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.
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.
One thing he didn't mention was the fact that this game has an unlocked Y-axis. This means that you can do flips in mid-air, and even end up shooting enemies while upside-down, up until you hit the ground and automatically flip upright. There's also "bunny-hopping" (very popular in Quake and Painkiller), where repeatedly hopping in any direction allows you to move even MORE stupidly-fast; something he COMPLETELY missed, hence him complaining about the lack of speed. He just didn't figure out how to achieve the speed he wanted. You need this skill to achieve it.
@@lugbzurg8987 the funny thing is you don't even need skill. They specifically coded it to be easy to do and to be accessible to everyone. People just have to give the game more than a quick critical playthrough like a lot do . I got bored the first time I tried to play, but I gave it one more shot and I was completely hooked. Started finding secrets, learned to bunny hop and flip and zoom across the map. Learned the awesome weapons, which btw the grenade launcher is so cool given the right circumstances. It's rare but if I get a tight hallway or a bunch of enemies below me I rain them indiscriminately until everything is dead. This game is a masterpiece. I wasn't sold until I gave it a second shot. Another thing he missed is the way the powerups affect the weapons. The launchpads, climbing mechanics, superhot, jewel of madness, fast shooting, and all stackable. So maybe the weapons aren't super unique but they're perfectly suited to dusk and can be used in unique ways.
@@GrandmasterofWin Yeah, and I like how there are levels that are designed to help you learn Bhopping, or in my case strafe jumping, like the first level of Episode 2, and Erebus Reactor Erebus reactor is actually what taught me how I get much faster by Strafe Jumping that I ended up doing so to the beats of it's theme song, in fact you can try and combine the chunky sounds of the Super shotgun or any other weapon and sync it to the current combat music as you play
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
@@goga.games18 I'd say yeah. Not a flawless "FUCK YEAH", but still a reasonable "yeah it's worth your time". It's a little jank by today's standards, but it's always fun to freeze the floor and watch an orc slip and slide off a cliff. Plus you can kick people off of ledges, into spikes, into fires, down stairs, and so-on. Arguably, Dark Messiah of Might & Magic has one of the best uses of the Mighty Boot in first-person combat next to Bulletstorm. Half-Life 2 is an excellent game already (which is relevant since Dark Messiah was made in the very same Source engine), but it would have been even better if Gordon could kick enemies. Not only because of the aforementioned boons of kicking, but because it would also allow for quick-melee in close-quarters. ...come to think of it, if Valve ever does make another Half-Life game, the Mighty Boot is a must-have feature, as it should be for any first-person shooter IMHO. Going back to Dark Messiah, while it's not exactly balls-to-the-walls in terms of action, when it is fun, it is REALLY fun. Though there was a point where I had to use the old "sv_cheats 1, noclip" technique, since I encountered a bug where Leanna didn't lift a fallen stone pillar that I needed in order to progress. But other than that little niggle, and a few other smaller niggles I had here and there, it's still very much a fun time when it works. Which is the vast majority of the time, save for the aforementioned niggles, which is a word I feel like I've used a little too much.
@@GmodPlusWoW thanks for amazing answer ill definitely check it out now i have really been enjoying playing some old games like half-life,duke3D and Painkiller(hella fun)
Dark Messiah is a strangely good game. There's so much about it that is just objectively cheesy or bad or even monotonous, yet for some reason I always find myself having so much fun with it no matter what part I'm at. I replay that game way more than I should.
@@GepardenK Like I said, it's "a little jank" by today's standards. And maybe a little clunky. But it still has a fair whack of stuff to it, for what it is. In a way, I kinda wish Ubisoft would lend the license to Arkane again. Yeah Arkane is on the payroll of ZeniMax, but given the semi-recent rumblings of Might & Magic making a potential resurgence, I feel like Arkane could apply what it has learned in the years since to make an excellent singleplayer tie-in. Just imagine a Dark Messiah game with all the polish and refinements seen in Dishonoured and Prey. It's probably never going to happen, but it would be pretty awesome regardless.
