I’ve always loved the mid-90s FPS titles, especially ones made on the Build engine. They had a perfect mix of exploration in fun levels, cool weapons and enemies to use them on, number of encounters per level balanced just right so action doesn’t get stale and almost always had kickass tunes. My recent revisit of Blood was a wonderful reminder of how fun those games could get. And after years of FPS games, and shooters in general, going in a very linear, very “cinematic” direction we’ve seen a revitalization of that old 90s approach in recent years. Some of them were disappointing, some leaned too heavy into base mechanics, forgetting about the importance of hand crafted levels, some were pretty okay. DUSK, though, ever since the first Early Access builds, attracted exclusively positive buzz around it. So I was understandably curious, yet, due to all those disappointments, still somewhat cautious.
But now I’ve played the game. And holy fucking shit it’s amazing.
DUSK is probably most easily described as a perfect marriage of Quake and Blood. Of best ideas from the id Software titles in the early 90s and the build engine titles. There’s a huge level of interactivity and physics silliness everywhere, from the usual “flush toilet” to killing enemies by throwing stones in their faces. There’s the speed and hop-heavy nature of Quake, with the ability to rocket jump, strafe jump, bunny hop and things that were not in the original Quake but totally fit the movement mindset of it, like the ability to slide when crouching mid-run. The mood of the game is very dark, sometimes taking you through levels that would fit a morbid horror title perfectly, and the feel of it all is heavily reminiscent of Blood. Yet, there’s always that pixelated 3D grit of Quake in every detail, every location, no matter how Blood it may look. And the gibs, the blood flying everywhere, the feel, the sound, the music, the absolutely everything… It really is a perfect mix of absolute best parts of Quake and Blood.
But it doesn’t just borrow from the classics, or even some of the newer titles. It goes into some really bizarre places. Some levels are so visually and mechanically creative, yet never repeated, never getting stale. Every of the 3 Episodes has a distinct feel, always introducing new enemy types, which never get too confusing or overwhelming and always feel specialized enough. And every time a new Episode or even a level starts, you have no idea what new cool things will happen as the game loves to surprise, either by introducing new things, or by re-contextualizing things that you’re already familiar with.
Even the existence of the game itself is somewhat of an unexpected surprise. David Szymanski has previously worked on weird narrative exploration titles with really interesting visual style and often uncomfortable horror themes. And while visual style in this game still plays an important part, and I liked it a lot, it was still less of a focus than in something like the wonderful The Music Machine. And while the horror is solid and story, well, exists, they’re not really as important as the fun of running, jumping and shooting things. It’s also shocking how forgiving the normal difficulty is in the game, without ever feeling like it’s hand holding you through challenges as so many titles aiming for the retro feel try to aim at the much higher challenge level as the “intended” way of playing.
Really, though, I just cannot stress enough just how incredibly fun this game was to play. It’s not a “perfect return of the 90s FPS”, it’s the 90s FPS as we remember them, not how they actually were. So many flaws, big and little, that we forgive and forget in those titles are simply not even present in this game. And unlike so many products from the shareware days, this doesn’t even suffer from the “First levels are usually the best” problem. On the contrary, the more you play DUSK, the more creative and interesting it becomes. And while it does hit a few sections where it’s either somewhat easy to get lost or the combat gets a bit too long, it’s never to a point where you need to “forgive” it. It’s often just a slightly less cool moment than the rest of the game.
If you’re into FPS titles, if you’re into action, if you’ve never understood why people like classic FPS so much, if you’re among those who like classic FPS so much, if you’re alive and breathing, you should at least check what DUSK is. It’s easily one of the best FPS games, not “of recent years” or “of the classic FPS revival”, but of all time. And check the soundtrack too, it’s really good.