One intriguing mechanic you hadn't mentioned was the fact that this game has an UNLOCKED Y-AXIS. (Something I've wanted ever since I got my first FPS.) This way, you can actually flip through the air or shoot upside-down, just by moving the mouse up or down enough. I also don't think the "grenade-launcher" firing projectiles a bit slowly is any problem, considering the "rocket-launcher" shoots very fast. You want fast explosives, that's what it's there for, and this helps continue to keep the two weapons distinguished from one another.

The point about abstract vs. representational level design was really interesting. Makes you wonder what modern shooters would look like had they gone down the other path.

14:50 Big John is actually a Triad Enforcer mini boss from the remake of Rise of the Triad. Good to see ROTT gets some love in DUSK too.

I like that they kept the entirely nonsensical 'This door opens elsewhere' message

I love how diverse the level design is. All of the levels are memorable.

Literally discovered this game via this channel. Was amused to realise that the game does anticipate players being used to reloading, so hitting R does a little neat animation.

fun fact you missed with the grenade launcher its grenades carry the momentum from the player meaning bunnyhopping forwards for a quick moment or so and firing can make the projectile go faster than the riviters bolts also explosions redirect projectiles of any kind and the crossbow can be used for flight due to its knock back

Dive into a room full of enemies and improvise a plan on the fly - exactly what I like so much about the genre, and about dusk

The nod to Terminator 2 with the spinning shotgun reload was a nice touch.

Ok straight up gotta inform you about a few things. The mortar inherits player momentum. So the faster you move forward, the faster the mortar shells shoot. As well as rivet and nade jumping you can also bow hop and bow hopping is one of the most useful movement abilities as while it does cost more ammo it also doesn't cause you to take damage and when combined with momentum you can really gain a lot of height and speed while already being midair. Speaking of speed, did you really manage to play the entire game without bunny hopping and strafe jumping? One of the core, nay, fundamental design choices in Dusk is it's simplification of strafe jumping. Rather then Quake's VQ3 or CPM it has no inertia and thus allows perfect air control as well as stopping immediately. Also no mouse input is required. Simply plus-forwarding (holding forward and either left or right while bhopping) is enough to start accelerating rapidly and this is often brought up as one of the many reasons why Dusk is considered a greatly accessible AFPS-style shooter. I've personally gifted this game to streamers who've never played an AFPS in their life and they have all found it incredibly easy to get into the routine of strafe-jumping. circle-strafing, and flying through the air. All within a couple of levels. Kinda disappointing you didn't mention the sound design or music. Nor the scaleability and variety in the graphical options. And finally. HOW DID YOU MANAGE TO PLAY DOOM 2016 WITH MOTION BLUR ON? ARE YOU CRAZY? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? DON'T GET IN THAT VAN!

Also, you can deflect fireballs with your scythes!

The case for the Emotional/Logical level design was a fantastic analysis I hadn't really thought of. It reminded me how this wasn't exclusive to shooters, american mcgee's alice, Soul Reaver and similar platformers all had moments of abstract symbology in level design, with certain impossible geometry locations intertwined with more representative spaces. It really made exploration fun and engaging. In contrast to this, as much as I loved the new PS4 Spiderman, it really speaks to this modern idea of moving between set pieces. It has a few moments abstract dreamlike environments, but it is always someone "poisoned" or "asleep" and the focus is on the extravagance of the set piece than the emotion of it.

Every genre and every era is perfect for a specific atmosphere and goal. You can only get a certain 'something' from black and white silent films that makes them still worth making (if the thing they offer is what you want). What was once contemporary and cutting edge always becomes a genre that offers a way of doing things that can't be achieved any other way. The trick is to not just become a parody or homage but do asomething new within those constraints.

