An actual fun shooter for a change that has enough extra depth to preclude it from being qualified as a “boomer shooter.” Although I've yet to beat it, it's holding my interest in the way Back 4 Blood—which I started around the same time—hasn’t.

The "2000s-era" rhetoric is somewhat perplexing. Except for its use of slow motion and a similar atmosphere to F.E.A.R., it's a wholly original game that stands on its own. Maybe the emphasis on creating unique engagements with relatively intelligent unscripted AI that utilizes cover and flanking maneuvers in an otherwise linear level is something that doesn't exist these days? I don't play enough FPSes anymore to say confidently. It'd be unfortunate if that's the case.

If I were to reach, here are the 2000s-era staples I could mention:

* Fun is emphasized over realism. The game is a shooter, not a rah rah military recruitment tool. You’ll fight interesting enemies that you’ll never be able to find or kill in real life.
* Faster paced. It plays much faster and smoother than anything that comes out these days. Impacts still feel like they pack a punch but, at the same time, you don’t get bogged down in your flawed human body. It also prevents your slow-motion abilty from feel tooooo slow, yaknowwhatImean?
* Level variety. This is the one thing that scares me about cheaper shooters - Good gameplay but horribly boring environments. That said, Trepang2 has you traipsing around the globe, primarily in maze-like interiors (which the 2000s featured perhaps a little too often). They're unique and interesting. The grand vistas intended to feature well in marketing materials are absent. This game looks far better in motion than you could ever gather from stills.
* Unscripted engagements with enough tools (e.g., weapons, level variety, abilities, stealth) to keep firefights interesting and varied. Halo comes to mind in this regard.
* A weird-ass story revolving around shadowy organizations, mutants, black ops, mysterious technology, and a Chekhov’s nuclear bomb.

Trepang2 employs several modern contrivances:

* Two-gun carry limit, with a single-button melee.
* Motion blur and camera shake (ffs).
* Gun fetishization. Do you want to ogle a realistic-looking gun from different angles, with different skins and a million different attachments? Boy howdy, somebody break out the Tannerite!
* Slower and more methodical than 2000s games, especially early-2000. It strikes an ideal middle-ground between modern heavy-footed trudging and Tribes skiing. Your character also gets winded shockingly fast while sprinting.
* Oh yeah, and sprinting. Although it existed in the 2000s, it was not yet the mainstay it is today. In Trepang2, it functions as a gameplay element in service of the fast-paced combat rather than a means of speeding traversal across vast levels.

Most of these things are nonissues. The motion blur and camera shake can be disabled, and things like chromatic aberration are nonexistent, thank god. My only graphical complaint is there’s a film grain you can’t disable and the game has a weird oversharpened over-HDRed thing going on that I lack the vocabulary to explain. I believe these are more modern style choices.

At any rate, if a single game that breaks away from the deluge of CODlikes is enough to qualify it as an homage to a better time, then so be it. Put another way, if you’re looking for an FPS that decides to go back to the forgotten virtues of pacing, gameplay, story, and fun, then Trepang2 is a dream (or nightmare, if the early story is any indication) come true.

amazing spirtual successor to F.E.A.R., wish it had more missions and slightly better story, but boy the gameplay is just great

We need more fps games like this an absolute satisfying gameplay.