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.
There are _some_ invisible walls. e.g. On the first level of Facilities there's a pretty low wall you can't jump onto because it would let you walk out of the map.
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.
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.
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.
It's sort of like that, when Halo came up, regenerating health (or rather shield), wasn't a thing. But it became popular, and suddenly every fps had it (or rather a worse version, where you only had the regen). Or for example, the cover system in gears of war. Or how every game seems to have "character progression" and "crafting systems"
it's just business. For 1 dev who can actually do what they want. There are 10 who just in it for monthly pay or dont have access to enough resource and big enough market.
@@estebanrodriguez5409 Both Halo's regenerating health and GoW's cover system are there mostly to band-aid the fact that a controller isn't up to the task of controlling the game.
I can't help but notice you weren't bunny hopping at all in the footage of you playing Dusk, and you didn't mention it. It's a pretty important mechanic, especially from the perspective of game mechanics that have all but vanished since the 90s. It was one of the first things I tried out and made sure to get good at as soon as I escaped the house in E1M1 and got to that big open space. The complaint you had about the player movement speed would certainly be gone if you had used bunny hopping. With that said, this is still an excellent video and a good watch.
Gotta say, the thing that always bothers me about 90s FPS despite how fascinating they are: They move too fast. They give me head aches and a weird motion sickness that doesn't feel like actual motion sickness, and I always feel really hot. Playing or watching. DUSK does that just as well as Quake or Duke Nukem does, OMG. Makes me wonder if this is the real reason FPSs are slower now than then, 'cause even Halo, which arguably takes a lot from these games, is slower moving.
I don't think dusk is just a callback to the 90's. I think it's the same genre of fps in the 90's. A genre I like to call "doomquake" which is an fps with no cover, minimal emphasis on reloading, a lot of enemies at a time, keycard hunting, a heirarchy of weapons with Melee to power weapon, an episodic format (optional), and Romero's 8 rules of Lille design.
What's this "p" you talkin' 'bout, whippersnapper? In MY day, you listed out both dimensions of the resolution, and you could gecher screen resolutions in NARROW screen, like 5x4!
I know this is irrelevant, but there has to be something odd with your mouse sensitivity or something. The mouse movement is very jaggy and shaky. It looks like you have an insanely high sensitivity. Anyways, great game. What I also like about it is the fact that it embraces bunnyhopping and you can get some decent speed with it. Cranking the FOV up to max gives it an even more intense sense of speed as well, and it's really good at reducing the fish eye effect when you do (at least on my ultrawide). It's almost a sin to not be constantly bunnyhopping and doing flips when playing this :)
I've tried some retro shooters like Doom Classic and Dusk, and I just can't handle how slow it is to give you all your weapons. The funnest part of the game is swapping between a bunch of weapons to fit whatever deathtrap plan you have in your head for your enemies. But instead, Doom Classic asks you to shoot Cacodemons with a pistol for the first few chapters. So frustrating.
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.
It's hard to imagine it happening. Representationality probably became dominant for systemic reasons rather than out of sheer coincidence. For example, representational spaces have a strong "memetic advantage", if that makes sense. That's like the entire reason why GTA ever became big in the first place. That's what enables you to say that Half-Life is mimicking the feel of a B-movie. And, of course, it's harder to come up with solid guidelines for non-representational spaces. Also, part of the reason for the lack of representational spaces in early games is that we didn't necessarily have the computational power to properly pull off high-fidelity simulations yet. And there's always been a "simulationist" impulse in what we write and say about games, so it's unsurprising that the first thing we did when we got more power was find ways to simulate better.
