I have played some of the relatively recent DOOM and some Quake (played with the Darkspaces mod/engine).

Now back in the day I played Doom and Doom II when they came out, using only keyboard, no mouse look, etc. My friends and I modded the game files to switch out monster noises with Sesame Street noises. I played and beat all of the game except that final level with the slowly rising pedastal and the ever-spawning monsters who shoot rockets to knock you off. And we learned the cheat codes, so I cheated on that level to fly intot he secret room to see John Romero's head on a spike. Etc. Etc.

I can't say I played all that many FPS games back then, though. I mean, Deus Ex, but that's an RPG, right, everybody? I didn't even play Quake at release. I did play Wolfenstein 3d, though I can't claim that I ever got even close to finishing the game. I didn't like the colors and level design. I ididn't play Rise of the Triad until last year. Heretic, never. I did play the Descent games - play the hell out of them, but I always considered them 6 Degrees of Movement games. Oh, I did play Duke Nukem 3D. I did not play Unreal... I did play Golden Eye and suck at it. And I've played a fair bit of Return to Castle Wolfenstein - but only over the last year or so.

So, I guess I'm not really that much of a classic shooter guy.

Modern shooters: I have played about an hour and a half total of all COD games combined. And the rest of the "shooters" from recent-ish times are not exactly shooters: the Bio Shock games, for instance.

But then along comes DOOM! I mean, I bought Doom 3 when it came out and enjoyed it very much, in spite of the dark tight corridor thing. But it felt to me like a shooter. And DOOM is great! The speed of movement, the unreality of the whole thing, the health packs, etc. I love it!

I guess there's also the Painkiller games, there's Rage, which I haven't played yet. There's Halo, I guess I forgot that one. I did play some Halo with my friends. Serious Sam I suppose.

What do you think? Classic vs modern? Golden Age of shooters? Best recent shooters? What makes a really great shooter?

New or old, I feel shooters have reached the same point as every other genre, they will not go anywhere until the industry stops prioritizing graphical development and start doing something in the unexplored frontier of AI. But graphics is easy, AI is hard. New or classic, we still have the same limited enemy AI's we've always had. We will only see something truly game changing in the genre when we finally get AI that can react properly and deliver an on the fly, emergent experience, instead of just a series of "cross a line on the ground" scripted sequences. Now that Microsoft have setup a dedicated department to study AI and machine learning...hopefully this will lead to something really revelatory down the road.

But with that in mind I get fun from the classics as well as new, pretty much equally. Blood is the gold standard of the old classic shooters. Yet, this year I had a surprising amount of fun with the campaign in Titanfall 2 as well.
I value the Halo series, because they have the best AI of any shooters. And of course Borderlands...I hate Diablo, but taking the formula and turning it into a shooter was genius to me. And recent products by Bethesda, Doom and Wolfenstein, are solid games.

The one I despise more than any other is Half Life, the game I blame for the popularization of jarring, mid gameplay, scripted sequences. Sure, have cutscenes at story milestones that don't break your gameplay- most games do that. But not in the middle of gameplay to force you into stupid situations with no chance of using skill to avoid. That's just cheap. Yet everyone else loved it so it became a standard. It was also too long and boring as well.

Pro and cons. And "modern" vs "classic" doesn't cut it, too many differences within these categories.

For instance, people complain about the call-of-dutification of shooters, pointing at regenerating health, scripted events, linearity, over-simplification, QTE-ish bosses, etc. But there are many non-linear modern FPS. In fact, I feel that most shooters nowadays are less linear than they used to be. Okay, we have simple corridor progressions, instead of some labyrinth backtracking switch hunt of the past. But we also have many open world shooters, that allow for hide-and-seek tactical approaches from all sides, and I love that. In the past, only Outlaws, and maybe Project IGI later, offered this. It's now commonplace.I also like the AI better nowadays (FEAR felt great, for instance, compared to earlier first person "space invaders").

So, hm, too many parameters for a blanket opinion. Many of which I don't really care about (regen and health packs, for instance, have their pros and cons, as I find health packs a bit too immersion-breaking than regeneration, but regeneration makes it indeed easier, so I'm on the fence there). Many are a matter of mood, and I welcome diversity. So, each element, rightly or wrongly attributed to an epoch, should be discussed. But I feel that today's shooters are varied enough for me not to need to seek in the past for a specific style.

I miss shooters like Serious Sam and Painkiller, where you get swarmed by dozens or hundreds of enemies. Especially Serious Sam is great, when you see three hundred enemies on the horizon and you have to think about how to ration your ammo.
That´s the downside of modern shooters: the graphics are so demanding, that you never see more than a few enemies at the same time.

i've already given up on these, they all r similar with micro different(as in not much different between others)

I played both of the new Shadow Warriors, but as far as I remember there were never more than 20-30 enemies on the screen at the same time. Well, I need more to be satisfied...

you're a masochist. :P

That's not an insult. Color me impressed.

I never liked Serious Sam or Painkiller. Still, the VR version of Serious Sam is pretty entertaining.

Here's few modern FPS worth mentioning:
Devil Daggers is really solid. It's permadeath, and has an atmosphere which feels extremely threatening.
Rise of the Triad (2013) is just violent fun!
Ion Miaden (not played. But I wanna!)
Superhot can't be as awesome as the VR version, but I still want to try this out some day.

Oh, yeah! I played the new-ish Shadow Warrior and really enjoyed it! I have since played the classic Shadow Warrior. Not my favorite, but not bad!

I am :)

Nowadays I play Brutal Doom on highest difficulty with giant maps full of monsters. The adrenaline rush alleviates the pain.

Doom 3 is much better if you imagine that it has a different name. I think most of the issues I had with the game were that it's not a real Doom game, it's a different genre trying to ride the tailcoats of Doom.

As for the tech demo aspect, I can't remember the last game that iD did that wasn't a tech demo. If I think about it, it's probably Commander Keen or possibly Wolfenstein 3D. Most of what they've released are tech demos that are as much about demonstrating what the engine they're sell can do as anything else.

Huh. I'll have to give that one a shot.

New vs Old, for me atleast it's a pretty easy desicion since the only newer fps i really like is Metro Series, Shadow Warrior reboots and Doom 2016 reboot while for older the list is extensive but some notable titles are Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl and Call of Pripyat, Doom 1 and 2, Painkiller Black Edition, NOLF 1 and 2 etc.

I also despise regenerating health because it removes a lot of the tension in battles and is a boring solution, same old crappy multiplayer fps that's everywhere today and some people i know tell me to play shit like PUBG or Fortnite and that gets me laughing because there's no fucking way i would play these uninspired copycats.