Finished playing Ion Fury/Maiden. Started playing Wrath.

While Ion Fury feels packed, Wrath feels tacked. That's normal given that one is a finished product while the other still is in development, but I've got the impression that when Wrath is complete, it will still feel less packed than Ion Fury, due to some design differences.

Sprite (fire, water and other vfx) and texture animations are incredibly fluid in Ion Fury. The sprites and texture animations in Wrath feels very stale in comparison. Enabling r_lerpsprites doesn't seem to help.

The vanilla Quake speed of 5 texture animation frames per second is simply too slow for anything more complex than glowing lights. Animations with morphing parts meds higher framerates.
This isn't a deal breaker though, I'm sure I'll get used to it after playing Wrath more.

Would be nice to make Wrath's particles round when texture filtering is enabled, for more visual consistency.

Ion Fury's maps are beautiful due to the incredible amount of eye candy, while Wrath's maps are beautiful due to the impressive brushwork.

Despite all Ion Fury maps being great fun, the freaking huge amount of things in them discourages any replays, which is bad for players who wants to play more than once to achieve 100% completion.

The only way for very big maps to be replayable in order to help players achieve 100% of their goals is to use a system similar to Metroid Prime, where only a few enemies reappears when replaying the map.

The early access version of Wrath doesn't come with any lore, any backstory, nothing. The only place where I found out what the game's story is about is a pinned thread in its Steam forums.
The early access version of Ion Fury had its background story available in the Help menu. It's a small touch, but it helped to make the players more involved with the game. 

I've always had the critique that Wrath's world feel very surface level at times, and I think that becomes very apparent when playing Ion Fury.

Ion Fury's world feels lived in, dynamic, believable. The interactive and scripting elements aside, the entire thing comes together to be read more often as a world than a game level, whereas Wrath has the opposite. A cold, sterile feeling, no other friendly souls seem to exist but you, everything is out to get you. It comes off like a Souls game without the NPCs, without the item lore, without the little pieces of worldbuilding around the place.

I guess what I'm saying is that, while it's obviously fun in it's early access state, I agree it could use something more. I remember KP talking about friendly NPCs you could speak to? That's a start I guess, but it needs to go further. Little scribbles in the dairy upon killing an enemy doesn't cut it for me. 

is like Quake, in many ways, including the simple backstory and static world. I suppose that it depends on what each player wants from the game. 

I think that worked better for Quake since it was a rougher, early 3D game that did a lot of it's world building via end-episode paragraphs, vague feelings of castles and dungeons, and differentiating via monster/texture usage. Whereas all Wrath levels feel so different and disconnected such that they could be ports from completely different games w/ wrath enemies slapped in and it'd be tough to tell.

Even something like Amid Evil makes it work, new enemies and textures for each episode with a bunch of story tidbits laid about. 

Quake had its backstory available in its readme file.

It's not possible to deliver a game's story in this way anymore, because Steam bypasses all handling of games' files through its automated installation and its launcher interface. But in 1996, anyone who would install Quake would have the readme.txt file with the game's backstory right there, in their face. Even in the shareware version.

Wrath comes without any backstory at all. Nothing that says anything about who you are and what is the point of being in the world where you are.
In Doom you were a marine in a world full of demons. A characterization very easy to understand: by default, marines are good and demons are bad, so you must kill the demons!

But who are we in Wrath? Why are the enemies attacking us? Are we the good guy? If we are a good guy, why are we using weapons?

In Wolf3D, we start with a kitchen knife because we're a prisoner.
In Half-Life, we start with a crowbar because we're a scientist, and scientists uses tools.
In Turok, we start with a bow and arrows because we're an Indian.

Thinking about it, Quake is an exception in that one of its starting weapons (the axe) doesn't make any sense for the player's characterization. At least if it was a fireman's axe, it would make some sense, but it looks more like a medieval lumberjack's axe that the player gets out of nowhere before he even arrives at the game's medieval dimensions.

An easy to access backstory does wonders to build some sense in a game's world and to give the player a purpose. 

For Coce. Yes. Should be discussed. I only became aware of it after the 30 mins unedited gameplay video which was a great display of the game. I think - with all due respect to Warth, and subject to one requirement - it's the modern retro game I'm most hyped for. Thusly:

Cons:

- Pixellation / texture resolution is pretty bad in most world textures, not only a bit ugly but out of place with the higher res model textures, filtered char hand, and general consistent quality of the rest of the graphics. i presume the texture resolution is a place-holder and linear filtering will be a default option.

Pros:

+ Errrr everything else??
+ Graphical harmony for everything else is spot on, really nice use of colours, fog, effects, etc. Retro feel without being too retro (i.e. artificially ugly like many of these games aim for).
+ Atmospere is 11/10.
+ Style / setting totally appeals to me.
+ Exploration and secrets look cool.
+ Combat and breakables look fun.
+ Nice balance of weapons and spells.
+ Control and movement looks fine.
+ Did I mention the atmosphere and style yet?

