AMID EVIL is another to one to add to the list. Fun weapons. Large arenas and each episode has different level design, art style, and enemies. Highly recommended.
Was expecting it on the list with all the other great boomer shooters on the list. Beautiful game, cool weapons, stunning level design, great souns loved every min! looking forward to the expansion.
I really liked it, but it somehow wore off. It feels... I dunno.. Too long? I still don't get the 'level' or 'chapter' selection. Too much for me. The first couple of hours were amazing though.
@@kirillholt2329 by today standard dusk is not the greatest boomer shooter. However, try to find a boomer shooter release before dusk. The best you will find is probably the remake of rise of the triad and before that you will go back to the 90s probably. Pretty much Dusk proved that there was a market for this kind of game. This is why dusk is cited again and again.
@@kirillholt2329 Its weird that this is a decently common opinion - finding Dusk to be overhyped but greatly enjoying Amid Evil. What do you like about AE so much? I think AE is enjoyable but it feels too simple to be great. There is not enough meat on this bone if you catch my drift.
I own and have played most of these games and am extremely happy you're promoting them, as someone who didn't grow up playing these retro FPS style games, Dusk was my first experience and got me hooked into the fast paced fps genre. Amid Evil is also fantastic.
Cultic and selaco are awesome. Check out this free game called wolfenstien blade of agony. It blew me away i cant believe its put out for free. took some modders 5 years to make it,
Ashes: 2063 and Afterglow are legitimate some of the best boomer shooters I've ever played AND THEY'RE FREE! As good as anything on this list in my opinion.
Fun fact! CULTIC was developed on a CRT, and with that I HIGHLY recommend using at minimum a good CRT shader based on Composite RGB, and watch those details come to life!
If you love the ESSENCE of shooting games, then boomer shooters are for you. The flow, the mechanics; the simple act of putting your crosshair on an enemy and clicking/pulling the trigger. They're literally a concentrated extract of shooter and I adore them for it.
It's strange that they can't make AAA games that are like this. Simple, fast, fun. The doom reboots tried I guess, but even they had too much of added complexity and enemies that require you to use a specific weapon and do a specific dance in order to kill them.
@@WarlonWinterheart DOOM 2016 was what initiated the entire revival, and DOOM Eternal is like the pinnacle of retro style shooters. More mechanics isn't a bad thing, especially because the whole "dance of death" aspect of it is really building on what came before. In every fps you have weapon's that work better on certain enemies, like in Unreal you use splash damage to take on the Skaarj, or in Blood explosives for some enemies to actually kill them. If you want something really polished but more old-school, though still with very engaging mechanics, try Cultic, it's incredible! Short but very replayable and with really solid gunplay, it's basically the true Blood 2.0!
@@AveSicarius I didn't mean more mechanics is bad. It's just that the gameplay doesn't feel the same anymore. And again, I'm not saying it can't be fun. It just requires more thinking and is't not as relaxing as blasting away in the old school type of gameplay. Funny you should mention Unreal, since I would pinpoint that game exactly as the moment when things started changing. The game was graphically demanding so they couldn't throw as much enemies at you anymore. There had to be fewer enemies that were harder to kill. Even at the time most people were saying that it wasn't as fun as a shooter but very impressive otherwise.
See that's where the nostalgia-crowd get it wrong. If you just want the experience described above, go play Serious Sam or Painkiller. Those games are very simplistic and purely about arcadey combat. Doom, Quake, and Duke Nukem were different. Not only are they not the mindless gore fests they appear to be, but they're actually more thoughtful than many modern shooters. You can't just hide behind cover and regenerate health. There is a lot of intentionality put into level design and enemy/weapon/ammo/health placement. The levels themselves are labyrinthine and require some thought to navigate to figure out where to go to progress in the level. Using your head to figure out what switch does what, or where the secrets are. The combat itself requires a good deal of skill, trial and error, and thought often. How the level is designed will drastically alter your playstyle, whether to be more aggressive or more careful. There's actually a lot of nuance possible in these games. It's why Doom has not only endured for 30 years, but in fact is thriving. It only gets bigger and better with time. These games are NOT mindless shooters, and in fact they have more depth to them than a lot of modern shooters do.
