DUSK

If I was supposed to be impressed with a mediocre Quake-like, this does not deliver at all.

Dusk is a surprisingly average game that does nothing to really capture my full attention or desire to complete another playthrough. The game contains many unnecessary mechanics (seriously, what's the point of rolling?), boring enemies / AI, extremely simple/underpowered weapons, maze-like maps that are worse than DOOM 1/2's, and an artstyle that screams hipster.

Every single time this game was about to throw me a curve ball, it is immediately circumvented by something being poorly designed. For instance, when the invisible enemies are introduced. As soon as they were shown for the first time, I wasn't spooked but I was sort of intrigued. Then, basically 1 minute later, their attacks are just bland melee hits and their AI is just as bad as every other enemy.

I was seriously expecting some interesting combat but got almost the same copy-pasted melee or ranged units from Quake.

Even the bosses here are average, not a single one has an interesting mechanic and they all function relatively the same.
All you really have to do to win in this game is strafe to the sides of the enemies, as the projectiles do not track or predict movement. Even the 2 final bosses are a joke. The ONE TIME I've seen projectiles track, it's nearly undodgeable and forces you to hide behind cover because the slide mechanic is terrible. This is most apparent in the level The Dweller In Darkness, where you have to fight multiple of the homing enemies.

There is also a gravity changing mechanic for 1 level that is really bad if you have any amount of weakness to motion sickness.

The unlocked y-axis does nothing. The dodge/slide is really bland. Even the climbing mechanic is tedious. It really feels like this game does not do anything over-the-top, just average/okay at best. There is a long list of mechanics and enemies that I can easily say should either not be in the game, or be more fully implemented.

The worst thing a game can do is bore its player, and this one makes me want to sleep. It doesn't even learn things from DOOM or Quake, such as melee still being overwhelmingly useless and underpowered (except for the sword which is only good at full health). As another note, maybe ULTRAKILL messed up my expectations, but this games secrets are so asinine and ridiculously hard to find that they're just not worth exploring for. I realized this after finding 1 secret and being granted 1 SINGULAR grenade as a reward.

One thing I can say is not average is the soundtrack, which is pretty good.

2.5/5, what a shame.

DUSK is a game that boldly wears its influences on its sleeve. It feels like a blend of Heretic, Blood, and of course Quake. Though Not only those games but a sprinkling of references and callbacks from other classic and "boomer shooters" titles. This is its Achilles heel. There is almost nothing here regarding original ideas or anything that would make me want to play this game over the other games it took its inspiration from.

First, let's touch down on what I like. There are some very memorable levels. Episode one has Down on the Farm, Sawdust, and Ghost Town. The sophomore episode has The Infernal Machine, The Escher Labs, and Neobabel. The last episode has City of Shadows, Homecoming, Crypt of the Flesh, and the best level in the game, As Above, So Below. The rest of them quickly faded from my memory or stayed because of flawed design.

The gunplay here is great. The Riveter, Crossbow, Sword, Hunting Rifle, and Shotguns were my absolute favorite weapons and were a blast to use. Even the far less memorable and fun-to-use weapons (the rest of them) all felt beefy and punchy, thanks to their superb sound design.

The story here isn't anything spectacular, but the way it's told really impressed me. It's all told passively, even more so than games held in that regard like Dark Souls. It's to the point where there are conflicting takes on what the story is about or the backstory of Duskdude. It's a nice pace change from games with constant exposition dumps and really forces you to think about the story if you want to.

Easily the game's strongest aspect is the enemies. From when I started the game to when I finished, not a single non-boss enemy left my memory, mainly thanks to how most of them are introduced. In fact, the game's most memorable moment is when the Horrors are introduced in Crypt of the Flesh. The game flexes its horror muscles and shows what it's truly capable of in that regard. Other great introductions are the Wendigos in The Unseen and, of course, the Leathernecks in Head Cheese. There isn't a single non-boss enemy that I didn't think was flawlessly designed and extremely fun to fight.

Now on to what I don't like. As I mentioned, a good chunk of the weapons are just not fun to use. Even with excellent sound design, The Pistols, Sickles, Assault Rifle, and the Super Shotgun feel so weak and pointless compared to the other weapons. When I run out of ammo for the weapons I enjoy using, these basically serve as filler until I get more, which never feels fun. How do you mess up a Super Shotgun?

Besides the final two bosses, every single boss is not only unmemorable but just bad. Episode two is the worst offender in this aspect, but the rest aren't that much better.

A much more minor critique I have are the secrets. Episode one seems free of this, but two and three have a very odd issue with the secrets. The secrets are one of two, they are tough to find, or they're so easy to find you seemingly pick up an item off the ground, and it just tells you it's a secret.

While a few songs in the soundtrack are stand-out jobs, the rest are either too subtle or too generic sounding, and they fade into the background and serve as glorified elevator music.

This game feels like nostalgia bait. It's good nostalgia bait, mind you, but once the appeal of the nostalgia starts to wear off, you quickly realize these classic titles outclass it. These other games will mostly have a better soundtrack, levels, guns, engaging stories, and better enemies. DUSK isn't even a bad game, it's quite a good one, but it feels unnecessary unless you're desperate for a "boomer shooter" fix.

The student tried to beat the master, but failed.

