2224May 019104yngem0netrvou May 2019 LXF249 25
First person shooter Reviews
Why the long face?A return to Return
to Ravenholm.VERDICT
Anobsessivelytuned,finelycraftedshooterthatmorethan
recreatesthespeedandpurejoyof’90sclassics.GamEPlay 9/10
GRaPhICS 8/10lonGEVITy 9/10
ValuE 9/10Rating 8/10
DEvElOPER:DavidSzymanski
WEB:https://newblood.games
PRICE: £15you fight bad guys in bars, bookshops, bedrooms, labs,
hay lofts, gas stations and convenience stores.
Dusk insists on using the classic trope of locked doors
and coloured keycards. Modern shooters have mostly left
that conceit behind because it makes players do a lot of
backtracking through empty levels. Distinct environments
filled with recognisable decorations like furniture go a
long way to keep you from getting lost, though; it’s
usually easy enough to recall that the Yellow Door is in
the bookshop and to find your way back there quickly
enough. Clever changes in geography, such as a floor
falling in or a hidden door opening, also help mix up
paths through levels.
More than that, developer David Szymanski has a
talent for environmental storytelling that goes way
beyond the tableaus in games from much larger studios.
Once, while venturing through a pitch-black subterranean
jail with a torch, we were hit from behind. Turning the
cone of our torch revealed... well, that would spoil the
surprise, but read with the light from our torch there was
another message in blood: “Don’t trust your eyes”. This
moment of discovery, and the sensation that the game
was toying with us, was better than any dozen skeletons
we’ve discovered in post-apocalyptic Fallout toilets.
Each level is surprisingly compact, using those colour-
coded locks to send players running back and forth
across relatively small spaces. Still, every area is full of
tiny corners and hidden walkways. Sometimes, but not
always, pressing a piece of wall opens a hidden door, or
shooting an air grate blows open a secret passage.
Without rushing, the average level takes about 12 minutes
to finish. These bite-sized little pieces of mayhem and
action make it really easy to pick it up and put it down a
few minutes later, and the built-in level timers are great
for speedrunners.
Dusk’s soundtrack is phenomenal. It’s got a heavy
metal flavour that instantly makes you think of DOOM –
so it’s no surprise that it was written by Andrew Hulshult,
the composer behind Brutal DOOM and Quake
Champions. It really is a stunner, and it’s also got a
relentless, driving quality that reminded us more of Mad
Max: Fury Road than the Rip & Tear track from DOOM.
The multiplayer mode is a more direct throwback to
the original Quake, and wasn’t as successful at grabbing
our attention. The high-speed bunny-hopping makes
aiming at human opponents much more challenging than
single-player modes, though fans of old-school Quake
deathmatches will enjoy searching levels and memorising
spawns for the strongest weapons. Matchmaking was fast
and rounds start with very little down time. The guns still
feel punchy, and the arenas use a lot of vertical space to
bring battles way above and below ground level.
To be clear, the multiplayer is completely fine. But
when the single-player is this good, a fine multiplayer
mode is a bit a of a let-down. Multiplayer lacks the careful
reinvention, the painstaking spiritual reimagination that
the single-player mode captures so effectively.
Dusk is brilliant because it understands that replaying
those old games is frequently kind of a let-down. Half-Life
is a classic, but playing it today shows how different parts
of it haven’t aged well; the graphics are barer than your
memories, and the animations are more stilted. It was
groundbreaking, but it’s just not as fun as it was when it
first blew our collective minds in 1998. Dusk captures how
those ’90s games feel now in our minds, tinted by
20 years of rose-coloured memories. It shouldn’t be
possible, and it’s a remarkable achievement.This is actually what Jonni’s
mind looks like inside.