Good video, and a fair assessment of Dusk I think - it's a great game, not perfect... but it does demonstrate a fundamental understanding of the genre (something that countless titles from the early 2000s onwards failed to do, including some of the so-called classics). The idea that the mechanics and design philosophies of 90s shooters are somehow outdated and need to prove that they still have a place is sadly common, and laughable. People didn't stop making 90s style shooters because they were outdated; they stopped making them because they couldn't compete, because the genre isn't actually simplistic; it requires a huge amount of talent and ingenuity. That's why so many attempts at making 90s-style shooters since then have failed; they didn't fail because the formula was old. They failed because they couldn't replicate it. And as such, it was cheaper, easier, to make simpler games with more linear systems and a reliance on scripted elements, with some flashy "complex" gameplay mechanics and visuals thrown on top. Another element in the downfall of classics FPS design was technological. Because graphics technology improved, developers started filling every environment with detail. This placed an emphasis on the room the player was currently in, instead of the level as a whole - and in fact, the presence of so much detail in individual rooms meant that level size and complexity had to be reduced. Similarly, because games began using prefabs more and more (which is to say, highly-detailed decorative assets that are placed in the level, not built by the level designer - not part of the primary geometry of the level), environments became too cluttered for the level geometry itself to play a dominant role - level geometry had to accommodate decoration, not the other way around. There's an interesting GDC talk on the use of negative space in level design, in fact, discussing why CTF-Face's first incarnation in Unreal Tournament 1 remains the most effective - that later, more "detailed" iterations didn't actually improve the gameplay or even the original's striking aesthetics: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fcBpbMpyx5q4YKM.html Essentially, it's all about signal to noise ratio. The more detail developers added to environments, the less complexity they could afford to have in the level geometry - when you strip away all the prefabs from most modern FPS titles (especially the CoD franchise), you'll find that the levels are often more box-like and simplistic than the original Doom, with most of the action taking place in big empty rooms. What Dusk gets right is that its use of prefabs is minimal; the level geometry is what matters, and it's crazy (also, it's worth noting that the level designer is clearly a fan of Thief - the Escher Labs, with the spiraling corridor, and later the bit where you "shrink"? That's taken directly from one particular level in Thief: The Dark Project). I think you really hit the nail on the head when you made the distinction between representation, and reality. Classic FPS games understood that level design is the conduit for gameplay; that the aesthetic element is supposed to represent a theme, and serve the gameplay, not SIMULATE reality, and let the gameplay kinda happen within the confines of that reality. Doom 2016 spent so much time making a "real research base on Mars" that it ended up filling its levels with fake doors and scripted sequences, and locking the player in arenas, to actively restrain the gameplay - which is ludicrous when you really think about it. Classic FPS level design never tried to restrain the gameplay; the level design was literally there to SERVE the gameplay.

damn my dude really beat all 3 episodes without B-hopping lol

Level Design is really good in this one. Wasn't expecting the more experimental levels in episodes 2 and 3, some of them remind me of Sandy Petersen's style. Great stuff

Dusk is amazing and I love how the way how they structured the kind of implicit narrative through the levels. It really gives you that feeling of reality dissolving around you by the 2nd chapter. I feel like they definitively got some vibes from that In The Mouth of Madness movie.

No mentions of strafe jumping? I feel like a few of your gripes with weapons and gameplay come down to the fact you don’t seem to strafe jump at all or even be aware it’s a mechanic. I thought maybe you’d be waiting to bring it up later when you mentioned this game isn’t as balls to the walls fast as Doom when it’s in fact doubly so should you use strafe jumping effectively. It turns the grenade launcher’s slow launch speed into something of a blessing, and a fun pace change relative to basically everything else (barring a couple of exceptions) into an interesting change of pace. When you are moving at near light speed, the grenade launcher acts almost like a set of deployable mines that you drop at the feet of a pack of enemies while avoiding fire and approaching and less something you actively aim at the chest with while backing away. It’s difficult to be evasive and approach simultaneously when moving at standard run speed. This game is DISGUSTINGLY fast with strafe jumping and I’d argue it’s the only way to play given the typical size of rooms and combat arenas. Watching you get hit in the face by fireballs was a bit jarring because part of the reason for the vast majority (if not every) enemy weapon is projectile based and not hitscan is so you can dodge and weave your way through areas without taking damage. It isn’t an advanced mechanic for elite players or anything; the game is incredibly lenient with its strafe jump timings, and you ramp up your velocity with only a handful of jumps. Would highly implore you to try learning the mechanic (if you haven’t strafe jumped in games like this before, it’s simply a matter of holding down forward and left or right, then arcing your camera so that even when moving diagonally on your keyboard, you are running forward, and jumping repeatedly every time your feet hit the floor) and giving the game another play through. It won’t address all of your criticisms, of course, but I think it’ll significantly alter your experience with the game. Great video nonetheless.

