Duskis a homage to late ’90s corridor
shooters like Doom, Quake and
Half-Life. It’s also a love letter to
weird cultist horror films like The
Hills Have Eyes and Deliverance.
More importantly, it’s great. Dusk is
fucking great.
Waking up hanging
from a meathook is at
least the third-worst
way to wake up. At the
beginning of Dusk, I’m
meathooked, trapped
in a hostile world and
mostly unarmed. Like
the ’90s shooters it
draws inspiration from, the first tool
Dusk gives players is speed. Pressing
the forward button zips me along the
ground, and, charmingly,
bunnyhopping adds momentum just
like it used to in the old days. With a
heavy W-finger and a lot of jumping,
exploring the creepy farmhouses and
industrial buildings of Dusk’s first
chapter felt like touring a videogame
art museum on a motorcycle.
It’s not speed for speed’s sake; I’m
moving fast because it’s the only wayto survive. There are a lot of different
enemies in Dusk, from possessed
scarecrows to hooded Klansmen
throwing dark magic, but almost all
of them charge straight ahead with
melee attacks or shoot swarms of
projectiles at me. The
variety of enemies,
some big, some small,
shooting bullets that
move at different
speeds, makes every
fight a constantly
changing obstacle
course. The only way
to navigate a crowded
field of shooty monsters and bullets is
to move, to run circles around the
bad guys, kite them into big groups or
toward explosive barrels, and shoot
as fast as I can.
Speed is the first, but it’s not the
only tool. Starting with a pair of
sharp sickles and moving up through
the traditional FPS loadout closet, I
shot demons and bad guys with
pistols, lever-action rifles, double-
barreled super shotguns, assault
rifles, sniper rifles and grenadelaunchers. The most unexpected
weapon I’ve found so far is the
Riveter, a bulky steel box that
launches hot construction-grade
welding rivets that, for some reason,
explode spectacularly. I’m not sure
why a rivet driver might act this way,
but it is extremely enjoyable.
The blocky graphics inDuskare
its most obvious throwback reference
to the era of games it idolizes, but
damn if they don’t look great anyway.
The sharp polygons of enemy bodies
might be two decades out of date, but
very modern takes on advanced
lighting and particle effects did a lot
to make me feel interested in
exploring and blowing up the world
around me. The limited polygons and
low-res textures have a jagged, unreal
quality that makes corn mazes look
creepy and country churches look
properly cursed by evil magics.
The singleplayer portion ofDusk
is broken into three campaigns.
Starting from that first moment in
that weirdo’s murder-dungeon, I
fought my way through farms,
industrial zones and apartment
buildings until I had completely
wiped out the cultist and/or demon
population of Dusk, Pennsylvania.
I had honestly expectedDuskto
be a more straightforward recreation
of ’90s shooters, including a generic
or nonexistent story. Instead, the
biggest surprise for me was
discovering a genuinely interesting,
gripping little horror story on offer.SEEK AND DESTROY
This is where Dusk became more
than a parody or homage to a
once-ubiquitous genre and started
kicking ass on its own terms. The
bare, pixelated corridors of yore have
been replaced by low-poly, but
recognisable and memorable, level
and environment design. I only ever
discovered hallways in classic Doom,
but in Dusk I fought 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 colouredNEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT?
A’90s-inspired
fast-paced FPS with
horror themes
EXPECT TO PAY
£15
DEVELOPER
David Szymanski
PUBLISHER
New Blood Interactive
REVIEWED ON
Core i5 4690k,
16GB RAM, GTX 970,
Windows 10
MULTIPLAYER
Up to 16 players
LINK
http://www.bit.ly/
newbloodinteractiveDusk’s first
chapter felt like
touring a
videogame art
museumI
was just about hip-deep in corpses and spent shotguns shells when
I read the writing on the wall. Scrawled in blood, a message: ‘Don’t
go in the ruins.’ I heard a raspy noise behind me. It wasn’t quite an
animal sound, but it wasn’t human, either. I turned and found
something much worse than a bad guy. A closed door marked
Ruins Access. The raspy breathing came again from just behind it. I felt an
actual chill run down my back.QUAKING
DUSK perfectly captures and reloads the joy
of classic ’90s shooters. By Ian Birnbaum
BLOODY WORDS Analysing Dusk’s gory graffiti
This one’s elegantly
self-explanatory. Where
shouldn’t you go? The
ruins. Where should you
go? Not the ruins.
Spookiness: 7/ 1 0
Style: 4/10
Execution: 8/10That’s the spirit! Just
because you’re dying
doesn’t mean you can’t
put some positivity into
the world.
Spookiness: 2/10
Style: 4/10
Execution: 6/10Oh my god, get out of
there. GET OUT OF THERE!
Spookiness: 10/10
Style: 10/10
Execution: 10/10A nice ‘fuck you’ on your
way out has a defiant
appeal, but dying is no
excuse for sloppy
handwriting.
Spookiness: 1/10
Style: 7/ 1 0
Execution: 1/10Dusk
REVIEW