For many first-person shooter fans, the genre peaked in the 1990s. This was when when some of the most iconic and influential shooters released, completely changing and evolving the genre into what it has become today. For many fans, there would be no Call of Duty without DOOM, no Battlefield without Quake. However, for many other fans of first-person shooters, it just feels fun to blow things up in a furious fashion, and that ideal is at the heart of the upcoming indie shooter Dread Templar.
Developed by T19 Games and published by 1C Entertainment, Dread Templar looks to combine aspects of retro-inspired shooters and the 90s classics that inspired the throwback trend of the past few years. Dread Templar is part of the movement has seen games like Dusk, Ion Fury, and Wrath: Aeon of Ruin release to critical and fan acclaim. By combining an almost slavish devotion to the past with a refreshing amount of modern ideas, Dread Templar succeeds on all fronts as a challenging and enjoyable throwback shooter experience.
Dread Templar puts players in the role of a Templar who must fight his way through literal Hell, and a dark realm of pixelated monsters and various incarnations of evil. The game is light on story elements because it focuses more on its action. Dread Templar delivers a customizable, exciting gameplay experience for those who want to move fast, wield powerful weapons and destroy evil at every possible moment.
Visually, Dread Templar eschews the often used DOOM template of many throwback shooters and instead opts for the style of DOOM's successor, Quake. The visuals are based on the early 3D low-polygon style that dominated the first-person shooter landscape in the mid-to-late 90s. Dread Templar displays this aesthetic very well, with shambling zombies exploding into pixelated blood and guts when attacked by the player, and copious amounts of simple but effective atmosphere. This graphical style is intricately recreated and combined with ridiculously fast-paced action that makes Dread Templar look just like it might have been released alongside the shooters of a bygone era.
The game's environments are drab and foreboding, with the dark realm composed of massive granite block castles, wooden-paneled torture chambers and moss-covered dungeons. When the player happens to venture outside, the hopeless tone follows with outdoor areas featuring dead forests, mausoleum-filled courtyards and moody fog covering everything. Dread Templar succeeds in making the environments feel spooky and filled with monsters lurking around every corner, all asking to be blown apart into a scarlet mist at a moment's notice.
From a gameplay perspective, Dread Templar continues to toe the line of recreating the classic shooters of the era it is inspired by and doing something a bit more contemporary. The speed is amped up by both player movement and the frame rate. However, the added ability to dodge in any direction much like the excellent DOOM Eternal adds a modern feature that further serves the frantic style very well. Dread Templar allows players to effortlessly deal out destruction while dancing around the hordes of undead enemies with a pistol in each hand.
Another modern addition to the classic gameplay is bullet time, which puts more of a unique spin on this throwback environment, allowing players to line up headshots for a deeply satisfying combat experience. These various abilities, dubbed Dread Powers, allow players to customize their playstyle, offering freedom in the way that death is dealt to the various denizens of the dark realm.
Dread Templar's arsenal is composed mostly of conventional firearms, but this doesn't mean that the weapons lack impact. The various guns are a treat to use. Dual pistols fire fast and furiously, and more powerful weapons like the shotgun absolutely devastate enemies up close. One particular standout, the massive revolver, is a hand-held cannon that blasts apart enemies as it roars to life with each shot.
Firearms aside, players can also wield a bow, and dual swords that can be thrown across the map to one-hit kill many enemy monsters as well. Additionally, Dread Templar delivers on its fantasy-based setting, allowing players to wield Infernal weaponry, consisting of rune-scarred, fantastical firearms that are as powerful as they are enjoyable to look at. Players have a multitude of weapons to dispatch enemies with, and the entirety of Dread Templar's arsenal both looks great and is a blast to use.
Overall, by combining a customizable gameplay experience with a noted dedication to the classics, Dread Templar looks to be another promising retro-inspired shooter in an increasing line of action-fueled, "boomer shooter" releases. The game brings together a challenging throwback experience with a devoted visual aesthetic that brings to mind great shooters of the past. Available now in Early Access on Steam, Dread Templar looks to challenge shooter fans new and old with evil-smiting action when it releases sometime later this year.
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