It's fitting that FPSs would be saved from the triple A machine that bogged down the genre for more than a decade by the same type of people who invented and cemented it, the indie scene. There's been in recent years a massive ressurgence of FPS games that pay homage to the 90s fast paced and movement focused titles like Doom and Quake, showing once more to people how fun the genre can actually be besides the standard fare of sluggish militaristic and realism focused FPSs. At the top of this renaissance of "boomer shooters", stands Dusk.

Dusk impresses immediately with it's pixelated inspired visual look and how much commitment it puts into recreating the experience of 90s computer gaming. The amount of speed you are given, after years of being conditioned to expecting regular human speed in the genre, feels like having the training wheels removed from a bike, letting you strafe at break neck speed and giving you a slide move that increases your maneuverability even further.

Having the benefit of hindsight, Dusk take into account the number of years that videogames have had since then to improve the genre in every conceivable way. Every single mission creates unique situations and challenges to be overcomed in some of the best level design ever produced in the genre, while also providing the player levels open enough to be tackled your own way and with numerous nooks and crannies to find out. All weapons have their own unique use and advantage, some even adding movement options to the player, like rocket jumping or mid air control, or defensive options, like sending projectiles back at the enemy with a melee weapon, and you are even allowed to dual wield pistols and shotguns for maximum cool points. It is filled with nudges and winks at FPS classics, while still being it's own beast, and in some sort of playful joke, it gives the player a dedicated "reload" button that just twirls your weapon, as if obliging the impulses of the player to reload every 5 secs.

Beyond it's incredibly fun and engaging gameplay, Dusk boasts a badass horror aesthetic that has you starting in a rural farm ran by a bunch of KKK like cultists, entering a forbidden industrial city governed by crazed military armies and ending in a lovecraftian hellish city filled with demons. It manages to captivate the player and keep him on his toes as new threats are slowly presented and escalated, creating some genuinely scary and tense moments. The pacing, setup and payoff elevates what would otherwise be a simple and cliche story, and makes Dusk distinguish itself from the classic games it "rips off" from. The sound design and OST is fantastic and blood pumping, the enemies are all unique and varied, and the game is beautiful to look at in all it's retro pixelized glory.

First Person Shooters are gonna be ok, you guys. We are all gonna make it.

in most obvious statement ever made, dusk's sole developer confessed on twitter he had no prior level design experience. ep 1 is a barebones unity experiment that was never supposed to be any particular kind of game, rather it's the kind of low-level map editor riffing a newbie indulges in. ep 2 begins to find basic, blocked out gameplay footing but loses all thematic cohesion and regurgitates levels from a grab bag of better games, throwing everything at the wall including a gross misplaced counter-strike 1.1 level in E2M3. it's clear ep 3 is the fruit of years of experience experimenting to see what works; it is the only decent episode in this, and everything before it should have been left to the annals of random ftps and not put on sale, baby steps that they were.