Lemming42
Arcane
I'm playing WRATH: Aeon of Ruin, and I recently played AMID EVIL: The Black Labyrinth. I've also just played Zortch, which was fantastic. I'm having fun with all these, but there's something about all these games - DUSK, Nightmare Reaper, Dread Templar, Project Warlock, and the like.
They have no stories, or coherent settings, or clear visual themes at all. Why is this? If you look at many actual 90s FPS games, they tend to have very clear plot hooks. They also have vivid settings with strong premises, a firm sense of place, and a bold sense of mood and tone:
Of course, the 90s shooter that most fits that description is Quake, which is surreal and has enemies that don't look like anything and locations that are deliberately nonsensical... but maybe not every fucking game should be Quake, especially when nobody seems capable of replicating Quake's sense of eerieness.
I really believe this is a big reason that many of these games fail to land with a lot of people, and why they're consistently viewed as worse than the games they're inspired by. AMID EVIL was fun, but you forget it five seconds after playing, because unlike Heretic and Hexen which it takes inspiration from, it doesn't have any kind of mood or story or concept that sticks in your mind.
They have no stories, or coherent settings, or clear visual themes at all. Why is this? If you look at many actual 90s FPS games, they tend to have very clear plot hooks. They also have vivid settings with strong premises, a firm sense of place, and a bold sense of mood and tone:
Meanwhile, with the likes of Amid Evil and WRATH and Prodeus and Project Warlock and DUSK, we have... a nameless hero fighting endless waves of surreal enemies in surreal environments for no clear reason. What's the big idea here? Even as early as Heretic and System Shock, actual retro FPS games were trying very hard to create a sense of verisimilitude, trying to create semi-plausible environments and evoke the feeling of fantasy and science fiction novels. There were even games like 1995's "Killing Time" that went full-on multimedia in an attempt to include more story. Why is the template for modern boomer shooters just surreal vomit with enemies who don't resemble anything, barely-there protagonists who have no presence in the game, and plots that are deliberately nonexistent?Doom - Hell invades Phobos, and the protagonist is forced into a battle for survival which leads him through Phobos base (which has striking, clear visuals), Deimos base (which is merging with Hell, resulting in some cool aesthetics), and then Hell itself.
Heretic - the protagonist's race is the victim of persecution and genocide, and he becomes a lone hooded figure, driven by vengeance, stalking through the ruins of a dead world, hunted every step of the way by sinister shadowy figures who worship the creature which obliterated his people. Also has an undersea base with insanely cool visuals.
System Shock - protagonist is trapped aboard a space station and essentially forced into a high-speed chess game against a rogue AI, who is turning the station itself against him. Has many audio logs to give context and characterisation and further the story.
Blood - after being killed by his own cult, a man returns to life and takes vengeance on the cult to rescue his abducted beloved. Admittedly, Blood is very surreal with not much story and not much of what happens makes sense, but at least it has a very strong sense of place and visual style (1920s occult horror). Protagonist is very memorable and very vocal.
Outlaws - a simple Western story of rescue and vengeance, presented with really cool cartoon cutscenes.
Unreal - a prison ship crashes into a strange planet which is being invaded by a militatistic alien empire, and one of the prisoners escapes and makes her way across the surface, inadvertently fulfiling an alien religious prophecy and triggering an uprising in the process. You can learn a lot about the Nali from their architecture and art.
Half-Life - a man goes to work and has it all go horribly wrong. Aliens are all well thought out and have clear places in the Xen ecosystem, and Black Mesa itself is designed as an exaggerated interpretation of a real, believable location, with areas that have clear practical uses other than being battle arenas.
Of course, the 90s shooter that most fits that description is Quake, which is surreal and has enemies that don't look like anything and locations that are deliberately nonsensical... but maybe not every fucking game should be Quake, especially when nobody seems capable of replicating Quake's sense of eerieness.
I really believe this is a big reason that many of these games fail to land with a lot of people, and why they're consistently viewed as worse than the games they're inspired by. AMID EVIL was fun, but you forget it five seconds after playing, because unlike Heretic and Hexen which it takes inspiration from, it doesn't have any kind of mood or story or concept that sticks in your mind.