The thing about mods like _Brutal Doom_ and its offshoot _Black_ is that you can play them with nearly every independently-created _Doom_ map out there. And there are _thousands._
Yes, *but* a lot of those maps are built pretty specifically around Doom's pacing, and stuff like Brutal Doom and kind of ruin the map design, especially stuff like Cacodemon clouds that were supposed to force the player into certain positions just evaporating into thin air from a few rockets...
@@McRcFly That doesn't really change that the pace of everything really messes with typical Doom "monster herding" style gameplay, though. It turns Doom into more of a room-clearing sim.
There are now entire mappacks much better suited for these mods (BD and Proj Brutality still offer more classical modes and are in general dizzyingly customizable) classics like Eviternity, Alien Vendetta, Ancient Aliens and all the better packs that were inspired by them. Many games are awesome, but I suspect Doom will outlast them simply because of the infinite mod + map variations.
In the past few months, I've noticed that I don't have as much fun as I used to have with franchises like CoD and BF, but then I stumbled over some of these boomer shooters. By far my favorite ones were ULTRAKILL and DUSK from New Blood. ULTRAKILL has a Quake-like movement, a style meter comparable to Devil May Cry and very good VA. DUSK feels like one of those 90's games with really fun movement mechanics and strafing being fast and overpowered. I recommend both games to anyone looking into this genre of games!
Well if you enjoy that VA Gianni. I have some great news for you. He's a memer of a pro VA and does voices in videos for max0rs review of ultrakill and other videos like Armstrong in his summary of MGR Revengeance, and Melina in elden ring
@slamkam07 I actually follow both Gianni and Max0r! Tbh, gotta be one my favorite youtubers of this year, especially Max0r with his overstimulating summaries 😭
Prodeus is so great! I'm starting to backtrack in my game preferences. I used to look down on pixel art especially as a younger person. But I look back now and I realize that these older style games have so much personality thats just absent in newer games. I just started final fantasy 6 and its great. More modern games with retro style please.
Played a side scroller called The Eternal Castle. And as a young kid I grew up with them before Doom or Wolf3d were made. That Eternal Castle game felt very much like old retro sides scrollers such as Another World. And also FlashBack. Highly recommended. And they have an awesome storyline too.
You've got good taste dude. FF6 is still the best Final Fantasy game in my opinion. And man, I didn't kow they finished Prodeus' campaign? I have it on my Steam Deck. When I finish Ion Fury I'm definitely going to play through the whole campaign.
Check out half life mmod if you haven't already, it has some advanced settings that allow you to change the shading of the textures and make it look all classic and pixelated but also with the revamped visual effects and lighting and what not. Truly mint mod.
The cyber dystopia themed Ion Fury felt a lot like Duke Nukem, and the mystical fantasy mod Hedon conjures the nostalgia of Shadow Warrior's rural maps, but with RPG elements and immersive story. Both feature female protagonists. While Siren provides the dark, edgy horror experience of F. E. A. R. and the Alien franchise.
@@Pawel_eS "They are unique because they don't need to follow trends" Yeah, I'm not sure I would say that about the developers of the more recent boomer shooters. Boomer shooters have become a trend, I feel, in the past years. (Which does not mean it's not good. I just would not say that it's "unique")
@@Pest789 Yeah, I find it funny that the video starts with "triple A bad because no innovation and they rehash things" but then turn around and praise indie games for.. rehashing DOOM a millionth time. (This isn't meant as an insult. It's fine to "rehash" things.)
