About

    If you've clicked on the "About" page of a blog titled "Boomer Shooter Book Club," you're in one of two camps: you know exactly what a boomer shooter is, or you know absolutely nothing about boomer shooters, and you're likely a little upset at the sound of it. If you fall into the latter camp, please visit the "History" page and I'll go into a lot more detail on the topic itself. For those of you familiar with boomer shooters already, I'd like to explain the spirit of this blog.

The goal

    A blog, channel, or any other public source of media focused on retro games is far from a novel concept, and I'd hate to add more noise solely for the sake of making the noise in the first place. Before I clarify my goal, I'll explain what the Boomer Shooter Book Club (or the BSBC) is not:

• The BSBC is not exhaustive. It will not feature step-by-step walkthroughs of levels, locations of secrets in levels and so forth. Posts on the BSBC will not rehash easily-gathered information from other sites / media aggregates (outside of some sensible expository / contextual info for a given game that I'm looking into). If you want this kind of approach, there are boatloads of online walkthroughs that will get you through virtually any decently-known boomer shooter. Here's a GameFAQs walkthrough for DOOM (1993) for good measure.

• The BSBC will not heavily feature visual content (i.e. videos) outside of some screenshots to illustrate a game and get any points across. There are plenty of great YouTube (and non-YouTube) content creators that spend ages putting together well-made videos of game walkthroughs and impressions.  One such example that's top of mind for me right now is Civvie 11. Great videos, good variety, and plus, he's simply better at these games than I am, which brings me to the next point.

• The BSBC will not attempt to provide the perspective of a "seasoned expert." I'm decent at games, but in the world of boomer shooters, I'm a journeyman at best. Let me put it another way: "Hurt Me Plenty" tends to be my jam, and while I'll get through most anything you throw at me on "Ultra-Violence," I usually won't enjoy myself. 

• The BSBC will not necessarily adhere to the pure / traditional control schemes of any given boomer shooter, especially any entries from the early 90s. I will be playing the majority of these games with any and all amenities provided to us by modern PC configurations. Plenty of classic boomer shooters made use of a dedicated "strafe" button, wherein the left/right (A/D) keys strictly served as "turn left/right" controls unless that button was depressed. I will not be adhering to this. If and when I can play these games with a full WASD keyboard/mouse setup, I will be doing so. If and when I can use something like GZDOOM instead of a port, I will be doing so. I'm a filthy casual, and I've accepted that about myself. Plenty of folks do a better job capturing the purity of these old games, but I'm here to have a good time, and controlling the DOOM Marine like a tank with a very hand-crampy strafe button does not a good time make.

    There's plenty that the BSBC is not. So what is left? In short, the BSBC strives to capture a "book club" approach to boomer shooters. Book clubs are low-stakes gatherings to discuss a recently-read book with no expectation for extremely high-level discourse or no strict thematic through-line. In that same vein, the BSBC will catalogue my foray into the world of boomer shooters, old and new. The thoughts I capture within will be relatively light, and I would hesitate to even call them "reviews." Just like a book club, when I wrap one up, that'll likely be the end of it, and I'll move onto the next one. It might be a sequel, it might be a new series. Again, just keep thinking "book club."

The draw

    So why should you care, dear reader? After all, I've said multiple times that I don't want to pollute the space with more noise. How is this blog any different?

    First, I want to call out the scope of what I'll be looking into, as I believe it encompasses more than many other creators currently do. My hope is to capture the aesthetic of the "boomer shooter" in the broadest sense, to be a jack of all trades in the realm instead of diving deep into any one niche area. That means I'll be including everything on the following spectrum:

