We've seen a good deal of boomer shooters on the PC in the last few years, from new games that seek to emulate parts of the genre to whole remakes of the classics. PC fans are swimming in a sea of good ones. Kickstarted back in 2019, Prodeus has made it out of Early Access and can confidently join that list of good boomer shooters.

If you're looking for a story, forget about it. There's no opening cut scene to fill you in on what's going on — or any scenes at all. No dialogue or old logs are present, and there is no name for your character. You simply get through some opening menus and start a quick tutorial before heading into the action. It's simple and straightforward, and it's a sign that the game knows that its intended audience wants to get to shooting.

Though it seems like it's lazy shorthand, the best way to describe the core gameplay loop of Prodeus is Doom with elements of later first-person shooters mixed in. The weapons you wield range from pistols to shotguns to grenade launchers, and a few energy weapons have been thrown in for good measure. If you want to hit someone with a melee attack, you need to switch to your fists to punch them. The level design follows the classic formula of slightly maze-like levels, where you need to find the right colored key to progress and an actual exit or elevator before the game takes you to the next stage. Enemies will remind you of carbon copies of id's monsters but changed just enough to make them less demonic and more alien.

The more modern stuff isn't too modern. You need to pay attention to the vertical axis and not just the horizontal one. You can also jump, with a few areas requiring some light platforming. Every gun needs reloading after a few shots, and they fall under classes that determine the type of ammo they'll share. Alternate fire modes exist for all of your weapons, and the game has a checkpoint system, so you aren't starting over from the beginning when you die.

There's nothing new as far as mechanics or features go, so you aren't expecting a twist on the proven formula. None of this matters too much since the actual gameplay is absolutely solid. The shooting feels punchy enough that even pistols feel dangerous against enemies. The alt-fire modes — a charged-up shotgun blast, a quad-barrel shot, or a triple shot from a pistol — make it feel like there's some depth to the normal weapon layout. Those enemies come in numerous waves that aren't overwhelming, and the variety of each wave is reminiscent of the classics. The level design feels right. Even though you can pull up a map to see where you are, the design feels intuitive enough that you'll rarely feel like you need it, even with the amount of backtracking you'll need to do. Movement is fast, but it doesn't feel like the run button is permanently on, so it doesn't feel like it's running too fast or out of control. Combined with item placement that also makes sense, it feels like a classic shooter that is more accessible compared to some of the more recent attempts that feel like they were only made for skilled enthusiasts.

If you had to look for something that can be considered new, it would be in the gore. We're not talking about something as advanced as Soldier of Fortune, but you will be separating heads from bodies and blowing apart enemies from their torsos almost constantly. Thanks to the number of enemies you'll encounter at any time, that means loads of corpses and buckets of blood being spilled in the environment and on yourself, as evidenced by your blood-soaked firearms. The game makes the corpses disappear, but it leaves the blood to act as a marker that you've visited and fought in the area before. The disappearance of corpses doesn't feel necessary, but the presence of a nearly blood-red room makes for a grizzly sight, so the change is for the better.

There is one thing that might irk some genre fans, and it is the checkpoint and progress system. The presence of checkpoints is good, since restarting from the beginning of the level after every death can get tiresome, and most players wouldn't create constant saves unless they were preparing for a personal challenge. Dying leads to a quick reincarnation, which is good since it means returning to the action quicker, but the problem comes from the fact that progress is recorded beyond the checkpoint. For example, if you hit a checkpoint, go into a room with 10 enemies and kill three before dying, you'll respawn with only seven enemies left to kill. You can do this as many times as you want, which means you can brute-force your way through stages. The only penalty is a reduction in points, but with no global leaderboards to show that off, there's not much to stop you from taking on this technique except for personal pride.

There are a few things to engage in once you finish the campaign. There's multiplayer in co-op form, as you can take on the campaign with three other online friends in tow. You can also engage in online PvP in deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag, a further nod to the game's throwback nature in that no other esoteric multiplayer modes are here. The problem is that there's no one online at the moment. Even much earlier reviews of the game had noted that the online community was practically nonexistent, so the chances are low of getting into a match with random people. We did get into a co-op match and learned that the online performance was good with no lag. Unless you have some friends willing to get their own copies to play co-op with, the multiplayer option will likely be skipped after you see that no one is playing.

While the multiplayer is almost nonexistent unless you have online friends, the creation features ensure that you'll spend loads of time with the game post-campaign. The level creator is rather dense, so you'll spend a good deal of time trying to learn its intricacies before throwing something together. However, with the game's lengthy Early Access time period, there are enough people who have come to grips with it that the game has a great deal of player-created levels and campaigns. The fact that there's still new stuff popping up to this day with a good mix of new levels, ports of levels from other games, and other odd stuff gives the game legs and shows that there's plenty of life in the game for quite some time.

The graphical presentation is where the hook really shines through, as it is meant to be a mix of an old-school look with modern techniques. The environments sport a heavily pixelated look but with modern lighting. Even though you'll trudge through similar-looking environments throughout the campaign, the varied lighting makes everything pop to create an interesting dichotomy between classic and modern. The items also have the added benefit of a staggered scaling that seems to change the item's appearance as you approach, and the same applies to corpses. The animation for your gun reloads follows a staggered animation style. It looks like stop-motion animation and creates an arresting look that holds up well, since the game never dips below the intended frame rate. The game lets you turn off the pixelated look, but it only does this for enemies, so it exposes their low polygon count nature and smooths out their animations. The trick is neat, but considering how it clashes with the rest of the game, leaving out that option is for the best.

The sound also adheres strictlyto this philosophy. The soundtrack is metal through and through, which amps up considerably while there's action on-screen and calms down to be moody once enemies are gone from the area. The sound effects are booming, with each gun giving off just the right amount of bass per shot, and everything else is crisp. There are no real voices in the game, but the grunts from enemies sound eerie and booming if you're using a surround setup.

Steam Deck users will have no issues running this game. With everything set to default levels, you can get the game running at the native resolution of 1280x800 at a locked 60fps all the time. That gets you a battery life of about three hours, and since that's at maximum resolution with everything turned up, there's a good deal of room to squeeze more battery life by lowering all of the settings. Thanks to the fact that this game is trying to emulate a modern retro look, the move works in the game's favor since it is meant to look like a somewhat pixelated but discernible mess.

Prodeus is a classic Doom clone through and through, but that isn't a knock at all. It nails the core mechanics well from the level design to pacing. While the enemies feel like reskinned versions of what you're familiar with, the gameplay loop works thanks to some solid shooting mechanics. Even though it lacks real innovation in the space and the multiplayer is practically dead, the inclusion of a map maker along with a plethora of custom maps almost negates those issues. Overall, shooting fans will like this one, and curious players can use as an entry point into the re-merging boomer shooter genre.

Score: 8.0/10