It’s a horrible cliché, and I feel like I’m about to age five years just by typing it, but I do miss the ‘90s. This was the golden era of the FPS, when Doom, Half-Life, Hexen, Heretic, Quake, and all the rest mixed swarms of enemies, ultra-smart level design, and supremely big guns to pioneer a new genre. Nowadays, we have the lovingly observed boomer shooters, throwback games that capture the spirit of the grunge decade, like Dusk and The Last Exterminator. Combining the hellish atmosphere and aesthetics of Diablo 4 – and of course Hexen and Heretic – with the run-and-gun, death-en-masse style of Doom, there’s a new, beautiful homage to the greatest era in shooter history available to play now on Steam.
This is The Age of Hell, and if you thought the bodycount in Doom was high, you haven’t seen anything. An FPS game in the vein of those ‘90s classics (The Age of Hell is even built using the GZDoom engine) you play The Crusader, sworn to protect the land of the living from the teeming masses of the underworld. Something is stirring. Demons and monsters are mounting a hellish invasion. But as John Carmack once said, in so many words at least, that’s about all the story you need to know. What matters here is the sheer scale of every battle.
In The Age of Hell, you’re fighting literal armies of the undead – hundreds of enemies fill the screen at once, pushing the frenetic, balletic sway-and-slay gameplay of the original Doom to its natural, spectacular conclusion.
You’ve got a massive arsenal of holy weapons, all of which can be upgraded using a quasi-randomized roguelike system, and a whole coterie of different enemies to pulverize. Spread across six differently themed episodes, we’re still waiting for a release date for the full version of The Age of Hell, but you can try it on Steam right now for free, thanks to a new demo.
Alternatively, give into your nostalgia and get the best old games. You can also look ahead to 2024 and beyond, with the best upcoming games coming to PC.
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