Then, in the cone of my flashlight, I saw blood spatters in the shape of footprints moving toward me, marking the steps of an invisible bad guy. I turned and fired, but there was nothing there. Once, while venturing through a pitch black subterranean jail with a flashlight, I got hit from behind. More than that, developer David Szymanski has a talent for environmental storytelling that goes way beyond the tableaus I've discovered in games from much larger studios. Clever changes in geography, like a floor falling in or a hidden door opening, also help mix up paths through levels. I could usually just think to myself, oh, the Yellow Door is in the book store and go find my way there quickly enough. Having distinct environments filled with recognizable decorations like furniture goes a long way to keep me from getting lost, though. Modern shooters have mostly left that conceit behind because it makes players do a lot of backtracking through empty levels.
I only ever discovered hallways in classic Doom, but in Dusk I fought bad guys in bars, book shops, bedrooms, labs, hay lofts, gas stations, and convenience stores.ĭusk insists on using the classic trope of locked doors and colored keycards. The bare, pixelated corridors of yore have been replaced by low-poly but recognizable and memorable level and environment designs. This is where Dusk became more than a parody or homage to a once-ubiquitous genre and started kicking ass on its own terms. I started shooting, and a demonic deer-type creature roared out of the darkness and attacked again. Instead, the biggest surprise for me was discovering a genuinely interesting, gripping little horror story on offer. I had honestly expected Dusk to be a more straightforward recreation of '90s shooters, including a generic or non-existent story. 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.
The single-player portion of Dusk is broken into three campaigns. 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 The sharp polygons of enemy bodies might be two decades out of date, but modern lighting and particle effects did a lot to make me feel interested in exploring and blowing up the world around me. The blocky graphics in Dusk are its most obvious throwback reference to the era of games it idolizes, but damn if they don't look great anyway.
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