Some people call them ‘boomer shooters’, but the retro revival of linear FPS games spearheaded by 3D Realms is for anyone with a twitchy left mouse button finger. Biomechanical matter all around, unidentified life forms clawing at you, and not even a bit of narrative exposition to help you out. Developer Ebb Software wants you to feel thrown into a strange new space without explanation, to which its original title Dasein (“being there” in German) attests. And while that does at first sound like any branch of Hooters, its gameplay reveals a first-person horror with a focus on exploration.

Or as the game’s own Steam page puts it, “a nightmarish universe of odd forms and somber tapestry”. It was seven years ago now that Scorn first showed us its H.R. As we look at 2022, we can see that the definition’s broader than ever, and that even though we’ve somehow still got new 3D Realms shooters popping up, there’s plenty of life in the ol’ faithful FPS. Then FPS games found a second life, as competitive online arenas, experimental storytelling vessels, survival sims and even conduits for nostalgia. For a while, the chambers were empty and the red barrels went un-exploded.

Since the arms race waged by Quake, Unreal, Half-Life and Call of Duty ushered in a golden age of especially violent storytelling in 3D environments, the industry diversified its portfolio and found massive audiences elsewhere. Once the kings of gaming, at the forefront of every graphical innovation and the first word on the pre-production document of every studio with a few million to spend.

Best tactical shooters