Dusk is a Right Proper old school shooter in the vein of Doom, Wolfenstein and Duke Nukem but Dusk is the continuation and perhaps even revival of that genre of 3D shooter. I personally don't have much experience with it, I played a bit of Doom and DN when I was younger but not too much - though last year I did try out the enjoyable-but-not-excellent Ion Maiden which is pretty similar to this game. The basics of the genre are thus - you will pick up a variety of weapons while moving through short enclosed levels (usually 5-15m a pop) taking out enemies with your arsenal while solving either very simple puzzles or finding keys that will allow you to progress. This is very action-oriented however: your movement speed is FAST and your enemies are numerous and you are expected to be nearly constantly fighting as the levels go on. Even in the short levels of around 5 minutes you can expect to kill at least 150-200 enemies in that time frame so "action packed" is definitely an appropriate term for these games.

Dusk itself however has something to it however that I was drawn to and immensely enjoyed - a SUPERB aesthetic and premise to its world. The game is set in the eponymous town of "Dusk" (a feature it wlll share with game 39, oddly enough...) and you are a denizen who has witnessed a new cult pop up in the town and turn folk legit crazy - oh yeah and monsters are here now too! The game is broken up into three campaigns of your character slowly getting to the bottom of what exactly happened here and what might be able to stop it. First up is the farmlands - this is the town itself and the surrounding lands + some mines and small industrial plants where you see a lot of folks have gone crazy and become twisted by some dark force: I REALLY like Chapter 1 because it sets the tone so damn well and you feel pretty scared of what you're up against with the atmosphere of a haunted and dying rural area you fight through. Chapter 2 however things take something of a dive - this is you moving through the military base and through the nearby Big City where it becomes more and more clear that the government/corporation in charge here started "digging too deep" and found something they should not have... The theme here isn't nearly as strong as chapter 1 and the level design takes a heck of a nose dive. The previous campaigns failings are okay though because Chapter 3 comes to the FUCKIN RESCUE! We're down in the deeps and we get to see what eldritch abominations have been twisting the very land and we meet up with the narrator who has been whispering to us the whole game - some weirdo named Kevin..?? Nah, it's Nyarlthorep!! Fuck yeah Lovecraft.

So while the story and atmosphere is quite good the gameplay is quite solid as well. You've got 10~ish weapons to play with who all feel somewhat different and none of them reload: this is GoGoGo the game okay? Just kill shit and keep moving. And while shooting isn't really my genre and I can't say this game really changed my mind about the style of game it was more than good enough to keep me rolling through to the end. I mean really any game with dual shotguns + a supershotgun is going to be A-Okay in my book alright? The enemies have a nice variety to them and you get to know their various quirks quite well by the end of the game. At the beginning they start off as regular folks or slightly twisted versions of such - they do veer off straight into the monstrous and insane as the game progresses and it feels quite natural as you get good at killing the enemies a new warped creation will show its ugly face.

But its not all positive - the level design in a lot of this game is... FRUSTRATING. Remember Chapter 2 being annoying? Yeah, it's because for like half the damn levels I spent more than half of my time in it looking for the EXIT!! I would kill everyone, flip a switch, get the popup that a door was open somewhere, and thenhave to go over the entire damn thing with a fine tooth comb looking for the way out. And then I did this like... 3 levels in a row? I nearly took a break after the second one but I knew I had to soldier on... so I'm curious if there were different designers or something in Ch. 2? I don't recall having the issue at all in either of the other two campaigns so it was especially annoying to run into it so consistently in the middle of things which kinda broke the pacing of the game.

All in all it was an exciting horror/action shooter which is a genre I'm not often in to but for Spookstober I thought I'd sit down and blitz through the rest of the game. The evolving mood and threat your facing is almost Bloodborne-esque and I love that and each level is soaked with atmosphere. As the game progresses you feel significantly more powerful even as your foes level up as well. There's some bosses but they were all pretty meh but the FEEL of flying through a level fighting off monsters with my dual shotguns never really stayed past its welcome.