Yyyyyup, sold. Once I'm done with Dark Messiah, DUSK is next.

abstract level design is a primary focus in my project. I keep coming back to this video, thanks for the inspiration.

"The fall broke your flash light"

The lack of strafe jumping in this video hurts

Not quite apples to apples, but this applies to Amid Evil as well. Each world is memorable, with their own enemies and level design/enemy placement matters, instead of the cacophony that the latest Dooms throw at you every five seconds. I can think of favorite sections in Amid Evil, where Doom Eternal was an adrenaline rush that... Well, I enjoyed it. But I keep coming back to Amid Evil and Ion Fury more often. There is still an art to this kind of shooter, and I'm glad New Blood and 3D Realms brought it back.

I've been making arguments about the merits of old design sensibilities for what feels like years now, not just in nostalgia laden 90s games but in any era of game design, really. There's a tendency for critics to prioritise the new and throw away the old, that old ideas are bad just as a function of their oldness. Like recently I was playing Darksiders 3 and enjoying it a lot, but I saw it had a relatively tepid or sometimes outright negative critical reaction, which I found genuinely baffling. When I read through some of those reviews the thing I saw popping up again and again was the accusation that it felt like a game straight out of 2010, like that was somehow a negative thing. What was wrong with 2010? Did none of the design sensibilities of 2010 have merit? Perhaps it's better to view game design as a giant box of fun tools you can use to make games and not a constant progression of improving ideas. That mentality just leads to discarding good ideas.

That is nice and all, but have you found soap in every level?

I think weapons are definitely a bit of a let down in Dusk (no offense to the game, it's really awesome). One of the awesome things about classic shooters is that you know you're going to get your melee, handgun, shotgun, sniper variety but seeing the crazy shit devs come up with was always a tantalizing incentive to continue on. Like, here you were getting the meat and potatoes in terms of weaponry but you knew that, near the end, you'd get some nice dessert like the BFG that just let you go wild (with limited ammo, of course). It's one of the reasons I love the Ratchet and Clank games and consider them more spiritual successors to those classic FPSs of old. Granted, it's in 3rd person but the arcade-y gameplay of you vs dozens of others were there and while Ratchet had his melee, handgun, shotgun, sniper weapons there were also others later on in the game, like the disco ball that made all enemies, even bosses, dance uncontrollably. I loved using that weapon, not just because it was kind of a "go wild on enemies without repercussion for 5 seconds" button for you but also to see the variety of different dances the enemies did. Insomniac could've just made all the enemies do a single dance but they had their own variety, making it interesting to not only use the weapon but use it on different kinds of enemies to see what crazy dance moves they had.

A point you touched on in your video about the existential dread of dusk, I wanted to share a personal experience to that regard. Over the past few months (christmas I think) since I beat the game, I have had repeated dreams about it. Now, I should mention, my dreams are incredibly vivid, are typically pretty long winded, and are lucid; running the gamut from nightmares to heavenly experiences typically in one night. This game has given me two dreams, both of which are entirely unlike any dream I've had before. Whereas I'm either happy, running in sheer terror from some invisible threat, or are experiencing everyday life at an off angle, my dreams based off this game take an entirely different tone. Simply put, they're claustrophobic, tense, and entirely uncertain. You see, as my dreams are typically lucid, I can feel whether this dream will be good or bad and pull myself out of it if necessary. I can't with these. Instead of being happy or at least having certainty that something is coming to kill me "right now", I don't have any guarantee where these dreams go. Both of them have been labyrinthine experiences in the truest sense (this word gets thrown around a lot, typically to describe a maze like environments, which in my opinion are completely different), with fog, darkness, low light, and things that want to kill me. Both of these dreams impart that same feeling of dread you get from playing the game, that same indescribable emotion of creeping fear (existential dread may be the words, but like "labyrinth", its thrown around far to much to have any meaning anymore) No video game has ever done this to me before, and it's why this game is easily one of my favorites. It's a work of art that has made me feel emotions I never knew existed, and it did this as a 90's form FPS.

