I know it’s not meant to be pejorative so I really don’t take offense except I’ve been playing video games since pong in the early 80s so they’re talking about me. I’m only 53 and no freakin’ boomer.
GenX shooter… ok maybe. Gex shooter … GX shooter…. Something like that. I don’t know of a single boomer playing games. I know there are some I just don’t personally know any.
Yes it’s annoying because realistically they should be called millenial shooters or something, but “boomer shooter” is somewhat alliterative so I get it
It’s games like Quake, which does have it’s fair share of explosions but it’s mostly about emulating what games like Quake had to offer. Like high skill-cieling movement and/or combat.
It’s more like Quake than DOOM in terms of shooter mechanics (but the levels are very similar to both). They usually have rocket-jumping/bunnyhopping and stuff. IMO, the high skill-cieling movement and/or combat is integral to living up to the OG boomer shooters like Quake and Unreal
I started my PC gaming journey with Wolfenstein3D and Return To Castle Wolfenstein. DukeNukem3D, and RTCW were my jam and I was high ranked on public servers (was in clans, etc. all that). After that I joined the Navy, got into Warcraft (was easier for LANs in the barracks, wc2 and wc3). From then on stuck to mobas for my competitive fix and never really went back to fps.
I had no idea there was an actual genre defined by these though. It totally makes sense. Wolfenstein was soooooo much faster than later games like COD.
Boomer shooters never get played by boomers, what a shame
Seriously tho a boomer shooter would be like maze war not DOOM, by the time this genre of games was created (by GenXers) and played by Millenials, they were becoming geriatric but whatever
Yeah, I’m around 40 and I played these games as they were coming out back in the 1990s. I call them either “FPS” or “Retro FPS”…
People born in the 1940s/50s never played them much. Although my dad did play Wolfenstein3D and Doom some, but that was not common for people in his age group.
As a Gen-Xer who used to twitch with the best of the younguns, I can vouch that we’re playing a lot fewer games that require reflexes that can’t be made up for with strategy and treachery (e.g. exploits).
Mostly I play dad games like Satisfactory or Subnautica but do pretty well for my crew in Deep Rock Galactic
If a boomer shooter is a classic run-and-gun shooter (contrast: tactical shooters or first-person survival) I’d still do fine unless its bullet hell or something. Serious Sam had the tendency to teleport in dozens of shooters on a plain with no cover, or send me into a dark place teeming with climbing ninja monkeys.
I skimmed through the list and it’s pretty accurate. If you’re interested in the genre, I’d recommend trying the Quake 1 remaster. Ultrakill is also very good if you want something newer.
I always preferred the term “Arena Shooter” but it may have more specific meaning than any game that vaguely has elements popular in fps games of the 90s that I think “Boomer Shooter” is usually trying to communicate.
I mean… I wouldn’t really say Doom or Duke Nukem or whatever were arena shooters, though? Something like Quake 3 certainly is, but I feel like anything that vaguely has a map that you progress through instead of having a round of a fixed length / kill count in a smaller space doesn’t scream “arena shooter” to me.
Doom had multiplayer over lan that I would say fits in that definition. For me personally arena shooters are more about movement speed and how weapons/health are managed as power ups to be found and managed as a recourses. I don’t consider multiplayer to be a requirement for the genre basically.
Doom multiplayer is kind of arena shooter, I’ll agree. Something like Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament fits the term much better to me. Genres are pretty arbitrary, though.
I had to look it up because I thought it was about “making boom and shoot”.
Also it’s a bit weird because I don’t know any boomer who played a shooter. Actually I don’t think I know any boomer who played video games, others than mobile word games.
The only people I know who played shooters in the 90’s were Gen X kids like me.
Anyway, I guess I’m a grumpy old man now but it’s a bit annoying that “boomer” has become synonym with “old people” and “millennial” with young people, while Gen X are close to retirement and millennials are clearly no longer young.
Check out a YouTuber named Civvie 11 if you haven’t already. He covers so many good and bad boomer shooters from old school to mkdern while going pretty deep into their history.
Also, dont sleep on turbo overkill. It’s everything right and then some about the genre.
I agree with the other guy, I’ve always thought of “arena shooter” as describing the multiplayer aspect. IMO, “boomer shooter” is a good way of distinguishing the game from being more similar to Quake’s multiplayer vs singleplayer
Arena shooter is descriptive of certain mechanics. Armor/weapons with tinted spawns on the map, usually some kind of bunny hopping, but that’s not mandatory, and often portals/verticality.
I’m talking about quake, unreal, warsow, xonotic, etc…
I think what you guys are on about are games like doom, Wolfenstein, Duke nukem and so on. Not so much quake but single player.
I don’t think an arena shooter necessarily has to be multiplayer (but they’re mostly only fun when they are)… but it heavily implies that the maps are… arenas. Smaller areas that you backtrack through constantly with no “end”. Matches probably end by a condition like a timer or kill count or something. That said, I think we use “arena shooter” to distinguish games like Quake 3 from CoD (with some differences like weapons being on the map and players spawning with the same barebones kit)… but arguably CoD isn’t that far removed from something like Quake 3 (which I know is heresy and they play very differently, but the fundamentals aren’t so different).
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