@@mightyNosewings I don't think it's that unlikely to have happened though. If a design philosophy where the focus was on conveying a feeling, atmosphere or similar had come to the fore instead of the school of thought that perceived realism as the way forward, then it might have gone a different way. I don't really agree with the point about "memetic advantage". Non-representational levels don't really make sense if you think about them, but at a glance they may seem somewhat sensible as they borrow the aesthetics of reality, though not its logic. You are correct in that it is more difficult to apply common sense to level design when you are dealing with non-representational spaces, but in that case you can follow the logic of good game design. Design a floor plan to be interesting to move about rather than simple to traverse. Don't place enemies where it makes sense for them to hang out, but place them where they can ambush the player or fire from a weird angle so the player must reconsider their movement path. I suppose non-representational design lives on in that sense, like in Dark Souls where enemies just stand around edges or ruins where they don't really have any business but disrupting the player. I think this is where abstract design has it's greatest advantage: It does not have to be restricted by realism, but can focus entirely on making the gameplay work effectively. To be clear I don't think abstract design works everywhere. In action-RPGs and similar it is mostly infeasible. As those, for the most part, require a logical setting to work properly. But I do think abstract levels could have a place in more arcady games, particulary where there also exists good excuse, like the modern DOOM(s) which are not only extremely arcady with their chainsaw piñatas and the like, but where the levels are also increasingly corrupted by demonic influence. I suppose that is why the philosophy endured for longer in arena shooters like QIII or UT where any pretensions of realism had gone out of the window.
@@arroraseliant8482 Representational level design in FPS titles was always destined to become the bog standard because a great deal of abstract design was not by the developer's choice, but rather imposed on them by limitations. Once technology surpassed the limitations preventing representation of something, the abstract elements used as a fallback usually disappeared. More powerful new graphics cards have never been sold on the strength of their increased power to produce cooler abstract effects. They're sold on increasing the capacity for realism in representation.
personally I like space which looks realistic, but the layout isn't, it's designed for gameplay. or kind of like an abstract level, but you use realistic textures and decorations to make it look like a real place.
I feel like more games could benefit from "splitting the difference" like DUSK does. All abstract is cool, though all representational is also cool, but mixing it up keeps the adventure fresh, and increases the factors of wanting to keep playing even more. You're always wondering "where is this exit going to take me?", especially in The Facilities and The Nameless City episodes, since while the levels have a great deal of connective tissue for the most part, the transitions between the levels gradually get crazier and more abstract. *(spoilers for the latter half of The Facilities)* For example, when you leave the Escher Labs, did you expect to lay your eyes upon the metal-as-fuck Erebus Reactor? And when you make it past Big John and leave The Erebus Reactor, what were you expecting before you lay your eyes upon the Babel Skylab of Neobabel? And when you delve deeper into the Skylab and finally make it to the top, were you truly prepared to bear witness to the monolithic concrete altars of Blood and Bone? And indeed, after falling back into the bowels of the earth, learning of the dark secrets of the concrete altars, did you suspect that you were going to end up in the ancient eldritch ruins of The Dig? That's the kind of thing I want from games like that: keep things varied, keep them wild and interesting, make me keep guessing about what's coming next. Take me on an adventure and show me all the wonders and horrors you can muster! And in that regard, I REALLY hope that we eventually get new level packs for DUSK. Because even after 33 levels of abstract imagery, representational spaces and weird wild madness, I still hunger for just a little bit more. I could definitely handle another 11 levels of eldritch bedlam.
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.
haven't had a chance to buy the game yet but i've seen other videos mention that you can hover with the crossbow and i was suprised it wasn't mentioned or shown at all here
@@ChrisTheSaiyanhog Yup that annoyed me too. You are literally able to skip level parts if you know what to do with the crossbow. Oh and no mentions of secrets. The secrets in DUSK were awesome.
@@ChrisTheSaiyanhog Yes, it knocks you back, and shoots fast enough to propel you in the air a bit each time. Like Q3A's plasma gun, without needing walls (more or less)
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
You can also rocket jump with both mortar and riveter, and the crossbow can be used to skip a bunch sinc you shoot through walls and often is used to hit switches/buttons...
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: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GZ99gAb4T0o.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.
