Dusk is one of the first boomer shooters I ever touched. The day I purchased it was a watershed moment that defines my taste in shooters to this day. These two statements aren't connected. I purchased Dusk in a double pack with Ultrakill. After a couple of hours of enjoying the former, I decided to try out the other game I bought that day. I never looked back. It's hard to say I gave Dusk a proper shake, and I had nothing but fond memories of the few hours I saw, so I thought I'd finally get around to seeing what I missed.
Imagine my surprise when I was bored to tears by the first act, a real Darkest Dungeon. Its gorgeous Gothic horror atmosphere, genuinely uneasy in its constant industrial scraping and thumping, is in service of nothing. I'd imagine my fond memories of this section have more to do with my first time b-hopping at Mach 10 speeds because I have no other explanation for how I didn't see the flat open areas and dull labyrinths for what they are. Lame as hell. Then, to compliment the overcooked levels, I found a swathe of oddly unexciting weapons (They fucked up the rocket jump! A cardinal sin) and a critical mass of great-looking but mostly unthreatening enemies. It's never unfun to blast through these zones at top speed with these weapons, I am biologically presupposed to enjoy this (and the addition of boss fights helps break up the pace a little). I've just seen all of its gimmicks done much better in the years since I first saw them.
This got even worse with the first half of episode 2, at which point I started to wonder if I'd been the victim of some kind of psychological attack, tricking me into remembering this as a fun game. Until the labs. I won't spoil where the game goes from the second half of episode 2 on, but it gets much headier, much weirder and much pulpier than I'd expected. I loved it. Genuinely, unabashedly. The level design (while retaining some fundamentally dumb idiosyncracies) got better, the enemies got better, the powerups started being fun, a whole new world opened up before me.
But when we get down to brass tacks, Quake's neo-gothic funhouse is unquestionably more appealing than this game's portentous sludge. Dusk is pulling too much from its predecessors and offering little in return. It's such a shame it takes so long to find its footing. By the back half the decision to take the material so deathly seriously starts paying serious dividends. The ending is euphoric in its pulp indulgence. But the good comes far too late and at the expense of its first half. Many boomer shooter aficionados have and will rightly drop this after its terrible opening act. Who can blame them, all they'll see is a bland copycat desperately smashing its influences together. Even if it eventually carves its niche, I find it hard to argue with that assessment.
Imagine my surprise when I was bored to tears by the first act, a real Darkest Dungeon. Its gorgeous Gothic horror atmosphere, genuinely uneasy in its constant industrial scraping and thumping, is in service of nothing. I'd imagine my fond memories of this section have more to do with my first time b-hopping at Mach 10 speeds because I have no other explanation for how I didn't see the flat open areas and dull labyrinths for what they are. Lame as hell. Then, to compliment the overcooked levels, I found a swathe of oddly unexciting weapons (They fucked up the rocket jump! A cardinal sin) and a critical mass of great-looking but mostly unthreatening enemies. It's never unfun to blast through these zones at top speed with these weapons, I am biologically presupposed to enjoy this (and the addition of boss fights helps break up the pace a little). I've just seen all of its gimmicks done much better in the years since I first saw them.
This got even worse with the first half of episode 2, at which point I started to wonder if I'd been the victim of some kind of psychological attack, tricking me into remembering this as a fun game. Until the labs. I won't spoil where the game goes from the second half of episode 2 on, but it gets much headier, much weirder and much pulpier than I'd expected. I loved it. Genuinely, unabashedly. The level design (while retaining some fundamentally dumb idiosyncracies) got better, the enemies got better, the powerups started being fun, a whole new world opened up before me.
But when we get down to brass tacks, Quake's neo-gothic funhouse is unquestionably more appealing than this game's portentous sludge. Dusk is pulling too much from its predecessors and offering little in return. It's such a shame it takes so long to find its footing. By the back half the decision to take the material so deathly seriously starts paying serious dividends. The ending is euphoric in its pulp indulgence. But the good comes far too late and at the expense of its first half. Many boomer shooter aficionados have and will rightly drop this after its terrible opening act. Who can blame them, all they'll see is a bland copycat desperately smashing its influences together. Even if it eventually carves its niche, I find it hard to argue with that assessment.