Turbo Overkill is another one I'd like to add to the list that's critically underrated. All the weapons have a purpose, the enemy variety is great, the level design is pure boomer shooter, and you've got a chainsaw for a leg!
Few more for those interested: Amid Evil* Anomalous Dread Templar* Forgive me Father (a bit slower paced) Gloomwood (a bit more like Thief) Hard Reset Hedon 'apply directly to the forehead' Bloodright Incision* Maximum Action* Nightmare Reaper* Postal Brain Damaged Project Warlock 1+2* Severed Steel* Strife Turbo Overkill* Viscerafest* Wrath: Aeon of Ruin* Zio McCall's Brutal Wolfenstein 3D (Doom 2 mod)* *best ones IMO, but they're all amazing
I've been playing Dread Templar recently, and it's actually really fucking good, to the point I'm not sure why people aren't talking more about it. Yes, it doesn't really do anything new, but it's super tight regarding both the FPS mechanics included and the level + enemy design. Having a blast just running through with the golden rune upgrades and slamming through hordes of monsters! Some of them are absolutely ridiculous, like the Cutter upgrade for the SSG that turns it onto a daemonic laser shotgun that can pretty much 2-3 hit anything in the game even on Nightmare!
@@AveSicarius Yeah Dread Templar is amazing, I haven't got a chance to play it since it came out properly but I'm eager to! It's defintiely not talked about enough. I feel like that about Incision and Viscerafest as well, though maybe because they're still in Early Access. There's a channel called Kirk Collects, he covers loads of games like this so you don't miss out on any in the future....like Phantom Fury!
@@KB-du3rh I've got my eye on Phantom Fury as well as a few others (like Selaco)! Mostly I watch Civvie as my form of BoomShoot news. Unfortunately he doesn't always cover everything, but usually the Realms Deep Roundup episodes have most of the up and coming games included. That's where I found out about Dread Templar as well as a few other games. Honestly I'd love to see a sequel to it, so hopefully it sells well enough to justify that!
@@AveSicarius Ah yeah that looks so good! I'm loving the FEAR inspired Woo Shooters like Selaco and Trepang2. Civvie's great for it too, always looking for those roundups and everything else he uploads. I have a bit of a mix, Civvie, Kirk Collects and JarekTheGamingDragon, though the latter does all sorts of reviews not just boomer/woo shooters and half-likes. Reminds me, I need to add Severed Steel to this list, I should be smacked for forgetting it.
Prodeus, Cultic and dusk are really solid Prodeus being my favorite of the 3 and cultic being interchangeable with dusk concerning fun and how much I like them
I've been going back and playing Unreal Tournament 2004 recently. Not a "boomer shooter" per say but it's been really fun to revisit a longtime favorite that I haven't touched in like 10 years, especially with all the custom map packs.
I revisited UT2004 2 years ago some months after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and had an absolute blast. IMO it has the best version of Facing Worlds in the entire series.
Wish they made an elderscrolls style boomershooter with rpg elements. You could implement a bunch of cool spells and abilities from daggerfall. Like being able to climb on walls and of course insane amount of magic abilities mixed with crazy bows and auto crossbows and stuff. Would be such an epic BR where you drop in and build a character. Where there were small side quests and dungeons you can stumble into and level up and get better gear,find npc that enchant armor and weapons.
Not exactly like that but hexen and heretic have a dark fantasy theme with rpg elements; also check out graven, which is potentially in development hell but a more modern take on that genre of dark fantasy fps rpg.
For anyone wondering what game is in the thumbnail its ashes 2063, a doom 2 mod based in a post apocalyptic setting. Its definitely worth a download, id say to download the redux version as it includes the expansion and uses the weapon models from the sequel ashes afterglow.
Weird how it was used for the thumbnail but never mentioned in the video, saddens me at the missed opportunity for more people to know about and play ashes 2063 + deadman walking + afterglow
One great game I would recommend is Overload, a modernization of Decent, a great old game that often gets overlooked next to Quake and DN. That game had some banger midi music too.