I agree about that, I prefer simpler looking maps with minimal use of prefabs which don't serve gameplay and can end up being visual clutter and distracting when you use too many of them.
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!
"Kinda disappointing you didn't mention the sound design or music. Nor the scaleability and variety in the graphical options." _. . . are you serious ?_ *_BUT THE GODDAMN MUSIC THO!_* oh boy
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.
It's more likely a reference to Marathon 2 from 1995, which has duel wielded shotguns that are reloaded via barrel twirling. steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1428758135 steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1428759341 Except Marathon's are super shotguns and it was also likely doing it as a reference to the film. Since you duel wield the shotguns in DUSK, I think it's fair to say it's referencing both.
I've played very little of Marathon, but doesn't the game outright admit that reloading a break-action shotgun with a twirling motion makes no sense and tell the player to not think about it? On the other hand, chambering a new shell by flip-cocking a lever action shotgun is actually a thing that can be done for real, although there is risk of catching your fingers in the loop and breaking your fingers in the process. From what I've read, there were two shotgun props used in T2, one of which had a widened loop to make it actually safe to flip-cock.
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.
@@FoxDie77777 Im know im 2 years late. There is zero Bhopping in Dusk. Unless it was removed from an update. there is none. The janky modified strafe jumping is all that exists to accelerate.
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.
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.
I like how the levels in this game slowly descend into madness, starting off as normal and then becoming something beyond human comprehension and yeah, the lockdowns in doom 2016 were a little bleh, if killing demons wasn't so fun in that game that mechanic would have made people wanna shoot themselves.
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.
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.
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.
I think it's actually worse than a discarding of good ideas - I don't think there have actually been any new ideas since the early 2000s. I mean really think about it - are there any gameplay concepts, any genres, anything at all... that is not merely a mix of older ideas? Consider that we had in rapid succession Doom, Quake, Unreal, Half-Life, Thief, Deus Ex, Unreal Tournament and Quake 3... and deviating from first person games, we had the C&C clones evolving into things like Battlezone and Homeworld and Sacrifice. We had driving games like Carmageddon, demonstrating that "open world" driving games were possible. And when it comes to open world games in general, we had GTA, we had Daggerfall and Morrowind. On the survival horror and dungeon crawling front, we had Ultima Underworld leading to System Shock, and System Shock 2, and of course on console we had the emergence of Resident Evil and Silent Hill. On the RPG front we had Diablo, and Diablo 2, and the more story-driven games like Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment. With multiplayer, we had World and Warcraft and Eve Online - all of these titles before 2005. So really... have there been ANY new ideas since then? Any truly new ideas? All the best indie titles at the moment, being risky and creative and doing something different to the mainstream... are mostly drawing upon older ideas. Now, I'm not actually saying that the lack of new ideas is bad thing really - I think actually, the late 90s and early 2000s was when gaming technology evolved enough that all the core ideas were formed - just like there are no truly new genres in literature at this point, I think what we saw in gaming was an establishing of the medium after years of massive technological obstacles and uncertainty. But the fact that there are no new ideas does rather mean that discarding the old ideas is particularly foolish - because there is literally nothing to be gained by doing so.
