Arthurian Legends
The Greatest Medieval Retro FPS to date…
Okay, so listen, son! This is the most fun, most historically inaccurate, bonkers, no-nonsense, Arthurian slaughter-fest you can ever imagine in videogame format. It’s like if it was made in 1996, before it was lost and forgotten for ages until a young and brave archeologist dug it out from some old crypt in Ireland.
It is highly addicting and rewarding with full of opportunities created by the wide variety of weapons, spells, and items. It’s almost like an immersive sim in terms of how many different ways you can approach an encounter or problem. It is hard but fair, very reminiscent of Blood where you need to adapt quickly to tense situations yet always thread very carefully to succeed.
– Real player with 27.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best FPS Old School Games.
This is an excellent game for fans of classic melee FPS games like, yes, Witchaven I & II. It’s absolutely a hoot to play, the secrets are very well hidden, and there’s a real attempt at atmosphere going on. I almost wish it was more like an immersive sim (or at least a step or two towards Hedon) in including notes to read along the way, just because the environments LOOK like they’d have little stories to tell. Excellent work, there.
So, all of that said, let me focus on what needs improvement, starting with one issue/disclaimer.
– Real player with 26.4 hrs in game
Relentless Frontier
Ross 128-B, a fresh new colony on the fringes of occupied space. Known for its beautiful red sun, volatile politics, and until recently, it’s independence. Ross has just signed a pact with the Solar Dominion Forces out of desperation, offering economic control of their planet in exchange for a piece of the SDF’s arsenal. Seems the planetary government has been having a hard time with a local energy cult, so the SDF is sending over a legion of expendable conscripts to test the waters.
You are Noah Gansky, a brilliant inventor doomed to Dominion servitude. Your prized invention, the Omnistruct, was capable of breaking down any matter into “Omnifuel”, then using that matter to instantly build a physical copy of any object. Unfortunately, this invention was also responsible for the death and illegal replication of an oafish Dominion official. Now you’re serving your life sentence as a soldier on the Penal Legion barge Procyon; your invention stolen, and your existence forgotten. Fortunately, the Procyon has just been called to deploy on a fringe planet to deal with some two-bit cult. This might be your chance to ditch the legion and go rogue.
On the way there, however, the barge gets a series of garbled distress calls from Ross. Panicked descriptions of hard-shelled creatures raining from the sky, ships being picked out of orbit by massive tendrils, and all ending with bloody screams. Abandoning some penal legion is one thing, but leaving these civilians to their deaths doesn’t sit well with you. You grab your ramshackle Omni-blade and do some warm-up stretches as you prepare to board your drop pod.
FEATURES
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Rapid combat with critical decision-making!
Your enemies are quick, lethal, overwhelming in number. Brute force may work, but using the right tool for the job is much more effective. Burn down a forest to keep swarming enemies at bay, detonate a demolition charge under a massive armored foe to sunder their defenses, or simply keep your opponents knocked down and stunned with a belt-fed automatic shotgun.
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A versatile weapon selection; a tool for every problem!
Every weapon you find will be viable throughout your entire journey (Yes, even the pistol). Blast enemies at range with the powerful Enforcer magnum, keep ‘em down with the Peacekeeper automatic shotgun, and then liquefy them with the triple-barreled Justice turbo-machinegun. If you’re running low on ammo, switch to your Omniblade (or simply hit quick melee) to punish any enemies that get too close, and refill your Omnifuel reserves to boot!
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A unique Omnistruct conversion and ability system!
Ran out of magnum rounds? Lacking in vigor? Maybe you just want to feel safe and armored? Noah’s Omnistruct system has your back, with the ability to perform personal on-the-fly ammo/health/armor conversions. Simply keep it supplied with a steady stream of Omnifuel by finding pickups, or ethically farming it from your foe’s bodies with your Omniblade.
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Interconnected maps with multiple progression routes!
You’ve got a destination, and many ways to get there. If a direct force solution isn’t working for you, use your wits to find a better vantage point, a route that avoids direct conflict, a secret cache of supplies, or any other myriad boon that can be rewarded by exploration.
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Difficulty settings that do more than increase enemy health!
You have 3 difficulties to select from at the start, with each one changing enemy placement, environmental hazards, and even level progression! Higher difficulties don’t just require quicker reflexes, they can also be conquered using strategy and exploration. Beating each episode gives you access to a new difficulty mode, which replaces conventional balance with a brutal progression.
Read More: Best FPS Retro Games.
Brutal Fate
Brutal Fate is a fast-paced ultra-violent retro first-person shooter inspired by 80’s and 90’s sci-fi movies. As a marine from the Global Order Alliance sent to Callisto to take over the local corporate government, you find yourself surrounded by legions of demonic alien invaders and you must fight for your survival.