I do like my boomer shooters. Currently playing through Powerslave Exhumed, which is great fun. I'm also making my own called Return to Sender with a multiplayer twist. Its a horde mode where you play against another player in your own copy of the map, buy every enemy you kill gets sent to them (think sending Junk tiles in Tetris).
This sounds radical! And has me thinking about how I'd do my own twist on it, lmao. Good luck! Keep me updated, this sounds like something I'd be really into!
@@NinjaSushi2 As someone who's dealt with Doom modding (not the same as Build, but close enough), do yourself a favor and use a modern engine instead. Those old engines are easy to get started with, but they become a nightmare as soon as you try to do anything even remotely different than what they were designed for. Now, if you're hellbent on it, don't let me stop you.
FYI The game in the thumbnail of this video is not actually shown. It's called Ashes Afterglow. It's a free Doom mod. I highly recommend it and its predecessor, Ashes 2063.
Last AAA games I've bought were Prey and Doom in 2016. And thanks to indie devs and publishers like Devolver I do not feel like I'm missing out. Call it coping mechanism all you want, but I'm old enough to know myself better.
I got Quake when they came out with the remaster. I played it for the first time with a friend and we couldn't believe how much fun we had. It's just so simple, but so much fun. Its visuals may be dated, but they are crystal clear and the game runs smooth as butter. That led me down a path to trying other older shooters that I missed out on. I'm nearly all the way through the Serious Sam games. The first two or three were great for many of the same reasons Quake is great. Just solid, straight forward fun. I also played Return to Castle Wolfenstein for the first time and ran through the Half Life series. There are so many older games that have aged really well! I haven't played the games in this video (except for the Selaco demo), but some are on my list along with the first two Far Cry games and Max Payne games. Sometimes these older games are a breath of fresh air.
As a 40 year old who's been gaming since Frogger at 2 years old, the Quake 1 era from '96-'98 is still one of my fondest gaming memories. Unfortunately, the remaster isn't faithful to the movement mechanics of the original. I couldn't play it.
Hrot (tip of an arror you can translate it as such) is set in the communist Prague. When Czekoslovakia was under Soviet occupation 1968 - 1989. Its a Czech game, so the names and stuff are going to be in Czech. Like names of places which we recognize well.
It's not as crazy as these, but my personal favorite recent boomer shooter is NIGHTMARE REAPER. Lots of insane weapons with random affixes a la Diablo, fun mobility options like grappling hooks, and optional side mini games like Mega Man and Pokémon. It's great!
"Not as crazy as these"? Interesting choice of words for Nightmare Reaper, but not wrong. Its ludicrous and insane. And it is most definitely one of "the best" available in the genre. Nightmare Reaper is who you play as. Ultramarine, Ultrakill, BrutalDoom, Nightmare Reaper. Pick the most bad-ass character.
For those wondering what the game is in the thumbnail, it's Ashes 2063: Afterglow. For some reason LevelCap decided to not feel it necessary to credit or mention it in the video
Blade Of Agony. it's a wolfenstein based game that is a stand alone. very much worth a look. plenty of youtube vids to to do a quick look. plays like a mix between brutal doom and ion fury.
Having played all of these, HROT really stands out as the most thoughtfully crafted experience with the tighest gunplay controls. For how minimal it looks on the outside, it's surprisingly deep and detailed. Had me hooked from start to finish.
I always wondered why indie FPS devs didn't just make games with old graphics so they could spend more on making a great game. I saw it in platforming and top down but FPS was pretty barren for awhile. So unbelievably happy with the indie FPS output over these past few years :).
Just wanted to say great list but my personal favourite of recent Boomer Shooters would be Amid Evil. I love the dark fantasy vibe and the magic-based weapons.
A little sad that Hedon didn't get added to the list. It was made in GZ Doom and you play as a thicc half demon/half orc chick raising hell to rescue her clan.