• Strict retro entries to the genre - games actually released in the 90s before the advent of the "modern FPS" a la Half-Life and beyond
• Entries that are built on the same hardware as the original boomer shooters, but weren't necessarily released in the 90s - most commonly, this would include the world of level packs and mods. A common phrase heard in this vein is the concept of the "DOOM WAD" - a map (or set of maps) created by modders in the community using the same tools that the original developers of a game or game engine used. ONEMANDOOM explains this far better than I ever could, so I recommend you check his blog out for more information
• Retro-styled entries to the genre - these games are aesthetically right at home alongside the original boomer shooters, but they are modern entries and do not necessarily share any direct lineage with their forebears (e.g. DUSK, a "Quake-like" built in Unity instead of using the Quake engine, or Hedon: Bloodrite, a game built in the same engine as DOOM, but ostensibly its own creation from the ground up)
• Most anything else that I feel captures the spirit of the boomer shooter - I acknowledge how broad of a statement that is, but hopefully it helps paint a picture that I'm aiming for variety here.

    

    My ultimate objective is that, in sharing what I like and dislike about these games, I can offer you an opinionated perspective, perhaps one that we share (or one on which we vehemently disagree!). 

    Regardless of whether we align, I think that checking out an opinionated source is a great way to get a litmus test on a game in which you're interested. Here's an example: a good friend of mine loves strategy and turn-based games a whole bunch. I usually don't enjoy those games. So if he were to mention to me that he found an FPS that he really likes because the pace is a lot more relaxed, there's a pretty good chance I would steer clear of that game, even if it was highly acclaimed, because games like that are not really to my liking. On the flip side, if he told me that a new RPG came out that was a little more intense than he was expecting, I would be very interested even if he ended up disliking it on the whole, because most RPGs plod along a little too slowly for me. In this same fashion, I don't anticipate enjoying every entry I play, nor do I anticipate even finishing all of them. But in sharing these experiences with you, I hope it might help better inform your decisions to check a given game out once you get familiar with what I like and what I don't like. 

The personal context

    To help paint a better picture off the bat, I'll close with a list of some games and other media I really enjoy outside of boomer shooters to help flesh out my tastes for your reference.

• Nearly everything From Software has released - all three Dark Souls entries, Bloodborne, Sekiro, Elden Ring, and all Armored Core entries that I've played so far, incl. all PS1 entries and II on the PS2
• Metroidvanias - Hollow Knight, the Ori games, Blasphemous, and many entries of the genre's two namesakes
• Roguelikes, but only the really dope ones - Star of Providence, Enter the Gungeon, The Binding of Isaac, Hades
• A smattering of platformers - Celeste, Shovel Knight, plenty of classic Nintendo entries e.g. Banjo-Kazooie, most Mario games and most Donkey Kong games
• Literally every game Supergiant Games has put out, they have my full support and fervent advocacy - Bastion, Transistor, Pyre (and Hades, again)
• Most any modern RPG that Bethesda has released, because they're basically video game comfort food - The Elder Scrolls III, IV, and V, Fallout 3, New Vegas, and 4
• A very specific list of third-person games that can all be vaguely considered "action/adventure" - CONTROL, Horizon Zero Dawn, Metal Gear Solid III and IV, NieR: Automata, The Witcher 3
• Several modern first-person games, with many leaning towards the "immersive sim" side of things - Bioshock 1, 2, and Infinite, Dishonored, Half-Life, Half-Life 2 including Episodes 1 and 2, Half Life: Alyx, Halo 1-3, the Metro 2033 series, Prey
• These don't fit anywhere else, so I figured I'd list these as examples of games that transcend their genres as I mentioned previously, because I don't like most other games that are similar to them: Cuphead, Gorogoa, Later Alligator, Monster Hunter World, Outer Wilds (not to be confused with The Outer Worlds!), Portal, Portal 2, all entries into the "The Room" series, A Short Hike, Slime Rancher, Star Fox 64, Stardew Valley, Subnautica, To the Moon, Undertale
• Finally, I thought it worth calling out that my gaming / pastime guilty pleasure is listening to the Lord of the Rings trilogy on audiobook and playing solo Deep Rock Galactic missions. I could do this for hours (and have, many times).

    I've explained the ethos of this blog and I've shared a little bit about my tastes. Armed with this knowledge, you'll hopefully be able to navigate this site with a better understanding of my approach, and with any luck, you'll come away with a few new items on your boomer shooter backlog.