It blends the best features of classic shooters such as non-linear level design, a huge arsenal and large enemy variety with some modern aspects, making it a unique mix that does not try to hang on nostalgia, but be something of it’s own.
This game is a finely crafted first-person experience designed to be the most satisfying and detailed possible. Enemies that can be dismembered and exploded into pieces, destroyable environments including lamps, cars and even trees. All many details that makes you really feel like you are in a real living world.
Do you want to know more?
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This game features a huge arsenal of weapons that may require the use of all your keyboard numbers to scroll through. We got battle rifles, shotguns, grenade launchers, smart missiles, laser rifles, you name it.
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Immerse yourself in a 3 episode campaign, with branching patches, multiple endings, and a story full of twists.
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Fight an entire circus of monstrosities, carnivorous demons, zombie-like cultists, shuffling supernatural incomprehensible abominations from beyond, and corporate henchmen that want to make sure you won’t leave this haunted colony alive after seeing everything you just did. Just like in classic fps style, each enemy type acts like a piece of chess made to compensate the weakness of another. Gib them into delicious meat pieces, burn them to ashes, almost every enemy features locational damage and dozens of death animations, including different deaths for different weapons used.
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Explore huge non-linear levels, look for secrets to find special rare alternative ammo types for your weapons, health and armor upgrades, and much more. No “procedural generated levels”, no faux-retro arena level design, just handcrafted levels by someone with over 10 years of experience in classic game level design. Get the feeling of exploring believable highly interactive locations, fight enemies in many different scenarios, scripted or not, pick them alone or in small groups and sometimes try to come up with a strategy to fight up to 50 enemies at once.
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Command your fellow marines out of this hell. Your character’s rank as a Staff Sergeant isn’t only for show. Find any survivors of this disastrous operation and they will follow you. They have an acceptable AI that will actually follow your commands, won’t block your movement, and will kill enemies for you. Magnificent, isn’t it?
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Mod it until it breaks. Running on the highly reliable GZDoom engine, this game is extremely easy to be modified. You can make mods, add custom weapons, enemies, levels, and entire new user-made campaigns.
Plot
In the end of the 21th century, after a catastrophic nuclear war followed by a famine that wiped out half of Earth, the remaining governments united their military under the same banner in a vow to prevent another disaster, and so the Global Order Alliance was born.
Later the G.O.A. united with corporations in an effort to terraform and colonize other planets in the solar system, by using a method that allowed artificial black holes to be created at the center of the planets to imitate Earth’s gravity. 60 years later when the terraforming of Mars and Jupiter’s moons were completed and mass migration started, the corporations betrayed the Terran governments and decided to declare independency and not use their newfound resources to help Earth get back on it’s feet. Their moto was “We terraformed these planets and now everything on them belongs to us. If you want these resources, come and take it."
Betrayed and left for dead, the peoples from all around the world vowed to invade the colonies and take back what belongs to Earth. The armies of the G.O.A. which were once considered heroes and peacekeepers of mankind, became a violent, fanatic, imperialistic military legion. They launched military campaigns against Mars and Io that lasted for decades. Now the year is 2297 and the people of Callisto started rebelling against the corporate rule due to recent strange phenomena caused by the planet’s artificial black hole, all the interplanetary communications are shut down by the regime, and the G.O.A. sees this as a perfect opportunity to invade the planet and “liberate” it with the local population’s support. The corporate conglomerates warns that the situation in Callisto is “complicated” and warns Earth to stay away from it.
You are part of a special international battalion of the Space Division of the G.O.A. Marine Corps sent to intermediate the situation. After a four month journey, you arrive at the planet with orders to destroy the corporate government forces and secure their industrial facilities. Drone scans shows literally hundreds of thousands of dead bodies littering the streets, apparently they genocided the local populace which saves you from the work of having to watch your targets… Your orders are clear: Descend into the planet with companies of battle-hardened Marines, combat androids, tanks, mechs, gunships and orbital artillery, and eliminate any colonial military forces you may find. They are considered dangerous irregular war criminals and you have no legal requirement to grant them any human rights, engage on contact. All weapons are clear… Exterminate with extreme prejudice, just the way the Marines likes to operate.
The Marines quickly find out that something is wrong. The planet is dead. Non-combatants and colonial guard alike were slaughtered, women and children included. No signs that a war happened here, some bodies defiled in unspeakable macabre religious rituals.
You realize that what killed these people weren’t humans, it weren’t using guns, and it’s still here. An unfathomable evil from beyond lurks these dead streets, its hungry eyes are gazing upon you. Do you have what it takes to survive?
