Published 2025-05-17
tag(s): #gaming #reviews
While I wait for something to download (party like it is 2009, hadn't waited for a download to
complete in a long while) I figured I would write a small detailed medium?
review for this game, as I am very close to finishing it.
Seriously, y'all saying I could have been having a blast since 2019 or so? And instead I felt
alienated from the FPS genre thinking all that was released nowadays was online, survival,
open world, or any combination of those three.
Boomer shooters are a sub-genre of FPSs that make their gameplay closer to 90s/early 00s
shooters than to more modern takes on it.
As most people my age, I played a lot, A LOT of Wolfestein 3D, Doom, Quake,
Duke Nukem 3D.
And other relatively less popular FPSs like Rise of the Triad, Shogo, and a bunch of others
that are probably forgotten by now, because back then a new FPS was released every other
minute.
And I am sure I played others that are popular, but just can't remember them right now.
Because I am old. Maybe I'll edit the post to add them later.[1]
I played quite a bit of Unreal Tournament and Quake 3, mostly in LANs. But by then I was
starting to feel left out of a lot of games, since I am not much of an online player.
It's not an entirely "old man yells at cloud" moment, there are a bunch of modern shooters I
enjoyed, but my heart is clearly with the oldies. When think of newer shooters, I think of
the ones that that are modern but also callbacks to simpler times,
like Bulletstorm
and Doom 2016.
There was a publisher sale in Steam, and as I was checking out the offerings, Dusk caught my eye. It a Quake-looking first person shooter. Its description promised to take you back to those gib-infested late 90s feel. Reviews were positive. Game was cheap. So I went for it.
Everyone should play this game. First of all, it is simple: no reloading, no regenerating
health, no cover. Just you, and your guns.
The arsenal is relatively tame: pistols, shotguns, rifle, explosive guns. But most of the
weapons are just satisfying to use. Even the crossbow, which has the simplest
shooting effect, but makes up for it by going through enemies and walls. There's a "mortar"
that is very similar to Quake's grenade launcher, which makes it perfect. The shotgun can be
dual-wielded, which looks and feels awesome.
The game evolves over its three chapters from giving a "slasher horror movie" vibe to something more fantastic and leaning into occultism. At no point in the game I felt that I was playing something novel, but Dusk does evoke a feel of uniqueness. Like, you have seen all this before, but not presented in this way. By presented I don't mean only the graphics, but the overall "feel": graphics, level design, music, movement, etc.
While the graphics themselves are simple, there are some cool lightning effects, and the maps are quite varied. Some of the ones that stuck with me were a level where you reach a rooftop and it is snowing, one that is red-tinted and you move through giant set pieces, and a few sections where you have to move in the dark (and boy do those get tense).
In a difficulty scale of 1 to 5, I am playing in 3, "I can take it". The game defaulted to 2,
for reference, which is called "Go easy". I died a few times, mostly from unexpected surprise
attacks or because of my own recklessness. The game's AI is also a callback to simpler times,
which I see in a good light, each enemy type has clearly identifiable behaviours and attack
patterns. That doesn't mean there aren't some truly cool enemies, which I won't spoil
here, because discovering them on your own is worth it.
The game makes up for the AI simplicity by upping the number of enemies you fight at a time,
which I also think is great. Instead of having combat with say, 7 enemies, with cover and
complex mechanics, you fight 15 or more at a time, and your only resource is shooting and
moving. And indirectly, cover, but because you abuse the AI limitations.
There are bosses, they are simple, and most of them can be also be sort of skipped: by
backtracking a bit, or seeking a hiding spot, and shooting them from afar. I never felt I
couldn't take on them (we'll see if that holds after the final boss), I just took the easy
way out, out of laziness.
There were two particularly cool things that happened during boss fights: in one of them, two
bosses started fighting between them, so I just let them beat down each other from a distance.
And in another, which felt very much a callback to Quake's final level, I ended telefragging
the boss. By accident, but I got an achievement for it, so clearly it was planned as a
possibility.
The music and sounds effects are great. The jumping "hump" is so reminiscent of Quake's, it might as well be the same sound clip. Some enemies make very distinct noises, so you have a clue that they are around, which also helps build anticipation.
Unlike last time, I was smart and picked up images directly from Steam 😁
The only criticism I have for the game, is that it was starting to feel a bit long. Some of
the later levels are just too big for my tastes.
But that might be a compound effect of me not having much time to play, and the fact that the
game's three chapters were released over time, while I am playing it all in one go. So I
didn't have a one year pause to "rest" from the gameplay.
Other than that, the game is just fun. Simple enough, but never boring. And with some very imaginative level design, satisfying shooting, good music and lots of explosions, I think Dusk is a must for everyone who likes first person shooters.