- Mirrors Edge - MOBA - Braid - Portal - MineCraft - Factorio - Terraria - Overwatch - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Subnautica ... and list goes on and on thing is - new gameplay concept require a lot of time and money - and "video games" become business So it very risky and cost a lot to make something "new" - and even after all you still will lose money This is why modern game development just use same practice as in movie making or any other big industry This is why you see gameplay experiments only in small indie games
@@ScorpyX I'm assuming that list was aimed at me. Mirror's Edge isn't a new idea - it takes most of its gameplay concepts from the likes of Thief (in which movement was the primary gameplay component, as was avoiding enemy contact - you could complete levels without using any weapons most of the time). Its general game premise is taken from speedrunning. MOBAs? That's just an industry-standardisation of something everyone used to do in old RTS games with their friends (coop games against AI in things like Starcraft). In fact, the entire genre as we know it started as a mod for Warcraft 3 (early 2000s, like I said). Braid? Uh... I saw nothing particulary innovative about Braid, to be blunt. It relies entirely upon old concepts, subverting some of them (but in order to subvert something, that thing has to exist first - you're not actually creating something new). Portal - while one could claim that making portals the primary gameplay mechanic was a "new" idea, the actual portals themselves are a very old idea - dating back to... at least the Build engine (the very first Shadow Warrior, for example, used seamless portals, and certainly later Unreal featured "warp zones" that did the same thing, allowing for infinite falls or seamless invisible transitions from one part of the map to another). And of course, immediately before Portal we had Prey, and Prey had been in development for many, many years. In fact, Portal being released when it was (2007?) demonstrates that my point still stands - its concepts were conceived in the early 2000s. Minecraft, you could just about claim is a new idea, at a stretch. Although really it's an old idea that became possible due to hardware evolution - people had been trying to do similar things throughout gaming history, limited by technology (for example, the terrain deformation/voxel system in Red Faction). The survival element of course is nothing new. Terraria, same deal. More so - because it was jumping on the world-building bandwagon. Factorio is essentially an evolution of old RTS ideas, coupled with the underlying mechanisms and logic of the likes of Sim City and themepark management games. Overwatch? Are you... joking? There is absolutely nothing original there. It owes its entire existence to TF2, which in turn is an evolution of the original TF, which was in turn inspired by older mods for the likes of Quake... Breath of the Wild? What does Breath of the Wild do that is actually a new idea? It's a very slick conglomeration of very old ideas. Subnautica... again, there's nothing much here that's a new idea, just a variant cocktail of ideas conceived in the 90s and early 2000s. That's the point. I don't think it actually matters that there are no new ideas - I think we reached a point where the set of genres and gameplay concepts was complete. That's fine. Technology evolved enough that we had a complete set of genres and tools to work with. The problem isn't the lack of new stuff... it's the fact that developers keep abandoning the old stuff, even when it works, or they break it in an attempt to make it more "commercial".
There are only so many elements on the periodic table, bro. You can't claim that there are no new ideas because people keep using hydrogen and carbon. Minecraft may just be a game about survival mixed with crafting, but that simple distillation was revolutionary, and Portal was more than just the warp mechanics as it blended them with narrative and psychological elements to create a game that relied on your perception changing moreso than just the simplistic elements of the actual warping devices. Evolution from old ideas is how art woeks. You take a limited tool box (sound, sight, perspective, control interface, narrative) and combine them in increasingly complex ways. Sure a human "is just an evolution on the ape" but that evolution is more than a mere copy. Obviously the dawn of gaming was going to be mechanically more diverse because they hadn't finished establishing the basics yet. They still had elements on the table undiscovered.
@@AuspexAO "that simple distillation was revolutionary" It was successful. Not really revolutionary - it didn't change how we played games in general... it just sparked a trend - and not a particularly healthy one. The only influence Minecraft had on gaming as a whole, is that games started inserting crafting systems that didn't need to be there (further facilitating the spread of microtransactions as a means of purchasing convenience in the face of such tedium). "Portal was more than just the warp mechanics as it blended them with narrative and psychological elements to create a game that relied on your perception changing moreso than just the simplistic elements of the actual warping devices" In what way did the portal gun "blend" with the narrative and psychological elements? The story would have played out exactly the same without it; if you replaced it with teleportation, or jump boots, even in terms of the narrative symbolism (of being free to defy physics, but trapped inside the test facility). Also, as I already said - my point stands: Portal represents the end of the early 2000s period. It was released in 2007, meaning it was conceived at least a year or two earlier. In fact, it was conceived much earlier - before Portal, there was Narbacular Drop. Portal is literally a refined, polished, mainstream version of a 2005 indie concept. And yet again, missing the point entirely. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing that there are no new ideas. I'm saying it's a bad thing that the fundamental building blocks of computer games - all the fundamental gameplay concepts and design philosophies that led to the creation of the greatest games in history - are being forgotten. FPS games went from mastering level design flow, weapon and enemy balance... to relying on workarounds, scripting and spectacle. RPGs went went from being all about character building and dialogue, to workarounds, scripting and spectacle. This is the pattern. There used to be a level of basic competence and precision to game development; true evolution, each iteration starting with the previous one, and adding to it. The classic became classics because they were highly competent. By comparison, the big budget titles of the modern world... are incredibly *incompetent*. They fail to master the fundamental building blocks that they're using, and in many cases, act as if those building blocks aren't needed.
