Exocide Is A Snappy, Stylish FPS That Would Be Right At Home On GameCube

Maybe I'm strange, but I prefer FPS that aren't heavily "action packed." Games like Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and Timesplitters had plenty of shooting but they were also methodical and required caution. I wish there was more of that in FPS games today.

@sketchturner The majority love fast paced action. Especially the casual audience. Quick, easy, and can be played in a short time. Just look at Splatoon. ^^

Looks ok, but will give it a miss as have Splatoon 3 already and Goldeneye will be coming out soon to scratch my FPS itch!

I wish we could get decent shooters like cod and battlefield than these gimmicky button mashers

"Would look great on the GameCube". This raises the question of when is something stylishly retro and when does it look like it just doesn't utilize the power of the system it's on? This is not a criticism of this game, just a question in general.

@Bomberman64

That's an aesthetic question and there's no clear answer. I'm pretty sure Undertale didn't fully utilize the power of any system it was on, but no one would argue it should have a different look. I think it's ultimately a question of intentionality: does it feel like the aesthetic is intentional? (It doesn't matter if it's actually intentional. You can't call up the developers to ask every time you play a game, so you have to look at whether the game is internally consistent and what it does with the graphics it has.) Paratopic looks like a PS1 game, but that's obviously the whole point: it uses a PS1 aesthetic to evoke an uncanny, unnerving mood. You can't separate the game from that vibe.

@sketchturner 100%. Also I’d totally forgotten how much I loved timesplityers so thanks for the memory joy

Re this game - yeah - I like the look of it and look forward to reviews .

I worry they'll fall into the trap of annoying, tiny, flying or crawling enemies that are a pain to fight along with way too much running backwards.

@Beaucine These are very good points! I'm very curious about where the line could be drawn, as in would it be possible to release a game on the PS5 and say "this game was intentionally made to look like a PS4 game"? Does two/three console generations have to have gone by (GC->NSW)? I know there is no definite answer but it's very interesting.

PS1 era graphics are easy to see as a stylistic decision but I find it harder to call it a stylistic decision the closer we get to the current gen. Some examples you have could be Deadly Premonition which seems to have gone for a sort of downgrade although in a slightly different sense.

Too many dime a dozen "retro" aka low budget/cheap to make games out there already.

that looks fun

I feel sorry for anyone that has to play a FPS on the Switch.

@MetalMan bioshock infinite is great on switch.... that's about it tho

I’d just like the classic dooms to have local system wireless play. Is that too much to ask.

@MetalMan Some work really well, Turok 1&2 play amazing for instance

Looks interesting, but since it's so fast paced maybe it's best to play it on pc with mouse and keyboard.

Hah, I will never forget "Nemac IV", an fps released on the Commodore Amiga in 1996 that also had four weapons firing at the same time.

http://hol.abime.net/pic_full/screenshot/0901-1000/953_screen2.png

Not saying it was great, but it had the four guns at once.

@Bomberman64

Yeah, that's true. It gets trickier the closer we get to our era. For two reasons.

First off, modern trends in gameplay and graphics always seem more neutral to us. We say an old game is a "product of its time," but would never say that of a newer game, even though it'd be equally true. To me, games like God of War, Nier: Automata, Control, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and Death Stranding are obvious "products of their time." But they're from our time, so most people don't see the datedness yet.

And secondly, I do think that, as technical leaps become less pronounced over time, it's more difficult to identify the "look" of specific eras. I recently replayed Metal Gear Solid 2 — a 20-year old game — and, even allowing for the fact that I played the HD version on PS3, there are moments during gameplay where I frankly forget it's that old. (The cinematics are a different story, because you see the character models up close. But the fixed, top-down camera angles during gameplay hide the game's age really well.) Fast-forward a few years, and Mario Galaxy, Bioshock, and Crysis still look nice on the Switch, 15 years later and with relatively minor touch-ups and resolution enhancements. You can obviously tell they're from the aughts if you look at the texture work, lighting, water simulation, and so on, but their art direction and overall look is fundamentally modern. How would you replicate the 2007 aesthetic of Bioshock? It'd just look like a modern game but with comparatively low-res textures.

Now, think about the pixelated graphics of, say, Metal Gear Solid 1, which I also replayed recently. That game still looks awesomely gritty and beautiful in its own way, but it's also very specifically 90s. It's a look, a vibe. It feels like the art direction even accounts for the pixelation. (That's why I played the emulated version on PS3 and avoided the GOG PC port, which gives you a cleaner, less jaggy look, but ruins the aesthetic. The chunky character models and simple environmental geometry don't work without that pixelation. The PC port is the one I played originally, in 2001, because I never owned a Playstation. And even then I knew I was missing something, when comparing with screenshots of the original.)

That being said, I do think that, in this era of good-enough graphics and indie games, you can find titles that look both perfect and last gen, like Death's Door, Inside, or most of Nintendo's first-party output. None of these need more graphical fidelity. They're "perfect" as they are. But they're not retro either. They're not, say, Celeste or Hyper Light Drifter, which are riffing on the pixelated aesthetic. Death's Door and Inside are clearly games from the past handful of years. They're modern. They're inspired by retro games, but they don't look retro. Yet their graphics are still minimalistic, simple. They're not technically impressive, but they're artistically whole.

@MetalMan Uhh, why? I have all the Dooms, Bioshock collection, Serious Sam collection, Duke Nukem 3D, Call of Juarez, Turok 1 & 2, Bulletstorm, Dusk and Quake. Proud of it and think they are all solid ports. Sure, Doom Eternal is of course going to be better on a PS4, but I don't care.