I love how it mixes the cel shaded, comic book art style with the old Duke Nukem, Build engine technical presentation. Not sure if it's actually using that game engine, but I love the way it looks in this game.
I was disappointed by Prodeus. They’ve got a good foundation in terms of gameplay, the map design is unbelievably good, and the aesthetic is genre leading - but the enemies all just stand in one place and the gunplay just doesn’t feel as good as other boomer shooters. It doesn’t matter how amazing the former is if you haven’t nailed the latter.
I’d be keen to see them keep working on those areas but I think they’re more interested in making it a platform for modding, which is cool but kind of pointless if the game itself isn’t tight.
I disagree regarding the map design being “unbelievably good” (a lot of it was “okay” to “good” with very few standouts) but yeah.
It reminds me a lot of when Bloodstained and Timespinner came out. Both are unapologetic love letters to Symphony of the Night. Except…
Bloodstained felt just as clunky and awkward as SOTN (I should know since I replayed SOTN in anticipation) with a lot of the same “good for the 90s…” design choices and mechanics.
Whereas Timespinner straight up stole the menu. But also modernized the gameplay and filed off a lot of rough edges.
End result is that Bloodstained played like SOTN and was carried by nostalgia and influencers. Whereas Timespinner played like what we remembered SOTN playing like… but didn’t have Iga.
Same here. Games like Dusk, Project Warlock, and so forth all play like what we remember DOOM and Quake playing like. Prodeus… played like DOOM without the nostalgia factor.
You make a great point there, Prodeus is funny in that respect because it’s heavily, heavily inspired by Brutal Doom (like deliberately going for the pixelated sprites + HD level geometry dichotomy) but they didn’t really take any of the lessons from what that guy did to make the Doom enemies smarter and more fun to fight.
I recently replayed the first Soldier of Fortune and Perfect Dark back to back and I gotta say they nailed the retro style in this game. I can’t wait to play it.
This doesn’t look bad, but I feel like bringing back Goldeneye style shooters is a bad idea. Like, I get it’s nostalgia and all but there’s a reason why that game is stuck and forgotten on N64, it just didn’t age well at all. It might’ve been good for it’s time and platform of choice, but I’d say that in retrospect it’s easily one of the weakest shooters from the 90s, especially in comparison to games like Quake, Unreal and Half-Life.
Why must everything be compared? If I pull out my N64 and Goldeneye and have a round of single player or multiplayer with mates, fun is still to be had. No one is sitting there thinking, this is shit compared to Quake. These games have their place in the hearts of many because of its gameplay and I for one welcome a new game that honours this era for what it was.
Old and out of the loop gamer here - used to love FPS games but quit playing them when Counterstrike was new.
What’s uh… what’s going on? I keep seeing trailers for new FPS games that look like they’re running the original Doom or Rise of the Triad engines. Somebody help me understand.
There’s been a resurgence of retro throwback shooters. The first one I noticed was with STRAFE, which released (to a rocky start) back in 2017. It’s a brilliant game now, mind you.
You may also want to check out:
DUSK
Turbo Overkill
GTTOD
SPRAWL
Prodeus
Ion Fury
Selaco
Ultrakill
I’m sure I’m missing some great ones from this list.
3D Realms, today a publishing label by Embracer Group, focuses on retro games. Just like 10 or so years ago pixel art games had a resurgence, since about 5 years old school FPS games came back as well. This is both a path to reduce workload as well as a gameplay design choice.
3D Realms’ annual event, Realms Deep, is the biggest showcase for such games.
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