4:31 "Doom had its plasma gun and BFG that not only exploded but damaged anyone that had line of sight to the explosion" This is a large misconception to how the BFG worked, check out: /watch?v=_0KBAZkPFmI It will help make sense why the two imps survived in that clip you showed, safe to say it functions more like an OP super shotgun.

Thanks again, excellent video as usual Chris.

What a wonderful explanation, Campster. It looks like a really trippy, dream-like game, where with each step of the way you don't know if you meandering into a nightmare or a waking reality. I'll have to remember and try this game out. And Happy Holidays!

The secret Steam achievements for DUSK was definitely the main thing that kept me playing it after i finished the campaign

What a excellent video, i think you covered all the critical areas, and more. You've earned a subscriber, fine job sir!

"Again Doom 2016 mostly just removed the thinking on your feet strategy part and focused on pure adrenaline." Oh my god THANK YOU, someone besides me realizes this! I'm not alone!! The new doom is fun, but it's as foreign to OG doom as doom 3 is. I like Doom 3 as well, but it's not OG doom.

Nice timing on the thesis given Nightdive's planned remastering of Blood

I love and prefer abstract level design, since its way more pleasing to the mind and imagination imo. And about keycards. I definitely prefer keycards as pacing, instead of the horrible, absolutely horrible lock down arenas in Doom 2016. I love that game, but the constant LOCK DOWN this, LOCK DOWN that. Just get beyond tedious and annoying. Yeah god forbid that the player can move around the entire level, choosing when and where to find enemies. NO FIND IN THIS TINY ENCLOSED SPACE.. But rumors has it that the game couldn't handle more than a dusin or so enemies on screen, so thats the reason they did it. I just hope Doom 2019 has done away with the constant lock down events and let us have more enemies on screen.

This video is astonishingly good! It is the first video of yours I have seen, and I'm only 12 minutes in and I simply have to stop and write this, and subscribe as well! I am a massive fan of DOOM 2016, and I have no intentions of playing DUSK, but this video is a masterpiece of articulation and captivating speech, your form is amazing, and the entire video is a sugar-coated honey slide from end to end. I thoroughly enjoy the way you seamlessly mix review, anecdotal comments and video-game history into one, coherent way, to convey what is seemingly a free floating string of thought. I truly hope your other videos are like this, or, that you plan on making more like this!

Loved the brief mention of improvisational dance : ) I just wrote a thesis on the dance properties in games, and stick to the conviction that action games are the best dance games out there (for a bunch of meticulous academic reasons). You make a move, and the game responds with a choreography that you learn as you go.

Unfortunately, I had to listen to this one as an audio track in isolation, since the video content gave me *_massive_* motion sickness, almost right off the bat. That doesn't happen to me when I'm _playing,_ but when I'm merely _watching_ high-speed, twitch-turning, 3D action footage, it happens almost every time. I believe the difference is the lack of control; when I'm the one controlling the camera, my brain knows in advance when the turns, jumps and tumbles are going to occur, whereas when I'm watching someone else's footage, some part of my brain goes, "Nope! That does *not* match the input from your inner ear! I'm throwing a hissy fit and making you nauseous."

While the levels are good (but not even near the quality of the better quake or doom levels), I felt that some of them had very cramped corridors and small locales for how fast the player moves.

My favorite thing about the mechanics is that you can use picking up items or breaking things to your advantage. For example on E1M3 with the church, you don't have to get the key and you can just break through the window. There are no invisible walls over gates or anything like that, and sometimes it will reward you for thinking outside of the box and climbing on top of buildings rather than doing everything the intended way.

11:16 - Verisimilitude- there's that word again, which I first heard on Dean of Doom!!!!

This is probably the best breakdown of DUSK that I've seen so far. Nicely done!

Thumbs up for Joe Bob Briggs (and Phantasm). Best Xmas special ever!

Love this game, one of my favorites of the last year.