Read More: Best FPS Gore Games.
Hecatomb
In a world where cultists desperately need to be shot…
What, Were You Expecting A story?
Oh, Alright.
You are checks notes Gary, an unassuming nobody with no backstory, personality or, for the moment, voice, who got kidnapped by an evil cult aiming to summon their god into this reality. You are the final sacrifice. And you’re having none of it. You break out of your cell, and kill literally everybody so the cult cannot summon the great evil they worship.
#### A Window Into The 90s
3D enemies? 3D weapons? No. The enemies, the weapons, most of the props are all 2D sprites. What 3D models there are are crude and low-poly. Texture resolutions are abominable. I even wrote a special shader that lowers the apparent colour depth.
Commitment to the 90s aesthetic is near absolute: The sole exception is that the weapon viewsprites are normal mapped, which is anachronistic but looks so good.
#### Boom, Pew, Bang
Shoot all the bad guys! Or hit them! Or kerplode them!
Defeat your foes with these bog-standard FPS weapons:
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Carpenter’s Hammer
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Pistol
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Submachine Gun
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Shotgun
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Hand Grenade
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Fire Staff
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Staker
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Rocket Launcher
(Note: List subject to change as I see fit.)
#### Reinventing the Wheel
Unity? UE? Build?
No.
That would be easy.
Hecatomb is coded entirely in GameMaker. I had to do everything 3D myself. Among the things I had to figure out are:
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Drawing walls and ceilings without tanking performance
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How sprite-based enemies move
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Shaders to restrict the colour palette
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A normal mapping shader for the weapon viewsprites
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How to calculate the position of bullet holes in a wall (it uses the tangent!)
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How to bake lighting into the map
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How mouselook works (Note: vertical mouse look is implemented, but disabled.)
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And many more that cropped up over the months but I can’t think of right now.
Project Warlock II
Palmer - a dedicated disciple of Warlock wakes up in his castle’s bedroom. His master nowhere to be found, castle overrun by demons, and only his trusted arsenal as means to stop them and make sense of it all - the young warlock must now collect himself, his guns, recharge the staff and make his way to a nearby stronghold spewing hordes of the hideous monsters.
Project Warlock II picks up right after the events of the first game, shifting the perspective to that of three disciples of the first game’s Warlock. Each perfecting their own discipline, with his or hers reasons to confront the old master. Utilising everything their mentor taught them, and harnessing the powers of combat magic, pyromancy and dark arts - Palmer, Urd and Kirsten must now put their hard earned skills to the test.
Get ready for three explosive episodes - each revolving around a different Warlock with their own skills, perks and arsenal, and featuring a distinct setting, menagerie of deadly monsters, requisite boss hulking in the darkness and more secrets, weapon upgrades, pickups and jumping, strafing, and spraying trigger happy action that you can shake a lightning staff at.
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Each of the Warlocks carries a different arsenal based around their personas and playstyles
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Tools of destruction can be upgraded through special stations resulting in 20+ weapons for each Warlock
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Shotguns, machine guns, sniper rifles, grenade launchers, quad barrelled harvesters, swords, staffs, cannons - and that’s just Palmer’s toys
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In Project Warlock magic is only supplementing weapons, or - as some put it - totally useless
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In Project Warlock II each of the Warlocks has his or hers three cooldown-able skills to use and support gun- or magic-play
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Project Warlock’s monsters defining trait was their relentlessness. That same applies to describe their strategy, Tactics. And - probably - problem solving approach. As the saying goes - when you’re a hammer everything looks like a Warlock trying to pump you full of hot magical lead
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Project Warlock II’s monsters jump, run, hold back when needed, hop, whirl and use each of the different attacks on their disposal to make your life as miserable as only a pigdemon with welded-shut cestuses and spiked back can
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Each world consists of six huge, sprawling levels - size of each roughly 5-10 times bigger than any individual level of Project Warlock
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Expect to spend up to one hour on each of the PWII’s levels, or more to find all the secrets, easter eggs, perks and achievements
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Experience multi-floored structures, platforms and buildings that literally elevate the gameplay from that of the original Project Warlock
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Let’s keep this one short. Project Warlock has no saving whatsoever.
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Project Warlock II has all the saving. Quicksave (F6), Manual Save (choose your slot) and Autosave. There is literally no other save that we could push in there.
Shillelagh
Got this game because I love devil daggers. The soundtrack is awesome and the gameplay has a really unique twist.
– Real player with 4.3 hrs in game
Overall, I feel the potential and the charm of this game are buried too deeply beneath absolutely horrible visual clarity and the frustration of, for a lack of better words, total bullshit deaths completely outside of player control.