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.
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.
"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.
Doom 2016 made a good call in not trying to be OG Doom, though. Original Doom and Doom 2 were a great games in their time, but it's not that time anymore. Technology and the game development craft are so much more advanced now that it would be a shame to waste them clinging to the relative simplicity of OG Doom when there's a lot more to be had.
@@wasd____ I agree they made the right call by not trying to recreate OG doom, but there were some things I was sad to see go. This channel has a great review of Doom 2016 where he points some of it out. The arena fights are very samey, and the level design rarely triggers different gameplay. Personally I was very sad to see the "zelda-dungeon" style open world maps basically vanish completely. Even 2016's most open maps still feel more linear than what I really enjoy from a good Doom map. I don't think all of those things are mutually exclusive with 2016's design, and I'm hoping Eternal will marry new doom with some of these old elements that go left behind. Even if Eternal ends up being more of 2016, it'll still be great because 2016 is an AMAZING game.
I don't quite agree, a LOT of Doom 2016 especially on higher difficulties revolves around you carefully planning how you approach a combat situation by prioritizing targets, strategizing your ammo usage and which weapons you use on which characters, and making sure to leave some enemies alive to get your health back up if things go south. There is TONS of thinking to do in Doom 2016 if you wanna survive on Ultraviolence or up
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
Dropy9 imo it’s Destiny’s enemies that give it an old-school feel. Most of them have unique silhouettes, sounds, and attack and movement patterns. You learn how to deal with each, and then enemy encounters are dealt with based on how you prioritize them in the moment. There’s also not a lot of hitscan weapons on enemies, so you can actually dodge enemy fire. Compare to something like The Division where enemies are all just “human with a hitscan weapon”. The only really interesting exception being the shotgun guys that rush you.
Honestly, I wouldn´t be able to sink nearly as many hours into Division as I have into Destiny, just for the dreariness of moment-to-moment gameplay. Plus, on the fun factor side, I´ll take exploding time-traveling robots and inter-dimensional manifestations of twisted worm-god logic over shooting guys in hoodies and garbagemen any day of the week
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
I've watched Civvie 11's "BENEATH DUSK" series: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KiuC1DcgIMo.html It goes quite a bit more in-depth into the game than you did, showing the little "oh, neato!" things you didn't show.
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.
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.
Yeah aside from the Ratchet & Clank series I'm actually pretty hard-pressed to think of ANY shooting franchise in the last 10 years that really went out of its way to offer strange, unusual, quirky, offbeat, or nonsensical weaponry.
@@chavesa5 not arguing your point, but deadspace might qualify, since all the weapons in that were in theory engineering tools. xept for the pulse rifle.
@@levianjenkins9447 No. No it doesn't. I'm talking about weird weapons like voodoo dolls, shrink-rays, dancing guns, cerebral bore, etc.-- the kinds of weapons that are exaggerated, ridiculous, and half of the enjoyment of using them is the balance of enjoying the cartoon chaos while still performing the game with reasonable skill. Weapons that are "lore-appropriate" as er, appropriated weapons..but functionally service the same standard arsenal slots as any other FPS (melee, light arms, automatic gun, shotgun, sniper, explosive) is NOT what I am talking about. Besides Dead Space is one of the hackiest franchises in a genre that was already derivative as all hell. "Isaac Clarke." Christ that name STILL gives me a headache. I'm going to create a game starring an artist and name him Rembrandt Van Gogh as an "easter egg." Give me a break.
gamers are in a losing battle here, mediocrity is encroaching because money, and all of the grand things beyond the comprehension of the hollow souls are being toned down, dusk reminded me why gaming was so special to the weirdos and the outcasts of society, but the richer the companies get the less they relate/ care for where they come from, but we will remind them.
