We all know that Boomer Shooters are stylized FPS games that’s taking inspiration from Doom. But what about stylized TPS games? And what games would you recommend
I’ve heard that called “run 'n gun” or “robotron clome” if one is old-school enough.
For a recommendation, today I choose pure chaos, and so recommend “Heavy Burger”.
I think you’re thinking of twin-stick shooters like Smash TV, Kill Knight, Assault Android Cactus, or Nex Machina. These are typically either top down or isometric, not behind-the-shoulder 3rd-person.
I think the best example of what OP is thinking of is Vanquish.
Max payne
As a side question, I am a late GenX-er, essentially a Xennial, and I was a teenager when Doom was released in 1993, so surely young GenX was the target market, and the games themselves were probably written by older GenX-ers.
Why then, are these FPS games referred to as Boomer Shooters?
Marketing.
I’m not a fan of the terminology myself, but I get it that when someone says Boomer Shooter, they don’t mean “Shooter that plays like DOOM/90s shooters which would have been played by someone born between 1946–1964.” (which they largely weren’t)
They simply mean “Boomer = old” as in “old and/or inspired by old 90s shooters i.e. DOOM and the subsequent DOOM clones.”
It helps that it sort of rhymes / rolls of the tongue.
Also helps that gun go boom. Genre nicknames that stick tend to be snappy rather than descriptive. “Immersive sim”, “character action”, etc are terrible at describing what the game actually is. Regardless of whether or not the shooter is “for boomers”, a game calling itself a boomer shooter means, quickly, that it’s a fast movement shooter without “realism” mechanics like long reload times, usually with you using a vast arsenal of guns instead of only carrying a couple at a time and swapping them. Health kits or health-on-kill typically replace “take cover to regenerate HP/shields”.
Without using a -like suffix, there’s not really a snappy word that fully communicates that stuff, and as you say boomer=old. And -likes drift really far nowadays. Anything with parrying or drop loot on death is a soulslike. Anything with a run based structure and any procgen is a roguelike (even if the runs actually exist in a framework of permanent progression).
I feel like about the time of doom2 is where they really took off.
- Playstation 1: Syphon Filter
- Nintendo 64: Jet Force Gemini
Those are third person shooters. But it depends on what you mean by “Boomer” and “stylized”. The way you frame it, its more like a clone of DOOM. I am not aware of a one or two most influential third person shooters that defined all other, and created a clone that played very similar to it. So I don’t think there is anything like that for third person shooters.
Fast paced, 3rd person, not a lot of depth but a lot of fun and action.
Millennial online battle arena.
Dang. I thought it’d be a game about class warfare.
I only learned of the phrase “Boomer Shooter” the other day. I feel old because my old bread and butter is considered Boomer material…
don’t worry, it’s boomer as in lots of big explodey boom-booms not boomer as in old and out of touch 😁
Really? Good grief. Really poor choice of wording, then. Thanks for confirming!
If you want to
ruin your life andsink a couple thousand hours into something, Warframe is free, has a decent backstory and a few bangers on the soundtrack.The regular gameplay loop boils down to “Be a ninja with space magic, build weapons and biomechanical suits of armour out of blueprints that RNG drop from different enemies to customise powers/damage types, level up weapons to rank up so you can get bigger and better weapons, save the solar system with the power of friendship and this gun I found.”
Vanquish? It’s a fast paced cover shooter from Platinum. It’s closer to a CAG, kinda like Ultrakill.
Yes, Vanquish, Wanted: Dead, Gungrave G.O.R.E., and Evil West.
Basically, 3rd-person action shooters. They hardly make them anymore, sadly.
The FPS genre slowly became more realistic and methodical over the years, so the Boomer Shooter is a callback to its origins of fast paced unrealistic frantic action. You have a lot of health and a lot of guns and there are swarms of enemies that you meet face to face.
TPS are things like Last of Us, Resident Evil 4, Uncharted, Tomb Raider.
A stylized version of this would be something like Control, Returnal, Mass Effect.
Would you consider Ratchet and Clank more of a platformer with gunplay or a TPS with jumping puzzles?
I never played but I immediately think of Sunset Overdrive. I’m pretty sure that’s what it was supposed to be
Duck Hunt
Silent Gen TPS.
It’s equivalent because third-person shooters didn’t exist during the silent generation’s youth, just as first-person shooters didn’t exist during the boomer generation’s youth. The phrase “boomer shooter” is ignorant, nonsensical, and according to the people I’ve spoken to who actually made or played those early shooter games, a bit offensive. So I try not to use it.
