Dusk Review

 

Spooky yet Scintillating-A Dusk Review

Every so often a video will pop up in my online feed about the importance of the old doom and quake games and how they paved the way for the future of the fps genre. Such videos tend to inspire me to go and check out some of those classic titles, and, while they can be fun for a bit, they all eventually have a level or two of truly awful maze like levels with no sense of direction. It leaves a sour note on titles that have legitimately cool and inspired weapons to have these poorly created dungeon-labyrinths of level design. 

What Dusk accomplishes for me is a title that encourages careful exploration and proper old school gunplay without the confusion or frustration. This is a game that has those keycards that would make you scream if this was the 90s, but in a shocking turn of events creates levels that naturally guide you through them and never lead you astray.  

The main point I want to draw home here is that Dusk is the antithesis to DOOM 2016 in the sense that it doesn't necessarily reinvent the wheel of retro fps games, but instead polishes that foundation to the extreme. You'll still be using quick saves and health/ammo pickups, but because of how David Szymanski masterminded this affair it feels like something right out of the modern era. It's far more quake than doom but it really tends to blend both together in a meaningful and intuitive way. 

Throughout the main campaign of 3 separate episodes of 10 stages each I never got lost or was confused, and it was so intentionally designed well that the lack of a waypoint system is wholly justified. Dusk takes the satisfying aspects of those old classics and reintroduces them in a way that feel authentic yet modern. Staples like the super shotgun and a rocket launcher-esque rivet gun all make appearances, and the variety of enemy types force you to be careful with how you approach each combat scenario. Instead of fighting the same military soldier like the swaths of call of duty campaigns; careful consideration and change of strategy has to be taken in to account when encountering foes in Dusk. 

One of my favorite encounters is the wendigo, an invisible enemy in which you can hear its stunted breathing and see only its bloody footprints until you take a shot at it and a shrieking tone plays. This embodies the soul of Dusk, a thrilling horror straight out of the PS1 era with incredible sound design. There are legitimately enemy encounters here that made my heart skip a beat, but Dusk is careful to not fill it all up with "cheap" scares.

In one of my favorite examples of pacing in a video game, Dusk will contrast a dark and claustrophobic level with a huge combat arena stocked full of all types of enemies. It is a deliberate push and pull of scenery that allows for these huge set pieces to really stick their landing in dusk, and keep the environments fresh. Don't go in thinking this will be just a set of linear dark hallways full of jump scares, as Dusk places special emphasis on its ability to reel itself back in. 

And don't go thinking it's a short affair, as the aforementioned 3 episode campaign has well over 10 hours of content if you take the time to scour its levels. For a $20 yet frequently discounted indie game with such a breadth of levels like this you can't help but feel happy with your purchase. 

Verdict

Throughout Dusk's absolutely action packed campaign with terrors alike I never felt bored or annoyed with any one section. As an even more faithful testament to classic fps games than anything I've seen before, Dusk outshines some of my wildest expectations. A game for the ages.

10/10-Faithful, Fruitful, and Fantastic