Also you forgot to mention that the Y-axis is unlocked, so you can do frontflips while you spam your flip key to make your gun go crazy while do you a friggin mctwist

Thanks for making this. I'm currently coming up on finishing Doom 2016 and as much as I loved Ripping and Tearing (and *cackling* when I get a Berserk powerup with the 'glory kill from further away' buff as I turn into a teleporting whirlwind of blood), the way id took a modern open-world style upgrade progression system and bolted it on to their linear finite-progression shooter really rubbed me the wrong way. I didn't mind the upgrades, but the milestone stuff, in a finite and level-based game, where I don't know how many encounters I'll have to farm out that milestone, really dampened my experience. It's made me wary of picking up Shadow Warrior or Hard Reset if they fall into the same traps. Maybe something as focused and defined as Dusk might wash the sour taste of upgrade tokens out of my mouth.

Another wonderful video, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this one. I'm too sick to play it but was really interested in what it has to offer and this scratched that itch. :)

MISTAKE HAS BEEN SPOTTED! The BFG dosen't work with line of sight with the projectile itself. In fact, it could blow up right next to you and you'd be safe from the beams if you cut line of sight with the player. The "rays" are projectected in a cone toward the general direction the player is facing toward at the moment the ball explode. But, those are projected from the attacking player and not the blob. This is also a key knowledge that helped me win a lot of deathmatch when I was still doing that shit. :P

Have you heard about our Lord and Saviour Strafe Jumping? Please embrace him once you'll play DUSK again.

Nice review. I played most the game when it was the early access, almost a year ago it seems. I need to get back to it and finish the last chapter.

Great video! I do have one question because when you got to the end but hadn't even tangentially mentioned Serious Sam I have wonder if you've gotten a chance to play them? All of them have value even if SS2 goes in a very strange art direction, and hit on a lot of what you are discussing here. They also add in some things that I feel DUSK under represents like creature sound design/audio cues like clacking from around corners, a distant AAAAAA, or even the rumbling noise across a field are vital pieces of information that other people who played the game can vouch for. I'm not saying DUSK doesn't have this, just that it's so integral to Sam.

I liked Dusk's mortar more than Quake's. Blowing up a crowd of enemies in a single well-timed click feels so satisfying.

how have I not discovered this channel until now?

I got stumped by secrets so hard, it made me smile.

Really enjoyed this analysis. I really miss the eery and surreal environments of early FPS games. I guess limiting yourself and your resources can have interesting and unexpected results!

Aside from the misrepresentation of the movement mechanics (which make this game faster than Doom, I would say), I also disagree with the statement that Dusk's arsenal is not as experimental as that of the FPS games it wanted to imitate. In Dusk you have: -A standard melee weapon -An alternate melee weapon -A pistol (which you can dual wield without power ups, unlike the pistols in the old FPS games) -A shotgun (which can be wielded in pairs, similar to pistols) -An SSG -A fast-firing weapon -A slow-firing, but highly-damaging single-target weapon -The crossbow, which fires through enemies and walls, aside from being good in general -A grenade launcher -A (fast-firing) rocket launcher I think this resembles the arsenal of Doom 2 the most, minus the BFG, with the second melee weapon being a bit more useful, with the addition of some weapons, and with only one non-rocket launcher fast-firing weapon (I don't think that the plasma gun of Doom 2 is very interesting, as it's basically a better chain gun that uses a different ammo type). The introduction of the crossbow alone makes this arsenal more interesting in my opinion, especially considering how it all works with this game's version of strafe jumping. What was the interesting stuff in other old FPS games (I wouldn't count HL, Unreal, and Blood 2, as Dusk doesn't seem to be similar to those at all)? The rays in DN 3D that didn't have a unique behaviour apart from requiring the target to be finished off afterwards? Shadow Warrior's nukes? OTOH, I can agree to Blood's flare gun being interesting and generally useful, and life leech being at least somewhat experimental, but the other old FPS games seem to not actually have much that isn't represented in the arsenal of Dusk, while Dusk's crossbow is probably the most experimental of the bunch. Note: realised too late that I have forgotten about Heretic and Hexen. I haven't played either of those games yet, so I can't comment on how the weapons of those games compare to Dusk.

Obviously they felt hands were an unnecessary modern extravagance.

Thank you for keeping this channel going! Would you consider an old jont into the adventure live action horror "Phantasmagoria?" It seems like something you'd see lots of good input on, as one of the few horror fmv games.