You know what you're getting, right off the bat. Cult oldie shootin. Pixels and polygons, sharp corners and stairs that only sometimes work. Absurd weapons, fast movement, and dorky ass voice lines. I mean the blueprint was already laid out from the get go, but this breath of fresh air gave the culture something to really work with. Such fun maps and enemy designs, such great sound and music, it just all works being the stupid gory excessive mess that it is because it's all well thought out and engaging. Well, for the most part. That's the charm of the jank. While the movement and everything about the way the player moves is completely torn from older games, the world that's crafted around it really works well with that gameplay, in a way that's just really inspired and realized. It's damn fun, and it's basically just a cool Quake mod but like, who cares? If it ain't broke...

I love old school fps games like with quake and doom and considering this set off a trend of more old school shooters being made i can say it was pretty fun but i think overall the lack of a story and the same gameplay routines over and over again made it boring after a while too play. it didnt help i dropped the game for a couple months before coming back and my save file didnt work so i had lost 2-3 hours of progress but it didnt matter too much i didnt care since i couldnt remember what i had played previously anyway.

it wasnt bad or anything just kinda boring a lot of the time. Id rather play half life or something

I am a massive fan of this Boomer Shooter trend that we have going on in the indie scene. A revival of 90s and early 2000s FPS gameplay that focuses on fast movement, creative level designs, head banging soundtracks, unorthodox weapons, and retro aesthetics that try to replicate 90s PC, or PS1 graphics. This trend could be traced back to 2014. Wolfenstein The New Order was the hypothetical dry sticks being rubbed together to get this shooter trend started, Doom 2016 was the spark, and Dusk was the actual flame that is still burning as of the time of this writing. Developed by David Szymanski, Produced by Dave Oshry and music by the legendary Andrew Hulshult, Dusk is a loving tribute to shooters of the past, and the model that most boomer shooters would follow in the coming years. In fact, it is so good, that I would say that Dusk is up there with the games it takes inspiration from, because of its creepier atmosphere, snappy feel of weapons, ITS SOUNDTRACK, and it creative level design.

In Dusk, you play as the Dusk Dude, a treasure hunter who stumbles upon Dusk, Pennsylvania, one screwed up town with a military base, an evil cult, and other horrors. You then go into the town and find said treasures and try to escape in the process. That is all the story you need for this game.

What really matters is how this game feels to play, and it feels very polished for an indie project made by only a couple people. The weapons all feel good to use with sound effects that sound really snappy and percussive, rather than boomy or pingy like other shooters today. While the weapons may not be as zany or creative as a game like Duke Nukem 3D or Half Life, the weapons they do give you all have a use, and each encounter has you switching weapons constantly to properly deal with the enemies. I especially love the mortar, grenade launcher. You toss the grenades, and you can blow them up with the alt fire button, or they blow up on contact with an enemy. A really useful weapon. The enemies are also fun to fight, with lots of enemy variety. You have your standard cult members who throw fire balls, or soldiers with projectile rifles, but you also have some stranger enemies, like a charging wolf who rides in a cart, scare crows with shotguns, creepy knights who float to you with flaming swords, and invisible skeleton deer who remind me of the Clears in Serious Sam. All these enemies are used very nicely throughout the level designs and they are all used to create interesting and fast paced encounters. There are also boss encounters! Yes, they are mostly shoot at the thing until it dies, but the final bosses are really fun encounters where projectile avoidance or situational awareness are key to survival. The level design is very creative too. With very simple geometry, the devs were able to create some inventive levels with many interesting mechanics, and set pieces. I would talk more about some of the amazing tricks the level designers used, but that may spoil the fun.

The presentation is also pretty good. Running on the Unity Engine, Dusk performs very well on most systems, even on an old computer with Intel HD graphics! If you can't run this game, you must be still running a Voodoo 3 video card. The graphics are mostly inspired by games like Quake with grungy texture work, simple angular geometry, and light-mapped levels. There are some more modern graphical features like bloom, and dynamic lighting from projectiles and your flashlight, but I would turn most of the graphical features off if you want to replicate the look of an old PC game! The music composed by Andrew Hulshult is fantastic as per usual. He is a legend in the boomer shooter community, and this soundtrack along with his Doom covers album IDKFA put him on the map. The soundtrack is heavily inspired by industrial groups like Fear Factory and Godflesh, some sludge metal or groove metal like Type O Negative, and even hints of djent here and there, specifically Meshuggah. The ambient tracks though are some creepy stuff too, with eerie keys, strings, choirs, and synth pads that create a haunting atmosphere. If you are a fan of metal music like I am, you will love this soundtrack in the game, and even when you listen to the album itself. If I had a criticism about the presentation, its that the main menu and save load ui need some improvement, or at least needs to be more descriptive. The save load menu especially needs to be redone with the actual save and load buttons being a floppy disk with arrows. I was confused for a bit as to how to continue playing looking at these icons. Either way, Dusk has a very polished presentation when we are talking about the graphics and sound.

Overall, Dusk is a must play for any shooter fan, or for someone who is interested in seeing what this boomer shooter thing is all about. The polish, passion and creativity is all here, and I think this game is accessible enough to be played by anyone, even if this is their first FPS game. New Blood, and the devs who created Dusk are all passionate people working in games, things we need more of in this industry, and supporting games like Dusk will only bring good things to fans of creative games, not just shooters.

Sure, it's just Quake worship, but oh man is it fun.