The 1990s are coming back in a big way, at least as far as PC first-person shooters are concerned. Amid Evil, Doom, the upcoming sequel Doom: Eternal, Dusk, Hellbound and Ion Fury are just a few of the names leading this charge, and it doesn't look to be stopping anytime soon. If you wanted one more title to add to that list, Wrath: Aeon of Ruin is currently out on Steam Early Access.

The game starts off in a very familiar way for fans of the classics. The first level briefly teaches you how to use your melee weapon, a wrist-mounted blade that gives you the power to dash forward in the air if you're using your alt-fire. From here, you'll see a fairly wide landscape with lots of decorations but no enemies. You'll also see at least two portals, and entering any of them will bring you to a level where the real fighting begins.

For those unfamiliar with this reference, Wrath essentially focuses on an experience much like Quake, with its hub world and portals to the game's real levels, and that intro gives a good hint as to what the rest of the title is going to be like. Movement alone is blazingly fast, so much so that you can't conceivably walk from one point to another, since you're perpetually running at all times. You may start off with a fixed blade, but you'll eventually get to some standard weapons, like a triple-barrel pistol and a double-barreled shotgun, each with different alternate firing modes. These soon make way for more fantastical weapons, like a gun that uses demonic bile or a rotary machine gun that fires wooden stakes. As with the classics, you can quickly chew through ammo, so switching out guns is paramount to your survival. Also, the game has no regenerative health, so picking up vials is essential to healing and staying alive.

The adherence to the classic formula, along with some tweaks borrowed from older games, makes Wrath a nostalgic experience for genre vets and something completely frantic for those more versed in the modern FPS. One thing that the game does differently is relish in the gore that is seemingly inherent in the gothic aesthetic. It's one thing to lop off enemy heads, but it is entirely different seeing some of the enemies get systematically dismembered with every clean swipe or well-placed shot, while others explode in a shower of blood with a few bullets. This isn't as excessive as the old Soldier of Fortune games, but it is enough that it mimics what the 2016 version of Doom did with glory kills — but this time, it can be accomplished without placing enemies in a specific execution state.

Perhaps the most intriguing mechanic is how Wrath is handling saves. Unlike modern games, there is no autosaving or checkpoints, so dying means that you'll restart the whole level or respawn at your last manual save point. Unlike the older games, saves are limited because you have to first acquire soul tethers and then use them to create a checkpoint in the level. Think of it like the ink ribbon system from the original Resident Evil games, as it forces you to be more careful despite the classic shooter mechanics that encourage mild recklessness. It makes for a punishing experience if you fail to find or use these things before everything goes south.

The presentation is decidedly classic; it's something of a cheat, since the game uses the original Quake engine with only a few tweaks for resolution and aspect ratio. The polygon count is low for each creature, but the boosted frame rate means their animations are much smoother than expected for the engine. The environments look quite nice if you're fine with mostly brown locales spruced up by hints of water and snow, but the lighting effects make it look spectacular. The gore is what will excite people the most, as seeing it all done in pixels is somehow more impressive than what modern games do with gore. Audio-wise, you're looking at grunts being the only vocals available, and while the music is appropriately gothic, the sound effects for each gun and enemy attack make the combat feel more vibrant.

Wrath: Aeon of Ruin is shaping up to be a game that lives up to its inspirations. A delightful shooter that revels in speed and rewards quick reflexes with a shower of pixelated gore. With only two levels and a handful of enemy types, there's not much to the demo build at this point, but it's an exciting teaser about what the final game could become. Wrath is another solid addition this year for shooter fans, and summer 2020 can't get here soon enough.