Great analysis as always

I'm glad we have such a retro FPS title like Dusk. It's nice to play a game like this again. Luckily it isn't stopping here. I am patiently waiting for Ion Maiden to continue the old school trend :).

Dusk is basically Surrealism : the Shooting game.

To your first point, I think the success of these throwback shooters is part of the reason why Doom Eternal dropped the facade of modernity in a lot of ways and has done away with a lot of the "realism" that was in 2016 and is unashamedly "videogamey". They don't pretend anymore to hide the arenas as real places within the world, they are very clearly only there for us to fight in. Same with weapon and item pickups. They aren't made to look like in-universe items anymore, they're now bright icons for us to easily spot. This aspect of the game has been pretty divisive, but I lean towards liking each for what they are, because they are each going for different things. It does make me happy that a shooter like Eternal can be made and sold in great numbers in 2020 though. No need for "realism", just arena combat. Aside from the platforming section in between arenas, which are not my cup of tea lol. They are not hard, but some of them do feel kind of silly to me. Good video, thanks.

Jump strafe; you go so fucking fast.

Is DUSK good enough to be on your top 10 list of 2018?

Hey you should check out Amid Evil, it's what DUSK is to Doom to Quake and Heretic. Really good weapons and level design.

A part of me thinks that a lot (or at least some) of the changes in game design was just developers trying new and exciting things, and having to make some sacrifices to gameplay in order to try that stuff out. Then those new things become the hot, trendy sthick for a while. Rinse and repeat and we end up with an odd, homogenized messes released annually. I hope I don't sound too detached, I just think game designers aren't in the business just to hash out trite garbage, considering how unstable working in the gaming field is and how so many of them join due to passion.

Dusk proves that good games are good games.

The early levels remind me somewhat of Zdzislaw Beksinski's paintings, the skyboxes especially

Project Warlock and Amid Evil are also worth exploring as part of this particular trend. I still think DUSK is the best of them, but there are things you mentioned that you felt were missing or underrepresented in DUSK that you can find in those two.

This is wonderful

Thank you for the information.

It's not unsurprising that Dusk really captures the games from the 90s, their previous game Amid Evil is equally mesmerising and gorgeous.

Destiny has its share of gimmicky weapons (and even armor) in Exotics, but the more outlandish they get, the more it becomes clear that it´s just more effective to point and shoot regular weapons. The level design is pretty loose most of the time, however the grind and repetition kinda nudge you towards trying something different, just for the sake of it

Great analysis

Dude! You forgot about Rise Of The Triad's goofy guns. The wall of flame was insane, the Excalibat, Dog!

I'm always in awe of your writing ability. So nice to hear.

any thoughts on Lost in Vivo?

Didn't you say you were gonna do a video on Hitman 2? Curious for your thoughts on it.

I played Episode 1 and 2 when it came out in Early Access, haven't gotten around to it sicne it got released in early december. I have thought about also getting Ion Maiden and Amid Evil which are similar retro games. I think both of them are also in Early Acces. Ion Maiden was in the Build Engine (I see you list in the credits, but I can't remember if you actually talked about it) by the devs that gave us the Rise of the Triad remake, which was pretty good for $350k they had to make it for (but it confirm that all the good level design in ROTT was mostly in the first couple of episode and rapidily declined).

i love more of these games thy seem so inspired but are all horror themed id love another take on it

I won't have time to play it but I might get this just for the soundtrack

Blood was easily my favorite of this genre because it married the two desperate sides of these types of games, and I'm glad this game appreciated that aspect and embraced it.

What's the name of the game on 11:46 ?

you can also use the crossbow to hover in the air

It suddenly bothers me ... your end card highlights the open brace not the close brace

Honestly the creative weapon design that was a bit left out with DUSK is delivered in more than full with Amid Evil where your rocket launcher is a staff that throws planets at people, your first weapon turns enemies into water and your BFG creates black holes

Take a shot every time there's alliteration

13:50 and there's miracle matter? I think that was the name of the boss from kirby 64.

This game has a crossbow that shoots through enemies. What more do you want? That moment when you kill 50 acolytes with 3 bolts is fucking boss.

I wonder if ES ever covered the nat sh*t craziness of Stubbs the Zombie?