So, yes... 

I'm sure I saw this a while ago and dismissed it for all the usual blindingly obvious "making a shit half-arsed 'inspired by Dusk reject assets' clone in deliberately pre-Doom graphics but in Unity" reasons, but the recent fresh trailer has actually got me quite inspired. It's garish and lurid and OTT and the weapon that takes up the full screen is naff, but it looks like as well as the obligatory visceral combat, they're putting some proper effort into level design, strong-ish sci-fi industrial theme, and a so far meaty looking bestiary (level design, theme, bestiary - who would have thought they could be useful for game design eh). Also the ability to switch between pixel sprites and full 3D seemingly on the fly is pretty promising... 

There has also been some absolute dung shown off in trailers recently including linked from the 3DR Big Event Reveal Livestream Expo whatever the fuck that was. But I've mostly blocked out the names from my mind, suffice to say the retro fps quality standards of 10% hit to 90% miss seems to be maintained... 

https://www.diabotical.com

Reminds me of Warsow and Q3 mods. 

Anyone check this out?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J_6CTHKbIg

Rhythm game mixed with FPS. 

Looks competent, but it seems like everything is gambled on whether or not people are able to tolerate the so-called "epic rock soundtrack" that the game is clearly built around. Seems a bit risky to say the least, if the trailer music is anything to go by.

Dipping the music, like you can do in every other game if it's not to your taste, probably isn't much of an option here. 

Yeah, I suspect Under The Mayo is right in his review. He sort of hates the music (and the levels and enemies):

https://youtu.be/ZiC5cCGsoCQ 

Less retro in graphics, maybe just as retro in gameplay? Theme looks semi-harmonious for a change, and it's got a playable demo that I will check later.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/668320/Perilous_Warp/

Cheers aDaya for posting it in Discord. 

Kinn you need to play this, enough said. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h50JJ8ko74Q

Demo playthrough with, errr, detailed factual analysis and comparisons! 

Looks 90% like a badly done Quake 2 custom map on gameplay, layout and textures, with the bestiary part that forces you to take cover and shoot to death, and every brick is a brush level of brushwork detail and texture resolution on very simple rooms with simple brushwork.

Darkplaces with Epsilon collection of mods' fans will love it. 

So far what is best are the looks, in the parts of consistency, lighting and texturing.

About Graven, it feels very good and solid but i am worried about the gameplay being too repetitive, and for the same reason, about the breakables. There is not that much variety on encounters and enemy types for now and from what we see in the video, while there is several ways to deal with enemies it feels to me that some option are a lot more useful than the others. The good part regarding this is that it isn't just kill'em all. It would not feel right that kind of gameplay with this game's atmosphere. 

Hellbound demo playthrough:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua8QokD57uo

Hellbound is a hardcore '90s-inspired shooter for "true warriors" apparently. 

Well, it is not much good yet but it is a big improvement from the last video i have watched about it. Now it has proper progression even if it has issues on guiding the player, some layout, even if very simple and still horizontal (maybe for a console port?). The sounds are Ok, save maybe the jumping one which becomes a bit annoying. The machine gun is quite redundant and i am worried about all the sniping opportunities it can bring together with the first shooting weapon.
I like that the lobbing guys keep lobbing even if they cannot see but can hit you.
I am of the same opinion as the video about the damage being probably too high. 

Ultrakill is billed as "Quake meets Doom2016 meets Devil May Care" .

It gets overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam.

This sounds just like the retro FPS we've been waiting for.

It has a demo available. I played it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNFMEVe4wVc 

New Blood should be banned from using the word Quake. 

it is hard to see the resemblance with Quake and Doom 4, specially the first. I would compare it with Devil's Daggers with a layout, while keeping it arcade-like. In this regards it would be decent to good if it had more enemies and variety on encounters. 

I feel like the first level is not a good demo for these last few games, if the entire level is spent teaching you how to melee boxes and crouch/dash and you get like a single pistol and can shoot the most boring enemy type for the majority of the level. Maybe they should grab like level 3 or 4 where it (presumably) opens up to more interesting layouts, more weapons, and more varied enemy types. 

Almost every one of these new games should. They should use Wolfenstein 3d, Blood or Serious Sam Second Encounter as references instead. 

There is that, but then look at the first levels of, errr, retro FPSes like Quake and Quake 2. Basic weapons, limited enemy types, and design / architecture / theme / atmosphere / exploration wise that would piss all over the last few games from such a great height it would leave dents in the typical New Blood shill's brainless head.

Ultrakill has a minimum introduction, 2 weapons with alt-fire and upgrades, 3 different enemies, 2 bosses, and an aesthetic tone that gets me hurrying to be underneath the piss waterfall so it can wash my retinas back to normal.