Dusk is a boomer shooter that came out in 2017, and then finally got released in 2018. Or maybe it’s an arena shooter, because there’s some verticality? Or maybe a twitch shooter, which is how it describes itself at one point.
Look, games in the vein of Doom have had 30 years of evolution. If you’re the sort of person whose played through myHouse.wad, you don’t need me to tell you shit about this genre. Honestly, leave this review now.
On the other hand, if you’ve never played a Doom game, or like me, you’ve only played stuff like Wrath and Strafe, this is the writeup for you.
I do want to quickly talk about the music in Dusk, quickly because I don’t really have anything to say about it. See, Dusk is going for a horror vibe, and no matter how much weaponry I ended up with, I found somewhere through the first act that game was scaring me.
So I opened YouTube, pulled up a mashup of Ready to Die/Party Party Party from Hellsing Abridged, and used that on repeat for a bit as my background music.
This gradually transitioned into a combo of AJR, Panic At the Disco, and other random songs YouTube thought I wanted to listen to.
If you’ve ever wondered what the inverse of Zen is, I would suggest playing through Dusk Episode 2, Map 6, titled the Erebus Reactor with This Town by Niall Horan playing in the background. The result was an emotional state where I found myself constantly torn between trying to not get blown up, shot, or fall into lava while wondering what I was even doing with my life, and if I’m going to die alone.
Anyway, if you like horror themed shooters, Dusk seemed to do a good job. If you don’t, and for some reason have emotionally committed yourself to finishing the whole thing anyway, adjustments to soundtrack may aid you.
This of course, won’t change the general vibe. Whether it’s a cursed farm, the worlds worst industrial park, or a research facility co-designed by Escher and Geiger, these are not pleasant places to be.
Despite that, it did feel like the level design massively improved between acts. Dusk has 3 episodes, with about 10 maps each, and secret levels. I did not play any of the secret levels.
Episode 1 was fun but a bit bland, episode 2 had a lot more variety in layout and design, and episode 3 has some downright nutty bits, with E3M7 probably reaching the pinacle of weirdo level design, being based around flipping gravity.
And while they may not be pleasent, I found them fairly fun. Okay, except for some of the claustraphobic underground sections, but I enjoyed the larger maps.
I also feel obligated to talk about the weapons. This is classic shooter, so you can carry all of them at once, there’s no reloading, and the only real cap on using them is ammo. My personal favorites were the super shotgun, duel pistols, and a explosive bolt thrower called the riveter. The most interesting one is probably the spectral crossbow which pierces multiple enemies, and shoots through walls, but it never really clicked for me. Generally, I just used whatever felt best in the moment, and only really felt ammo starved in boss fights.
I really only have two complaints about Dusk. The first is bosses. I did not find any of them particularly fun. It’s hard to put my finger on why that’s the case, but mechanically I found most of them pretty dull. The second is an enemy type called the wendigo.
Wendigos look like this.
You might be looking at this, and going “That doesn’t seem particularly bad” and you’d be correct. But there are two things I can’t show in a still image.
- Wendigo’s (or maybe just a map trigger) make the lighting dim when they activate, and make a screech like a parrot being squeezed to death.
- Wendigos are often placed in dark enclosed spaces in the first two acts.
- Wendigos are invisible until you shoot them for the first time.
The end result is an enemy that can organically jumpscare you every time it shows up in a level.
I hate them. Fortunately they’re at least kind of rare, so my terror was generally short lived.
I got Dusk on sale for just about $7. I had $7 worth of fun with it.
Right now it’s $20 on Steam, but you can probably just wait for another sale. It’s not my favorite game I’ve played so far this year, but it also isn’t my favorite genre, so I don’t think that’s on Dusk.
I thought the game was the most fun when it managed to blend it’s evocative tone with maps that were enjoyable to traverse, and least fun when it shoved me into coal mines filled with Wendigos.