The Rise, Slow Fall, And Return of The Retro Shooter
Well to understand how the Retro Shooters came back, we have to understand their rise and fall. In 1992 id software released Wolfenstien 3D, the first mass market First Person Shooter; here the objective was to shoot your way out of a Nazi lair because fuck Nazi's. This however was less shooter and more maze game, you had about three types of enemy who did the same thing at varying speeds and your real concern was escaping their lairs, all 60 of them.
This would change with id's follow up, Wolfenstien Spear of Desti- nah I'm kidding, Spear of Destiny was a glorified expansion pack. The game after that though was the really where the Retro Shooter, and the first person shooter in general, was born. I am of course talking about Doom, easily one of the Top 5 most important games ever made.
Everything Wolfenstien did wrong Doom did right, the pacing was faster, the enemies far more varied with differing attack patterns, and the emphasis was less about finidng your way out of a maze and more killing everything in that maze with a wide assortment of weapons like Shotguns, Rocket Launchers, Chainguns, and of course, the BFG. Doom changed the industry in every which way from it's tech to it's style, there was nothing before like Doom, but there would soon be.
The first few standout competitors for Doom were merely good, 1994's Rise of the Triad was more of a Wolfenstien clone than a Doom clone and 1995's Dark Forces was a fun Star Wars take on Doom. But by 1996 the first actual Doom competitors would come into existence with Duke Nukem 3D and id's own Doom follow up, Quake.
Duke pushed far more interactivity than Doom did and Quake went full 3D, both of which were game changers for the industry but not as much as Doom. Both games were still copying Doom's homework and formula, something similar could be said for Quake II, Blood, and Shadow Warrior in 1997. They were entertaining games (if you mute Shadow Warrior's protag) and kings of the Retro Shooter.
Things would change however in 1998 when Valve, a brand new dev team, released Half-Life which changed the industry just like Doom did. Sure it followed a similar plot to something like Doom, aliens teleport in and cause mayhem; but Half-Life told it like an actual story as opposed to just giving you a gun and telling you to have fun. Suddenly you were given context in the actual game, interacted with characters, and were given an actual name and role with weight.
The downside to this is that Half-Life, in the service of it's story, was more linear and less maze-like than any of the games that came before. It was however the only caveat sacrificed from the Doom style, you still were encouraged to think fast, move fast, and kill faster. The enemies were also still varied; aliens shot lightning bolts at you while marines would try to out flank you and flush you out.
Half-Life may have changed the industry but the Retro Shooter style was still strong. Though the shift was largely to multiplayer with games like Quake III and Counter-Strike. The single player games were still about fast paced action with thoughtful enemies that required strategy and even the multiplayer games were fairly fast. And then Halo happened and console's became viable for shooter games.
For years PC's dominated the shooter space, the fast paced action something that can only be met by a mouse. Sure you had a Goldeneye or a Turok every now and then but the best shooters were on PC. But Halo changed everything when it released with both it's game loop and control scheme. Halo introduced a twin-stick design where your camera was mapped to the right stick with movement mapped to the left.
Crucially as well Halo slowed things down, encouraging the player to stop and take their time as they considered their options. Recharging health encouraged the player to retreat when their health got low. Your aiming was noticeably slower as well with generous auto aim, a consequence of the fact that while stick shooting was a good solution it still couldn't match the speed of the mouse. You were also limited to two weapons as opposed to every weapon; a consequence for the game being able to only map a simple weapon swap button.
Now, I'm not blaming Halo for the death of the Retro Shooter, these changes were the best solution Bungie could come up with for the Xbox. I am however laying the blame on every dev who looked at what Halo did and decided to shamelessly copy it, including PC game devs who didn't need to but did it anyway. But at least shooters post Halo still had enemies that required thoughtful strategy to beat. Not to worry though as Call of Duty took care of that.
Call of Duty was a World War 2 (eventually modern) shooter focused more on creating a cinematic experience above all else, a movie within a game. While CoD was successful in that, the downside is that the Nazi enemies tended to just be "guys with guns" and the game's idea of difficulty was turning every room into a hail of bullets.
This however turned out the be highly successful and shooters that were already headed in that direction copied CoD's formula because it was easy and CoD proved it could work. Especially combined with Call of Duty 4's successful multiplayer that caused CoD 4 to blast past every shooter out there.
The end result is that once sprawling maps with multiple routes had turned into linear corridors, like a shooting gallery at a carnival. Only broken up by big sweeping scripted set-pices that the player had almost no control over. Single player basically took a backseat to multiplayer, relegated to being an interactive action movie.
Meanwhile varied enemy types that kept you on your feet were replaced by cannon fodder that mindlessly charged the player. Speed was basically non-existent, you might get a sprint button but that was it. You were slowly walking forward, blasting mindless drones, and ducking behind cover to regenerate health.
By 2008 the Retro Shooter was, for all intents and purposes, dead The only series carrying to torch ironically being Halo, the series that helped start this mess. Things seemed frankly bleak for shooters until 2014, when the series that served as the genesis for the original Retro Shooter returned with Wolfenstien: The New Order.
The New Order was a fresh take on Wolfenstien, telling an alternate universe where the Nazis conquered the world. It was still fairly slow compared to Doom, Quake, or even Half-Life; but The New Order was more strategic and the maps, while linear, gave you more berth to move around and strategize. Meanwhile the enemies were more than just bullet fodder that charged mindlessly at you, they kept you on your feet and forced you to think. It was a start but, just like the birth of the Retro Shooter, the rebirth started by Wolfenstien would reach fruition with Doom.
Released in 2016, this new Doom was everything shooters hadn't been since 2004, fast, chaotic, requiring constant on the fly strategy, and encouraging you to kill everything in sight. From the opening shotgun rack to turning the final boss' head into the Grand Canyon, Doom (2016) is non-stop and aggressive. No more regenerating health, no more two weapon limit, no more slow movement, that's all out the window. To say Doom (2016) changed the landscape would be an understatement, it blasted the landscape apart.
But if it were just Doom (2016) then it wouldn't be much of a rebirth, however Dusk and Amid Evil entered early access about a year later. Now to say these games were inspired by Doom (2016) would do both games a disservice. These games were in the works at least a year before Doom (2016) released and Amid Evil's devs were old Doom modders from the 90's. But Doom (2016) did raise their profile by getting people interested in retro shooters in the first place.
After that a flood of indie retro shooters began hitting the web; Project Warlock, Ion Fury, Proteus, Ultra-Kill, and Viscerafest were just the tip of the iceberg. From 2016 to 2021 the Retro Shooter went from being practically dead to having more games than one can shake a stick at. 3D Realms even holds a yearly event just to highlight new Retro Shooters, it's a rapidly growing market... maybe too rapidly.
There's a growing feeling that this return of the retro shooter could very well wind up being a bubble. Kind of like when everyone and their grand-mother were making 2D 8-bit sidescrollers in the early 2010's. Or when Telltale pumped out point and click adventure games in that same time frame at a rate of like, 5 a year. Only time will tell if it truly a bubble or if this trend will last; but till then I'm going to sit back and enjoy the slaughter.
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