Retro Blazer - An upcoming tribute to old school shooters.

[The Backup]

Here is a game flying under the radar - Retro Blazer. It's an FPS modeled after early first person games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Duke Nukem. It's currently in alpha with a downloadable demo available. There is no release date.




What do you think?

[Wilian]

Judging from those videos:

Wolfenstein 3D with modernized textures and awful art direction, ignoring any progression that Doom/Duke Nukem 3D/Dark Forces brought to the genre.

[The Backup]

Yeah. That's my only complaint with it. Going all the way to Wolfenstein 3D for stage design and aesthetics is too retro. Everything looking the same is something from retro games I can live without. Why not Doom? Doom is much better. Oh well. Alpha is alpha. Plenty of opportunities to fix it.

[The Backup]

After playing the demo a few more times, I have some speculation.

When the website mentions seven levels, it means seven levels for the demo. The demo currently ends in front of a boss door. The in-game information page says there are five zones in ARK. The final game will have five unique zones with seven levels each - six normal levels and one boss level - for a total of thirty-five levels.

The demo for the first zone takes about thirty minutes to complete. This includes the suspected time for the boss level. Levels will take ten minutes at most to complete once you know their layout. Beating the game will take between two-and-a-half to five hours - about as long as the first Doom.

According to the in-game information page, relic disks contain "data crucial for discovering the secrets of ARK." Perhaps in the future collecting relic disks will unlock bonus content?

I don't mind the flat plane anymore. It could open up new game play opportunities. For example, an enemy that teleports behind other enemies and uses them as a shield. Also, since everything is a projectile and the gameplay is fast, there could be situations where certain bullet patterns are more effective against certain enemies. There is already a little bit of this in the demo. The machine-gun alt-fire is best against groups of enemies, and the pistol alt-fire is best against the snake turrets. Future examples could be the shotgun against a side-dashing enemy.