Shillelagh is held back by issues that are few in number but quite significant in effect. My biggest frustration currently is that it seems everything in the game has collision and can push you around. The trees popping up, the spirits you launch at enemies, the little floating stone fragments that appear when enemies burst through the rock, and probably more. On the handful of runs I’ve tried, an enemy has killed me only once. Every other run I’ve had end did so due to a tree bursting up beneath me unexpectedly and shoving me off the arena with no chance for me to react, or a single, tiny out of place floating stone bumping me into a pit. I don’t feel like I died because I made a mistake - I died because of something stupid I have absolutely no ability to influence and no possible method of reacting to. It feels like shit and it’s rapidly killing my ability to enjoy the game even this early on.
– Real player with 2.0 hrs in game
Waves of Rotting Flesh
Waves of Rotting Flesh is a very simple wave-based shooter with a charming (and surprisingly adequate) art style. I can happily say that when I was looking for a simple game to shoot zombies, this one delivered perfectly.
The damage system is surprisingly dynamic, featuring damage drop-off, different death animations depending on how close you are to the enemy and where you shot them, with equally appropriate sound effects. Getting that nearly point-blank heavy revolver shot just right is easily one of the most satisfying things in this game.
– Real player with 3.9 hrs in game
So, you’ve played (or at least seen footage of) games like Faith or World of Horror, which are throwbacks to older aesthetics, and want a little more? While this game is certainly a bit more of a budget release, it may be worth your time.
Waves of Rotting Flesh in many ways feels like a lost Mac Classic game from the late 80s or early 90s, right down to the 1-bit graphics and creature/texture design. It brings back fond memories of shareware titles like Halloween Night 1/2 or Haunted House for Mac Classic, and 3D elements aside, could’ve fit right in with so much of that era. It stays loyal to these elements so fervently in fact, that some might be taken aback by a lack of a lot of modern conveniences and FPS design, but it’s very functional for a modern take on a late 80s/early 90s shareware FPS.
– Real player with 3.5 hrs in game
Witchaven
For anyone who remembers the days of these old school games, knows you can’t beat a classic. Witchhaven is that classic game. Awesome that Steam finally got both Witchhavens so us old school gamers can relive some nostalgic.
– Real player with 15.7 hrs in game
Es un juego mediocre, no nos engañemos. Esto es un hecho. Pero también es uno de los primeros FPS que jugué en los 90, junto a Rise of the Triad, de alguna colección de kiosko… Y no puedo evitar guardar recuerdos entrañables de aquellos días ingenuos en los que me parecía un buen juego.
Es un juego con buenas ideas y potencial, pero un desarrollo mediocre y chapucero.
Lo recomiendo, pero con un aviso: solo para nostálgicos.
Y además os dejo un vídeo que le dediqué en 2018.
– Real player with 14.1 hrs in game
Diluvian Ultra
In Diluvian Ultra you play as Atilla, an undead king that is awakened in deep space, aboard his tomb, ship by an invasion of unknown enemies. He must fight to prevent them from stealing his most sacred object: The Book of Life. Without the book, Attila’s order can’t revive the long-dead human species.
The spaceship is a living combination of flesh and stone, teeming with creatures created to serve a purpose aboard the ship. Even the doors are alive.
Diluvian Ultra is built around a damage system where you have to combine weapons to be effective. Armor negates most damage, but some weapons are designed to damage only the armor itself, setting the victim up for a lethal blow. The player has to be careful, as enemies will combine their attacks in the same way. Armor damage cannot kill you, but take too much and a single well-placed lethal attack will kill you in one hit.
Combat in Diluvian Ultra is all about mobility. Dodge enemy fire, while you chain together ranged attacks with close combat blows and devastating ground slams to interrupt and stun your enemies.
The weapons range from living insect guns, to plasma spewing shotguns. Each has a unique special reload function, like healing armor damage or turning the magazine into a grenade.
Musical Aim Trainer
I definitely recommend this.
The music makes you focus and try hard to hit the targets.
The sensitivity-convertor is really useful and it works very well.
There are a lot of possibilities in target options: for instance, you can train against snipers by making targets spawn in a big distance.
I think it’s a good price-quality product.
My aim got much better after a few hours of training.
The only thing that I don’t like is that you can’t change the look of the background.
Otherwise, the design looks great.
– Real player with 9.8 hrs in game
Good game for aim training and listening to music. You can import your sensitivity from other games and change a lot of other settings. Because it only costs 3$, I think it’s a good buy.
– Real player with 2.9 hrs in game