This week, I’ve been playing two homages to genres that were popular in the 1990s: Fallen Aces, a throwback to that era's shooters and immersive sims, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Crow Country, a modern take on classic 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Resident Evil.
Boomer Shooters Show That There's A Reason To Go Back To Basics
Though both games have similar purposes, the key difference is that Fallen Aces is slotting into a well-established niche. Since the success of 2018's Dusk, a lightning-fast homage to shooters like Doom and Quake, indie publisher 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:New Blood Interactive has had a ton of success with similar games. Amid Evil, Ultrakill, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Gloomwood, and now Fallen Aces have all put different spins on ‘90s FPS design. In the process, a genre — lovingly referred to as ‘boomer shooters’ — was born, and has♍ grown to include tons of indies like Ion Fury, Prodeus, and Fish Person Shooter, as well as games in major franchises like Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun.
Though some other games, like 2022's Signalis, have homaged early Resident Evil, Crow Country makes me want to see a similar rush of developers returning to those old design tropes, and seeing ho༒w much life they still have in them.
Like the first-person shooter, old-school survival horror was basically made extinct by the arrival of new games that did things in a more polished, cinematic way. For first-person shooters, that evolution happened with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Half-Life, which showed that it was possible to make a sho🥂oter with a story as engaging as its shooting, where the levels were logically connected to form a believable place, not loosely arranged according to an aesthetic theme.

W🔥hy Capcom Should Remake The Original Resident Evil Again
A remake of a rema⛎ke of Resident Evil actually isn't such a bad idea.
Survial Horror Evolved After Resident Evil 4
Survival horror went through its own evolution with the release of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Resident Evil 4, which shifted the camera from fixed isometric angles to over the shoulder, giving players control of their perspective. All genres go through evolutions. Sonic and Mario and Zelda and Metroid and many other series underwent major shifts as they made the switch to 3D in the ‘90s and early ‘00s. But the difference is that developers kept making 2D platformers, and 2D Metroidvanias, and 2D action-adventure games. Old-school shooters and🐟 old-school survival horror games are like wooly mammoths, fully replaced by a descendant better adapted for the changing climate.
Crow Country does a good job updating the genre while still keeping the look and feel largely intact. The camera is still at a distance from the player, and serves up a different position for each room you enter, but it can be r൩otated with the right stick. Movement feels modern if you play with the sticks, but you can switch to the D-pad at any time for tank controls. As in the old Resident Evils, you can’t move and shoot, and must pause, move your gun into position, and then blast; an awkward approach to shooting that ratchets up the tension even during small encounters. It looks like old Resident Evil but, to use a cliche, it feels how you remember Resident Evil feeling.
The problem with genres or mediums evolving is that they rarely do so because there isn't any creative juice left in the tank. The possibilities of silent film had not been exhausted when The Jazz Singer arrived in 1927, but the technology of synchronous sound enticed studios to abandon a form of storytelling that suddenly seemed outdated. And, by the same token, Resident Evil and Doom-style design hadn't been explored entirely. Games like Half-Life and Resident Evil 4 just suggested alternate paths to take. We've seen a host of developers return to the '90s style of shooter and discover cool new possibilities, like mechanics from newer games that they can anachronistically graft back into the old form to produce something fresh. Crow Country has me hoping that more developers who grew up with old-school Resident Evil will take the same chance and reanimate the corpse of a genre that never should have died.

Indie🦹s Are Finally Tapping Into PS1☂ Nostalgia
Lunacid, Nightmare Kart, Crow Country, and so many more are bringing the early Pl🥂a𝓀yStation generations back in style.