Over the years I've been hearing all kinds of insane praise for this game, from "best boomer-shooter of all time" to "the game that perfected the boomer-shooter" to "an FPS every fan of shooters must play", making it sound like one of the greatest games of all time. While in reality Dusk isn't doing anything fundamentally groundbreaking, and even at that it's far from perfect.

I've just finished replaying FEAR. You can't gaslight me into thinking this is the next coming of Christ. Even Quake 2 (the weakest of the single-player Quakes) is more consistent than this game.

Dusk is essentially Quake with some gimmicks thrown in and a much less coherent art-direction. When playing Quake, despite its episodes depicting different worlds with distinct aesthetics, they feel like they belong in the same game. Can't say the same about Dusk. And the same criticism applies to design.

The second episode quickly devolves into poor attempts at horror, which consist of the game throwing you into pitch-black rooms or corridors with invisible enemies, and [in]conveniently your flashlight just happens to break in that moment. It's more frustrating than scary.

Level design starts to get confusing too, forcing a lot of backtracking, and often hiding the path forward in some unremarkable location. The game heavily features keyhunting, but unlike the shooters of old, doesn't give you a map of any kind, dynamic or static. This isn't much of a problem in the first episode, because the level layouts are quite simple, but in the second episode it does become one as mazes start occurring more often.

There are somes shooters from the early-to-mid 00s that directly follow the best principles of the 90s retro FPS while building upon that foundation with increased mechanical complexity, advanced physics, dismemberment systems and AI, that also have better level design, better flow and sometimes better story. A game like Dusk in 2018 is at best a fun little throwback, not the revelation that everyone seems to describe it as.

I frankly don't get the hype. I watched Mandalore's review, and he did highlight some things I didn't notice myself, like how you can deflect bullets with your melee weapon, avoid killing enemies altogether or circumnavigate some locked doors by stacking objects as platforms. But these are gimmicks. Nothing in the game's core design is built around any of these. I saw one video where a guy thought the game hasn't been playtested because he was able to skip an entire boss-fight, and people in the comments were calling him an idiot because no-kill playthroughs are a feature, not a bug. My question is: why is it a feature in an old-school FPS? This isn't Metal Gear Solid. Nobody in their right mind launches a game like Dusk - a clear Quake-clone - to NOT kill anyone. Similarly, deflecting bullets with your sickles is something few people would even try because it makes no sense. But once discovered, there's still no reason to ever do that because it's your weakest weapon and most enemies are ranged. And regarding the ability to pick up objects, that's again not something you would want to do in a game like this. This is something you'd see in a physics-based shooter like Half-Life 2, or a game with more of an emphasis on exploration and platforming. A lot of these features feel like gimmicks because they're not parts of the core gameplay and are alien to the subgenre.

That being said, it is a good game. I was forced to rant instead of highlighting what I liked because practically everyone is praising the hell out of it, and nobody talks about its flaws. Ultimately, I lost interest in the game after 2.5 hours of playing. Not because it's bad, but because I don't find it interesting. I'd rather go back and replay Quake or even something like Heretic, which despite its flaws I enjoyed slightly more than this.