reizak on 16/8/2021 at 09:35
Another all-caps title, HYPERVIOLENT.
[video=youtube_share;q6hkQGu8x-k]https://youtu.be/q6hkQGu8x-k[/video]
There's more going on there than the average throwback, what with the terminals, vehicles, talking and something that looks like Citadel Station.
Jason Moyer on 22/8/2021 at 02:06
That Postal one looks less like a classic 90's run and gun shooter and more like some shovelware crap Valusoft or whoever would have sold at Walmart a few years later.
Anarchic Fox on 24/8/2021 at 20:42
Are any of these Serious Sam-style arena shooters? Most of what I've seen seems to hew to Doom, Quake or Unreal instead.
nicked on 15/4/2022 at 07:59
Forgive me Father is now released and it's great:
[video=youtube;XDLHEVNLxz4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDLHEVNLxz4[/video]
Pros:
- Really fantastic retro shooter gameplay - satisfying weapons, challenging, varied enemies, good variety of environments, and serviceable, if rarely exceptional, level design.
- Special powers and upgrades choices give you a lot of additional options beyond vanilla shooting. There are also two choices of protagonist, each with their own set of special abilities.
- Atmosphere is top notch - the heavy black outlined comic-style art looks fantastic and the choppy animation adds to the feeling of descending into madness. The music is a good mix of moody unease and pounding metal when things heat up.
- The boss fights are a real highlight - super challenging, bullet-hell style attacks, well-paced and spread evenly through the game.
Cons:
- Some minor annoyances, my main gripe is that you can always switch to any weapon, even if it has no ammo, and there's no auto-switching. This means if you're short on ammo, you have to waste valuable time scrolling through your guns to find one that has ammo left.
- Feedback could use a little work. UI elements are very small and close to the edge of the screen, meaning it can be difficult to actively keep an eye on your health, ammo and enemies' health bars in the heat of battle. Very little feedback when you're on low health means death often feels like it came out of nowhere.
- The difficulty curve ramps up to eye-watering in the later levels. Skilled ammo conservation is a must, as well as saving your hitscan weapons for some of the faster-moving, tanky enemies. There are also some platforming bits which border on frustrating (though luckily never far from a save point).
- Story is derivative and forgettable for the most part (but really, who cares? It's not that kind of game).
- The protagonist has voice lines for lots of game situations including pickups, which can get quite repetitive and annoying after a while. Voice acting also sounds like it lacks context & direction for some of these lines - the emphasis is on the wrong part of the sentence.
Overall the minor gripes are just that - minor, and did not stop me having a really great time with this game. Highly recommended for fans of retro FPS games.
Anarchic Fox on 17/7/2022 at 11:53
Civvie 11 covered a bunch of boomer shooters in his latest video:
[video=youtube;Nn6bUUvIdlo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn6bUUvIdlo[/video]
nicked on 20/10/2022 at 18:14
Cultic Chapter One came out the other day and it's great.
Understated but cohesive retro art style, tight, satisfying combat, masterful level design and an engaging but not distracting story. Hard to believe it was made by one person.
ZylonBane on 20/10/2022 at 20:17
Weird design choice by the Cultic dev to make the graphics in some ways even worse than the old Build games. Like, distractingly worse. Even DOS Wolf3D had more colorful weapon sprites.
Briareos H on 20/10/2022 at 21:31
I think I liked the demo a bit better overall, I even liked it when it was more stylized (ZylonBane is going to have a field day with stuff like Hellscreen), but still an awesome retro shooter, well worth the 10 dollars.
The gameplay in the final product is kind of halfway between Blood and (the best bits of) Blade of Agony. Looking forward to chapter 2.
nicked on 21/10/2022 at 06:14
Some of the long range combat levels even remind me of something like Far Cry 1 in a weird sort of way - wide, wide combat corridors with multiple possible approaches.
I love the art style - everything is so crisp and readable despite the palette being deliberately extremely limited.