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."
I actually was frustrated by his gameplay since I didn't think he was playing very fast or effective for my liking. I don't want to know what your reaction is to my gameplay, lol.
It's a problem I've had with playing Mirror's Edge, the extent to which the game moves and shakes the camera independently of the player's input gives me similar issues. Heck, the cutscenes where the game completely controls your character and give no clue as to when you'll have control gave a sense of paralysis and being trapped inside your own self that seemed to completely clash with the game's themes. On the other hand, Dusk, Quake, Unreal, and even anything with planes or spacecraft, don't have that problem because the movement occurs when it I tell the game to make it happen, no matter how erratic that movement is. Sure, being thrown about by an explosion is still disorientating, but that should be disorientating, it's a fucking explosion!
@@Mekora - Yes, many games that have a lot of non-player-controlled camera movement (such as excessive "head-bobbing") cause that reaction. The worst offenders are games that don't even give the option to disable the unrealistic bobbing and/or shaking.
His gameplay is about a third of the speed of the game when played with strafe jumping. That isn’t really hyperbole. This game is STUPIDLY fast when using the strafe jump mechanic.
Honestly, the boring weapons is not nitpicking. Also they made it look worse then, lets say Quake 2, not to mention HL or Unreal. It looks closer to Blood 2, that, well, everyone hated, yet B2 had much, much more detail. These two alone stop me from playing this. Edit: Ok, your excellent points about level design MIGHT actually make me play it.
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.
Hard Reset doesn't have a whole lot of unlocking. You can see the entire gun / upgrade tree from the start, so you can plan out what you roughly want to get. I think the game made a poor choice in having the blue and yellow (or whatever the two main guns were colored) guns all have roughly the same variants (like, yellow might have a rocket laucnher, but blue would have an exploding plasma gun - technically different, but both major trees had area of effect, explosions, lobbing, line-of-sight, etc flavors of gun), but it's still a fairly good game.
I believe DOOM allowed you to replay levels and maintain your progression, so that wasn't an issue. Of course it's been almost three years since I played it, so I'm not certain.
The fact that a DOOM game even HAS an RPG mechanisms of any sort is highly problematic. Instead of having a focused, satisfying gameplay, this style of design is practically the same as devs throwing their hands up and saying "Welp, make your own experience! :^)". I'd also wonder why the hell would anyone WANT to play nuDOOM's maps, seeing how they're always the same, linear and heavily scripted roller coasters, with same lock-down rooms.
@@Welverin Yes, you could replay levels to maintain your progression. But if you didn't do it to farm out milestones ('oh hey this level has lots of instances where I can line up 3 kills in one gauss cannon shot') then why would you do it otherwise before completing the game? The thing with Doom 2016's upgrade system and the nuances of it is that 'yes, you could farm on prior levels' and 'yes, strictly speaking, it is optional' and 'yes, there are 17 more upgrade tokens than needed to get everything' but the reality is that A: I don't know these things going into the game, B: if it's optional, does it belong there at all, existing to poke you in that direction and C: I'm still being poked to ADJUST how I play. Rooms don't become the developer's combat chess, it becomes 'looking for instances that I can manipulate to farm out my milestone or mission task'.
Do yourself a favour and pick up Shadow Warrior. The upgrades in that game are all based on collectibles, they're very easy to find and only upgrade your secondary abilities such as heal speed etc. I personally didn't get past the second level of DOOM 2016 but played Shadow Warrior and all the way through, its a far better modern shooter in my view.
