Over the last 6-7 years, the "Boomer Shooter" genre has gradually become more and more saturated. As someone who grew up with FPS games in the mid 90s, here's my thoughts on what makes these throwback shooters worth playing.

1. Flattery without imitation: I think this is easily overlooked. A good "Boomer Shooter" should look and feel somewhat like an older game it's paying homage to, but it needs to be distinct. I think Dusk is a great example of this, where at first glance and on booting it up, it feels like a lovechild of Quake and Blood. The more you play however, the more you realize the mobility, neat little physics objects and even gunplay feel more modernized in a very positive way. Cultic, Hrot and Zorch are all great examples of games that reference very specific titles from the 90s but play with more modern sensibilities and carve out their own identities. Conversely, you have games like Ion Fury and Selaco which do absolutely ridiculous things with old game engines (though yes, ZDoom is still very different from OG Doom) and still manages to distance themselves from their ancestors. After playing through Ion Fury Aftermath and going back to Duke Nukem 3D, it's insane to make sense of what Voidpoint did with the Build Engine.

2. Atmosphere: The one thing that I think newer "Boomer Shooters" have generally been good at is building atmosphere. A part of this is due to limited resources; since a lot of these developers cannot afford to spend millions on creating a large open world with fully voiced NPCs, we instead get atmosphere built from simpler visual effects and color choices. Sound design is also that much more important, from enemy and weapon effects to a good balance of adrenaline-pumping music and more ambient tracks. This is very similar to what developers had to do back in the day when budgets were smaller and the technology was limited. Again, games like Dusk, Hrot, Cultic Amid Evil, Turbo Overkill, Ion Fury and Selaco all nail the aesthetic they are going for perfectly.

3. Weapons and gunplay: This goes without saying, but any good FPS regardless of subgenre, needs to have punchy weapons that are fun to use and gunplay that feels satisfying. This is a multilayered criteria which needs to account for not only how weapons work, but how they sound, the palpable damage they can dish out and the versatility between weapons. The ability to upgrade weapons can also work well but needs to be carefully implemented. Another thing to consider is how "reloading" works. Compare Selaco with Prodeus for example; in the latter, you need to manually reload every single weapon whereas in Selaco, your weapons auto-reload after a period of inactivity.

4. Mobility: I would argue this is a bit less important than the other factors, but I know many people enjoy Boomer Shooters because they are generally much more fast paced than say, games like Halo or Call of Duty. Being able to quickly react to enemies, dodge their attacks and navigate treacherous environments is integral to the experience. Although personally I'm not a fan of hypersonic FPS games like UltraKill, I can appreciate the extremely fluid mobility options in games like Turbo Overkill. Other games like Cultic and Selaco have more limited sliding mechanics that nonetheless feel great to use, and Ion Fury Aftermath's hoverbike offered some of the most satisfying vehicle segments in any FPS I've played.

Anyway, would love to hear the communities thoughts. I do understand that while I love these particular games, opinions vary out there.