixed together really. It has tons of Painkiller style arenas for sure, but it also has some exploration elements and non-arena fights. Also I'd definitely say Painkiller is an old game now, so whether Doom 2016 is "old school" likely depends on your age and priorities.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

While Amid Evil, Wrath, Dusk and stuff may not have much narrative plot (kinda like the three paragraph story you used to get in manuals like Doom), one thing I like is that there is some environmental storytelling going on in them, or else it leaves the player to imagine their own interpretation of what is going on - like reading a book as a kid and not knowing the meaning of every word. That has been a sought after trait in games of late. I think Hidetaka Miyazaki talked once about how he used to read fantasy novels in English, but his English wasn't great, so didn't know half the words, his mind just filled in the details with his own imagery of what was happening, like how David Bowie used to write songs by cutting up newspapers or something lol. Depending on how vivid your imagination is or trained to be open, the imagery might be better than the author's own idea of how things looked.

Say with Star Wars: Dark Forces, I always felt quite immersed in the Star Wars setting because the environments were so impressionistically suggestive of being on some isolated outpost that even modern games like Jedi: Fallen Order don't convey with their pretensions to TV drama never leaving you feel truly alone, knowing there is gonna be some Saw Guerrera cameo in about 5 minutes making the galaxy feel small. Say when you land outside the Imperial base on Fest in Dark Forces, it really felt like you were a nobody, dropped into a cavern and crevasse filled remote planet with not a soul around save Probe Droids and an outpost somewhere ahead.

Doom, Heretic, Hexen, etc, all had those feels too to varying degrees. They don't fit the definition of an immersive sim like System Shock but suggested stuff environmentally, or left you to make up your own idea better than the manual's description - I think in a way Heretic/HeXen's worlds are kinda, as much as Ultima Underworld or King's Field or Gothic or Arx Fatalis, maybe a small part of the development of that tradition toward leaving people in the midst of an indifferent landscape and saying 'do as thou wilt', if you know what I mean - like maybe FPS contributed too.

 

[warpig]

I think it's both mixed together really. It has tons of Painkiller style arenas for sure, but it also has some exploration elements and non-arena fights.

It's has a bit of that but it's insignificant. The exploration is watered down and the monsters you meet outside of the arena sequences aren't that much of a threat. Knowing that unless it's an "arena" it's not really a serious fight kills the fun from exploring levels and makes the whole thing like some banal chore. There's also always abundance of ammo and items.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Those mines in Dusk felt pretty spooky. Reminded me a bit of the lower levels of the Thief 1 Cragscleft Prison.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Curious. There's a demo of that coming out tomorrow.

 

[Lemming42]

That looks interesting. Maybe a little too close to F.E.A.R., apparently including the boring as fuck segments where you walk down a corridor while doors spookily slam shut and shit goes flying around, but I think 2000s FPS games deserve an indie revival treatment much more than 90s games. Nobody's ever going to match or improve on Quake, Blood and the rest, not because those games are perfect or anything but because any attempt to recapture that specific experience just ends up feeling like an awkward lame imitation, especially when jarringly mixed with more modern mechanics.

Matching and surpassing the likes of F.E.A.R. and Far Cry, though? Two great games but not really dated to a specific time in the same way as something like Quake, modern developers with enough creativity and skill could definitely build upon and improve those games.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

The FPS genre has peaked with HL2/Far Cry/FEAR1. There has been zero innovation going on ever since.

 

[jebsmoker]

you forgot to put STALKER in that list

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

you forgot to put STALKER in that list

Not a traditional FPS. IIRC, Stalker started the whole First-person open world thing.

 

[DalekFlay]

The FPS genre has peaked with HL2/Far Cry/FEAR1. There has been zero innovation going on ever since.

For pure FPS games I agree 100%, but A) I think a lot of people will call us storyfags and say the genre peaked with Quake, and B) the industry as a whole seems to have dramatically shifted focus to hybrids like Bioshock and Far Cry.

 

[Siveon]

There's a Trepang demo already out on indiedb for those curious. I played it about a year ago when it was even more rough than the footage, but evem then I was already starting to get a feel for the flow they were going for.

I'm not gonna say its the second coming of FEAR but like the aussie said it is certainly better than the sequels already. I'm looking forward to it.

 

[otsego]

I say bring em on. I've gotten as much enjoyment (maybe even more) out of these 'indie' shooters as I did with the 'indie' RPGs we've seen lately. And both genres offer infinitely more enjoyment than the latest AAA iteration of these defiled genres.

While I agree there feels like there has been little innovation and some are missing the mark on what they intend to emulate, they've felt both samey and different in the right ways. Ion Fury had excellent levels, weapons and vibe - Amid Evil felt like Heretic and Hexen combined with incredible levels and art - Dusk is Dusk.

And the prices are just right. (And when they aren't, they tend to go on sale frequently.... that's how I ended up with Pathfinder )