Boomer shooter is a sub genre of First Person Shooters which deliberately eschew more modern shooter elements in favor of older designs. It also includes the games that these shooters are based on. As with most things labeled with boomer it's actually more related to Generation X and early Millennials but if you're going to smear something as old that's the word that gets thrown around. Modern FPS have a distinct vibe and while the exact point of departure is debatable if I had to pick one it would be the release of Call of Duty in 2003.
The single biggest difference between boomer and modern shooters tends to be the necessity of cover. In DOOM and Quake most enemies with ranged attacks fire projectiles which travel at finite speed allowing the player to dodge them. By contrast the average modern shooter has the player facing off against foes with guns. This difference more than any other leads to wildly differing tempos in play. Boomer shooters have an out of control action movie feel as contrasted with the war drama vibe brought on by constant cover seeking and quick death by automatic fire. While the unforgiving realism of the modern shooter has its appeal it's often a shallower experience dependent on patience and situational awareness. DOOM demands little in the way of patience but asks for situational awareness, weapon selection appropriate to enemy types and constrained by ammo supplies, and memorizing level layouts and resource placement. While none of that is necessarily absent from all modern shooters it's almost never all found together. Simply grabbing a soul orb to reach two hundred percent health isn't grounded in reality but it does present the choice of whether to take it now or save it for later. Coming out of an era when electronic games couldn't hope to aspire to realism the focus was on just crafting enthralling play.
There is no one thing that makes a Boomer Shooter but here are some common features not already mentioned: retro graphics of the pixel art or low polygon sort, variety in behavior of weapons and enemies, maze like levels which loop back on themselves with little rhyme or reason, campy plot elements which read like an excuse for a lot of violence, and power ups that bump up your damage output for a limited time. The last major element is probably a fairly high skill ceiling. Old school gaming comes out of the arcade era where the good games would ask for and reward unreasonable levels of skill. While modern games try to keep the skill floor reasonable and often leave it there boomer shooters will ramp up fast if they are kind enough to start slow. Player deaths should be common and deserved.
Boomer shooters include such new titles as Dusk, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, Amid Evil, Turbo Overkill, Cultic, and Hrot and such old classics as Duke Nukem 3D, Heretic, Blood, all DOOM games prior to Doom 3, and many, many more. Seriously, a comprehensive list would be obnoxiously long and out of date in no time. This is a rapidly growing genre. Whether this is a phase on the way to a synthesis of old and new or here to stay Boomer shooters offer nineties flavored violent fun for all.
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