DUSK

This game was played in its entirety on a MacBook M1 Air 8gb RAM 7c GPU. No gameplay glitches or bugs were observed. The game did not crash during my play through. All achievements were unlocked at their appropriate times. Another game I wish I could give a neutral to, as it has some great highs, but also horrible lows. Please read the following paragraph to ensure you are okay with purchasing this game. One of the biggest negatives (and I only found out about this after completing the game) is how the developers treat their fans. I acquired this game in a bundle, long before I knew of this, but had I known ahead of time, I doubt I would have purchased the game on its own. Dusk was in a kickstarter, and one of the most sought after features was its co-op mode. From what I have read, it was advertised heavily on its co-op mode. The problem is that the devs basically gave up on the mode. One post in discussions mentioned that on the dev discord, they stated that they ran into too many problems and had to drop co-op mode. That's understandable. What isn't, is that they seemingly continue to *taunt* the players that want this feature. On the steam discussions, the devs will frequently pop in to claim that no work has been done on the co-op mode. They also have a multi-year long discussion wherein the devs joke around once a year that they have done their mandatory one day of work on co-op mode for the year. I'm not a fan of that, and I will not buy any more products of theirs because of this. The game itself is pretty good. FPS games, for me, don't have to reach a high bar to be enjoyable. The maps are the best part. They are quite inventive and remind me of the glory days where every major FPS got huge map packs and the best map designers were like rock stars. There isn't a huge variety of map types (indoor, outdoor, foresty, hellish, metal/industrial) but the designs themselves are amazing. There are a huge amount of secrets, trap doors, false walls, breakable walls/containers/structures, etc. No spoilers, but the final few levels introduce a mechanic which really turns FPS traditions on their head! The weapons are the second best part. There is a decent number of weapons on display here, and shockingly, they all have their place! You could look at a guide for the game, and see that you have a shotgun, which gets upgraded to two shotguns, and then you also have a super shotgun; and I wouldn't blame you for thinking that this is a terrible choice and that it's all the same. But each weapon is designed well enough that there are enough differences to each that you will enjoy using them all throughout the game. The enemies are a distant third best part. Most of them look good, and a few are downright scary/creepy, but there aren't enough of them. There are three different "factions" of enemies (corresponding roughly to each of the three episodes of levels), but a lot of them are duplicated across factions (though they look different). Also, some of them have a very small animation when they shoot, which makes it hard to know when to dodge. The third faction is, in general, the hardest, but then you also have the common "helldog" (not sure of its actual name) which is one of the first enemies you encounter. It has one of the hardest shots to dodge in the entire game, so you do feel that you get thrown into the deep end at the start of the game. Of course, if you're constantly moving, it will miss often. The movement is ok, but not great. You move and turn very smoothly. I hate head bobbing in all games. This game doesn't have that, but the camera does angle slightly as you strafe at higher and higher speeds. It's a nice effect and did not make me ill at all. You can pick up and drop or throw almost every item in the entire game, which is impressive. Less impressive, however, is when you have to stack items to reach certain areas or secrets. This is mostly a problem before you get any of the weapons that let you "cheat" jumps. The physics feel off in that old style where you'll throw something at what you think is a great arc, but then it'll fall right at your feet; whereas a brief brush against a huge rock will send it flying to the moon. I also got stuck repeatedly on level architecture. None were permanent: a wiggle or jump would always free me. The story...exists. There might be more to it than I was able to gather, as a lot of it is told through voiceover while you are playing, and it's so garbled and poor quality that even with the volume to max, I could not understand what was being said (and there are no subtitles). The final opponents seemed to come out of nowhere, and I had no basis for who or what they were or if they were important to me (paintings notwithstanding). There are some UI oddities, but I'm not sure if they are Mac-dependent or not. The most annoying were: A) Saves would frequently add slashes to the save game names in a random fashion, and B) the multiplayer mode, despite being an option on the main menu (which does nothing), requires you to launch a completely separate application. Nothing too horrible, but odd nonetheless. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this review!