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
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 hate to say it but Doom 2016 is more modern than it is Classic Doom and I'd say it's closer to Halo than Quake both in multiplayer and campaign. Dusk is that step forward that Quake and Quake 2 needed for its campaign. The problem was these games didn't have the best single player and the multiplayer instead became more popular and ever since then I don't think many gamers have looked back on 90s FPS like this. You mention 90s FPS and most people will think of two things, the 2D shooters of Doom or Duke Nukem or the fast paced gameplay of arena shooters like Quake and Doom. When you hear of a new Quake clone you know it's going to be multiplayer focused and it's going to have Aerowalk. And Dusk reminded me that there is a lot of potential with Quake's mechanics as a single player game through well crafted level design. And it's sad Destiny is your closest modern AAA analogue. I do want to see a AAA studio try a single player only game like this but I don't think it will happen. I think the need to be multiplatform has limited a lot of design possibilities. I think if Destiny was PC only, it wouldn't be so much stop and iron sights and shoot at weak spots. In fact I don't think it would have iron sights at all.
the mortar in dusk could be completely fixed if they let you detonate it as soon as you wanted to rather than having the delay that ends up making it USELESS
The duel shotguns are actually a reference to Marathon 2: Durandal by Bungie in 1995, not Doom. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Rpk8I1IewyM.html This is because you duel wield them and you twirl them to reload like in Terminator 2, the difference being that Marathon uses duel super shotguns instead of pump action. It is still a Doom reference as well however as you have both the duel normal shotguns and a non duel wieldable super shotgun, so it references both games.
Destiny is NOT anywhere close to the old 90's shooter games. Also you dident even strafe jump so your credibility of talking about this game is invalid
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!
*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.
Greetings fellow gamers. I won't be playing Dusk because of the blocky pixel look, I want Alyx quality games please. Why, apart from memories, would you want to play something with shite graphics? We did that in the early days, time to move on, it's what all our spent money goes to pay back, all the R&D. One of the most impressive titles rarely mentioned apart from: Half-Life, Call Of Duty, Doom 2, Assassins Creed, Bioshock, Hard Reset, Dishonored, Skyrim, Rage, Fallout 3, Serious Sam, Borderlands 2 has to be the Painkiller series with the most inventive and largest enemies ever seen. The scariest game has to be Outlast and the hardest level bosses award goes to Borderlands 2 where you can only beat them with help from one or two friends, it's also one of the few games I know where you have to co-operate with strangers to advance to higher levels and that's a good buzz.. I guess the Fortnite fans cannot imagine anybody over 20 playing their baby and they are right, what's the point in playing a game where you can cheat your way to victory, like auto-aim, riding the drop balloon, seeing through walls, invisibility etc. Surely a win by cheating is a hollow & empty one, I also learned that malware comes included with some cheats and that is poetical justice, if you cheat. I'm playing for pleasure and for fun, I love the total immersion into another world and for me the ultimate was the world of Zen. Now I wait and bide my time to buy Valve's VR Alyx but the main question is which head-set do you buy? I am also of the generation that will be first in demanding computer games in the pension home, hopefully they'll have VR. All the best.
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
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.
i like shooters like postal 2 dusk doom1 doom 2 shadow warrior 2 (remaster but to be honest never finished it) and project warlock but i never liked games like blood and shadow warior 1 (redux) F.E.A.R IDK im fan of fps games but i just dont know what fps i would like couse in my opinion most of them are trash but some of them are gold. so yea by that i mean im saying dusk is good play it.
Fuck sake... Top tip for 'game journos': please turn down your mouse sensitivity when playing shooters. Not only will this help tremendously with your aim, it will also make your coverage of said shooters actually watchable. The jitter is painful.
Somehow duke3d/blood while representational weren't boring. And even if they were that, they could still add interesting secrets and non linear paths. Today's representational seem more boring for some reason I can't put my finger.
Duke and Blood were right in the middle, being semi-representational while still being semi-abstract and most of all being game levels first and foremost; and I think Errant Signal gives them far less credit.