Nah, to me it's exactly that. You expect great fun, you have great fun for like 15min and then get bored quickly. Because the AI is braindead and enemy placement is just lame. They mostly don't move in any way, you just go around corners and shoot at turrets in these levels. I played Quake Remastered before this and these are worlds apart in terms of clever game design.
That intro really touched me and made me realize why i love Boomer Shooters... because they are the most "video gamey" games without any drama or bullshit involved, just a whole lot of shooting and high-skill, dopamine rewarding gameplay.
Exactly. People who call themselves "Gamer", yet never played a classic FPS are just a fraud. Like those "i love Dark Souls" people who never played any OG Castlevania or Resident Evil. Because of these people AAA-Gaming has become Mainstream-BS.
To me the holy trinity consists of Ion Fury, Dusk and Amid Evil (like CV said). Enjoyed Prodeus, Cultic, Dread Templar a lot also. And there is the remastered and expanded Quake Stuff, also great. What also really rocks are some GZDoom total conversions, like Ashes 2063 or Wolfendoom. And i can't wait for Selaco. Started playing Farcry 4 recently and asked myself why pretty quickly 😗
I'd recommend The Citadel, Ashes: Afterglow, and if you're looking for doom WADS, Guncaster and Codename Demolitionist. The Citadel is my favorite FPS. I like a game where leaning to stay in cover is as important as crouch jumping and air movement to dodge bullets is. It's also got very in-depth guns for a boomer shooter- they all have different quirks that subtly change how they are used. For example, the SMG drops two bullets on the floor if loaded while not empty, and they can get lost among ejected shell casings. This ties in very well with the reloading system, where you have fast and slow reloads- fast ones drop magazines on the floor, slow ones keep the bullets. Reloading the shotgun only loads one shell per button press. This makes it great to use with the unlock-able bullet time, because reloading one shell is almost instant. The pistol is also a grenade launcher. Most weapons have stuff like this. It's also got some amazing level designs. And some flat rectangular mazes. Also I like how fragile everything is. Weapons break(in theory, in practice they get unreliable and inaccurate, and then are replaced), most enemies are not tanky (and the tanks are not axe-resistant), and the player has about 35 health instead of 100. Spamming portable medkits is extremely useful, unless you cheat and turn corruption on, which makes that a bad idea if you don't want to throw up. I'm planning on making 2 boomer shooters inspired by it eventually. One will be a bullet hell fps, likely a mix of Touhou Doom and The Citadel. The other will be slow, but with a feeling of immense power, focused on momentum and melee. Think of the power armor from guncaster, but on ice, with damage scaling based on speed, and everything you do pushes or pulls you.
@@themisterdellouNoo because i totally agree with you just because of the graphics looks retro and doesn’t mean the game is retro it just looks like it, retro is more of how old the games are like ps2, nintendo 64, and the ps3 now
Dusk and Brutal Doom are both amazing! Cultic is pretty good too, while Ion Fury becomes a bit tedious, as it is very true to the "pick up hidden key" gameplay - then I would rather replay Shadow Warrior :) Thanks for the excellent video!
Ashes 2063 Afterglow (second entry in the series) that is the game in the thumbnail, A Must Play, a new episode (episode 3) is on the making and it is just very very good. There is also the original Ashes 2063 and the dlc Dead man Walking
Boomer shooters became my favourite genre after finishing dusk. First I love the gunplay and leveldesign of these games but what is even more important for me, I satisfy my fetish for late 90s/early 2000 games atmosphere and artstyle. I just love the dark and grim atmosphere games these times often had.
Fun fact about ultrakills coin toss, you can shoot it with whatever you want and certain guns like the railgun do more damage than shooting the coin with the pistol.
The HROT dev said that the next update is likely to be the one that brings it out of EA, so it's just about done. I've played Dusk and HROT and they are both great. As a few others have said, Amid Evil is another good game for the list.
