The King is Dead! Long Live the King?

After approximately five million years in development, Duke Nukem Forever has finally surfaced, bubbling up from the earths core with a great and undignified noise, only to be greeted by disappointed fans and scathing critique. Supposedly a throwback to the early days of PC shooters, it led a great many reviewers to question whether there was any appeal to be found in the old-school in the first place.

The answer? Yes! The long answer? Very Yes. And the jumbo foot-long answer with all the toppings? Of course they were good, and they still are. In fact, here’s 8 free modern-and-updated games to get your teeth into right now:

8-Bit Killer

Starting low down in the evolutionary chain, DIYGamer favorite and indie prodigy Locomalito presents 8-Bit Killer. A rock solid attempt at boiling the FPS down to its purest elements, possibly rendering it more simplistic than even Wolfenstein 3D. Chunky NES style aesthetics and a catchy soundtrack add to a remarkably well tuned and polished shooty arcade romp in a post-apocalyptic setting packed to the gills with evil shirtless men with an affectation for viking helmets.

FreeDoom

With the rise of modernized Doom engines such as gZDoom making it possible to enjoy the seminal iD classic with all the perks modern computing can offer, it was only a matter of time until a project like this came about. Don’t have Doom 2? Well, FreeDoom is officially a ‘placeholder’ data file, containing copyright-free alternatives to every enemy sprite, weapon, sound and level that Doom 2 offered. The upshot of this is that, over years of development, it now stands as a full standalone game in its own right, playable in any of the standard Doom engines available.

And the icing on the cake? It’s fully compatible with the vast majority of Doom levels and mods, of which there are an absolutely incalculable number. Each day, more maps, mods and engine variants are released. Even if some of the sprites and textures from Freedoom are mismatched with some user-made content, there’s still hundreds if not thousands of hours of play to be found here.

And on the subject of Doom, here’s four notable releases all running on Doom-variant engines:
Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl / Harmony / Chex Quest / Mega Man: 8-Bit Deathmatch (V2.0)

The Doom engine keeps on trucking. Here’s another four games based on the old iD software, each offering a unique experience. Action Doom 2 barely even classifies as an FPS, but is worthy of mention here – it’s a Streets of Rage style brawler with a branching, Sin City-esque storyline, and shows that there’s life in the old dog beyond shooting demons on Mars. There’s just enough gunplay to sneak it into this roundup, although expect to be solving most disputes with your bare hands, rather than weaponry.

Harmony is a recent freeware offering, notable for its surreal claymation art-style, and gameplay flow inspired equally by both Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. The story revolves around a ruined world divided – the rampaging mutant menfolk of Earth trying to stamp out the last female resistance. You play as Harmony, a post-apocalyptic amazon on a rescue mission deep inside enemy territory. Plenty of levels, guns and mutants to shoot are on offer here.

Chex Quest is a title that fills many with notalgia and longing for breakfast-time adventuring. A kid-friendly, Doom-based FPS bundled in with packs of sugary cereal back in the 90s in America, it was planned as a trilogy of episodes, but never completed. Recently, the creator of the series went back and decided to finish the project once and for all, and it’s available as an all-in-one package running on a modern engine. All the classic retro FPS style of Doom, but with none of the blood-splattered grimdark demon-slaughter that made it so controversial at the time.

Previously featured on DIYGamer, Mega Man: 8-Bit Deathmatch is a fascinating hybrid. Hyper-fast arena deathmatch with level design, weapons and characters straight from the classic (and now controversially abandoned) Capcom flagship series. Recently updated with another pile of laser-spewing robot content, it now includes levels, weapons and robot masters from Mega Man 7, as well as a new boss level in the singleplayer campaign mode.

Aleph One – Marathon Trilogy

It would seem almost churlish to give so much love to Doom without any mention of its stalwart Mac rival. Apple owners weren’t starved for FPS action either, and before the release of Halo (and if certain grumpy folks are to be believed, the downfall of the FPS genre), Bungie released the Marathon trilogy, a remarkably plot-heavy series of shooters which cast you as an unlucky cyborg soldier, pressed unwillingly into the service of a series of sentient and incredibly powerful AI constructs.

With Bungie’s blessing, the full game data for all three games in the series has been released for free, and the Aleph One engine lets you play them on Mac, Windows and Linux, with or without a range of graphical enhancements and improvements. To this day, a small but dedicated mapping-and-modding scene strives to improve, expand and experiment on these games, too. There’s a lot of meat on them old bones.

WGRealms 2: Siege Breaker

Last, but absolutely not least, is a relatively recent release. WGRealms 2 is a must-have for anyone who likes classic retro FPS gameplay. Starring Duke Nukem himself (and running off a modern variant of the Duke 3D engine), the gameplay transplants him from his familiar urban and sci-fi haunts to a more fantastical, magical realm full of enemies from other classic shooters of his era, and a fair few new variants to tussle with. Environments borrow from Quake and Hexen, while enemies from Doom and Heretic get a fair amount of screen-time. The gameplay, though, is unmistakably Duke at heart, with freedom of movement almost unmatched, allowing you to bounce, dash and dance your way around foes while pummeling them with a hefty arsenal of downright overpowered weapons.

Devastatingly powerful as your weapons are (the cluster-grenade pipebombs are capable of laying waste to dozens of enemies in a single shot, which is satisfying beyond words), this is no walk in the park. Unless you truly consider yourself an FPS master, the lowest two difficulty settings are advisable for a first play-through. The evolution of this game has been a little frankenstein-ish, and the four ‘episodes’ on offer don’t string together in any appreciable order. The first two episodes each offer a linear chain of regular levels, while the latter two episodes are each single extended endurance missions, offering 3-5 regular levels worth of content in a single unbroken rampage. The whole thing feels like a ‘Greatest FPS hits of the 90s’ compilation, and that’s exactly why you should be playing it.

And to send you off with a bang, below is a full video playthrough of the final level of WGRealms 2 – Utter Chaos – a title which it lives up to quite admirably, showcasing the kind of manic arcade pacing and wild level design that you just don’t see in modern commercial shooters. I’m fairly sure there are more enemies and boss encounters in that single level than all of Duke Forever combined. Such is the power and the glory of the 90s FPS. Enjoy, and keep on kickin’ it old-school.