I just unlocked my 30th and last achievement in Dusk last night seven minutes before midnight getting all achievements! I did the same a week ago played Amid Evil which was also made by the same publishing company as Dusk in New Blood Interactive! You should check that game out and do a video of it. You should also play and do videos two other great boomer shooters in Ion Fury and Project Warlock.

Really surprised you didn't mention Turok's Cerebral Bore hehehe

As much as this game looks fun to PLAY, it's kind of a nightmare to WATCH. Maybe it's the combination of the head-bob and weapon recoil, but man, it's not easy to look at for extended periods of time. Great video, though :D

This looks great actually

Good video, man.

Back in 2015 I released a 2D ASCII shooter on Steam for 99 cents, which imitated 90s FPS mechanics. It didn't exactly enjoy widespread success, but it's a fun campaign-driven game which was my own expression of what's missing in today's games. You might want to check it out: store.steampowered.com/app/406920/Monsterland/ P.S. I just bought Dusk

I'd like to hear what you have to say about that new quake mod, arcane dimensions

Take a look at this exciting viewer engagement, Mr. Algorithm!

I miss the old style of FPS and find that still prefer to charge over cowering behind walls in these games. (Which often leads to me being shit at them.) Dusk sounds like a good game to check out.

*Update:* yeah Dusk is fucking great. I had a few niggles here and there, but I'm up to E3M9 at the moment, and it's been one hell of a ride. (As for Dark Messiah, it kinda petered out around the return to Stonehelm because those ghouls are annoyingly limber little bastards, and Arantir's zombie pao kai didn't feel all that fun to chip down even with the Dragonhorn Bow. Still good tho.) *(comment ends here if you want to avoid spoilers and me getting a little Errant Signally in my analysis)* Come to think of it, I don't know if this is just the forces of Chaos messing with our character's mind, but when I reached E3M7, I ended up down a weird mental rabbit hole in regards to what the story appeared to be conveying through the environment, which may be kinda spoilerish but I haven't completed E3M9 yet so I'm probably just missing something. E3M7: "Homecoming" gave me the creeping impression that some of this might simply be in Duskdude's head. When I first approached the house in the weird floating void, presumably home, the sound of the rotating gravity orbs sounded vaguely like someone cooking dinner to my ears, only for me to walk through the door and get screamed at by a ball of bone that constantly screamed skulls at me. Coupled with the pictures on the wall, which cause Duskdude to claim that "it hurts to remember", gives me the impression that something went wrong in his life at some point, possibly something happening to his wife, who seems to be present in those pictures. The following level, E3M8: "As Above, So Below", built upon this by giving me the impression that the ensuing mishmash of environments were, potentially, not merely the product of the Cult and the Demons, but Duskdude's own mind. Sort of a "final hoo-rah" of all the places he's been before the madness consumes him completely (as a side note, the mishmash reminded me a lot of Nipper's maps for the Counter-Strike games, if any of you remember Nipper). Which it may or may not have, given how E3M9: "The Dweller in Darkness" strikes me as an ethereal "Final Destination" kind of arena, where you face off against pretty much everything you've faced before in a final battle to "prove you are worthy". This level also meant a lot of those goddamn Cowgirl enemies (who are very reminiscent of Doom 2's Revenants, come to think of it), except this time there is no opportunity for cover, forcing you to be super-mobile all the time, though thankfully the vents allow me to "pomp!" up into the air to keep them from fragging me sideways like they usually do. But all in all, while I've yet to finish E3M9 and move on to the final encounter, I've had a lot of fun with the weird and wild encounters and levels of DUSK. At the very least, I can say I had a bit more fun with DUSK than I've had with Dark Messiah (yeah they're largely different games, but it's hard for me not to look at them side-by-side after playing so much of them), even though transitioning to DUSK made me wish that DUSK had the Mighty Boot along with the ability to mantel up edges. Campster wasn't wrong when he said this game leaned hard into its horror aspects: some of those levels had me dripping with a dread that I haven't felt from a shooter since the dark Voltigore-infested tunnels of Half-Life: Opposing Force, really scratching an itch I didn't know I had all these years. If I did Game Of The Year lists, even though it's barely even the start of January, DUSK would definitely be in my Top Ten for 2019. At the very least, it gets a Gold Star from me.