"Prodeus is kind of like the Doom 3 we never got." This was exactly what I said to myself when I first started playing it. It's amazing, and your opinion is dead on.
Why do a “boomer shooter” video in 2033? These aren’t new games and the writer doesn’t show an understanding of the genre. He just says words like “fever dream” and “chunky” and “immersive sim” to fill time to get to that ideal RU-vid ad revenue video length. Glad you at least mentioned Civvie. His 2-5 minute intros of the games he does outclass this in every way 👌
Ultrakill really is one of the best games I've ever played, the mechanical complexity of the gameplay really isn't matched by any other shooter that I'm aware of. The game just keeps opening up with new interactions between weapons and new techniques to learn, even long after you've beaten the what's currently available in the game, and the Cybergrind mode is incredibly addictive and fun.
I also think Fashion Police Squad deserves a mention. It's like doom but you can only use specific weapons on specific enemies. Great humour and overall a pretty decent game to pick up.
As a Gen-X/XENnial, I'm not too "Keen" on being called a "Boomer.," only because that term is meant to refer to people born between 1946 and 1964. "Do0mer" I could live with. 7:11 "Hhhrrrot" with some umph in the "huh" and a rolled "rrr" (but still one syllable). 7:18 Notice how the shotgun is reverse pump-action in the style of the RMB-93.
Boomer (noun): an informal noun referring to a person born during a baby boom, especially one born in the U.S. between 1946 and 1965. - I like how "boomer" means anyone over 25 now.
Don’t forget Project Warlock 1 & 2! I’m surprised to see people forget about those games. Very much in the Hexen style with spooky magic artifacts and powers and such. Secrets to find, upgrades to be gained. Just great games overall.
In about 2016 my computer started having major performance issues. I couldn't figure out what the issue was for the life of me and eventually gave up, opting to play on my weak work laptop instead. Pretty much the only games it could run were classic shooters. I wasn't able to get a new computer built until 2021. For 5 years I basically just played Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, and Blood, along with various mods. I love boomer shooters so much. I had not been an fps fan for a long time because of the directions they went, but having a broken computer brought me back into the fold. As I'm typing this, Boltgun drops in about 5 hours and I can't wait.
Exodemon, All Would Cry Beware, Serious Sam Syberian mayhem, Nightmare Reaper, Industria, Into The Pit, Arkos, Bright memory infinite, Dead Beacon, Nightmare Of Decay, Blood, Supplice, Meatgrinder. I have quite the list. Too many to put here. Keep it up my good fellow, you are doing great things.
I find it strange you showed Ashes Afterglow on the thumbnail, yet never gave it a section in the video. You gave Brutal Doom a section, so Doom mods/wads clearly weren't off the table. It's a shame, too. Because it's an absolutely phenomenal game! And that's what it is, really - its own game, completely free (aside from owning Doom,) just running on the Doom engine
I simply cannot recommend *Turbo Overkill* enough. It's gotta be the most fun videogame I've played in years. Brutal, fast and TONS of content for a Boomer Shooter
As someone who is quite bad at older games and finds the map design in boomer shooters to be too much to handle, it’s insane how much fun I had playing Prodeus. Never got lost and it finally let me fully understand the overall boomer shooter gunplay. I’ve gotten better in fps games in general because of it.
Woahhh! Definitely gonna try these games! I love horde modes in fps games lol, and Doom Eternal isn't exactly up my alley (kinda difficult and scary ngl) so this genre fits the bill perfectly lol. Excellent video man! An ode to old-school games and gamers.
Ultrakill has currently got me wondering where I am as I rocket surf across the map and get launched by a dbz character. One HELL of a fuckin boomer shooter for sure
Anyone who hates brutal doom... doom is for modding, doom is not just Doom, but MODS and that means a shit of of crazy things, from its inception... including Brutal Doom - Brutal Doom is "Doom"
