Dusk

If you were around in the nineties when gaming was well and truly taking off, you may have been treated to a little game called Doom. This title offered fast-paced, in your face visceral violence, incredibly well designed gunplay for the time and graphical content that while primitive by today’s standards were the best of the best back then. Since then we have seen Doom return to modern-day gaming with a bang but there is a modern game that decides to take the nineties classic and polish it up to offer retro gameplay with modern-day performance. This game is, of course, Dusk.

Dusk takes its inspiration from the aforementioned Doom as well as other FPS shooters of the nineties era such as Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, Half-Life, System Shock and Unreal Tournament to name a few. Dusk aims to offer the pixel heavy and crunchy visual stylings of these titles but provide a much more deep gaming experience as a whole and does so with a good deal of grace.

I’m a 90’s Kid!

Let’s begin with this games unique selling point, it’s retro artistic direction. This title is very true to the games of old and provides a pixel heavy aesthetic that will take older gamers back to the good old days. However, there are settings to change the level of effect this will have on your game. You can set the level of pixelation in the options menu to merely offer a hint of retro with plenty of 3D aspects included. Or alternatively, you can go all out with pixelation that will have you thinking your playing on your mega gaming PC from the nineties with a whopping 64mb of RAM. I mean what would you even use that much RAM for? How naïve we were.

The game does plenty to give the player that retro vibe but doesn’t live and die by this notion. The game offers much more refined gunplay than it’s predecessor, physics that actually work, the ability to use projectiles and melee attacks, a variety of different weapons to choose from that each feels distinctly different and a cavalcade of enemies that are more than just reskins of the game mindless AI. It’s by all accounts a retro game aesthetic with a triple-A mind-set.

What in the world?

Dusk's campaign is split into 32 beautifully designed levels that range from very linear and simplistic in nature to long and winding areas that will test your skills to the max. Each level really ramps up the intensity with a difficulty curve that is one of the fairest and consistent one’s that we have ever come across. Plus, each area is visually stunning with enough chilling environments to unsettle anyone, pixels or not.

As you would expect, this game is very light on the story front much like a lot of the games it models itself off of. Thankfully though, there isn’t really much need for narrative or exposition as the game never gives you a moment to breathe from the high octane action. You’ll be able to gather enough of the pieces of the puzzle from the environments you explore to gather what’s going on and quite frankly that’s all you’ll need.

Play From Dusk ‘Til Dawn

Dusk takes what was great about FPS shooters from the nineties era, leaves the performance issues and lack of depth in that era and produces one of the most standout FPS shooters of its generation.

Pros

• Deep and nuanced gunplay
• Fun and fair difficulty curve
• Amazing level design
• Retro visuals are great

Cons

• No real story throughout