Dusk 12 Reviews

The ultimate mid-2000s eurojank experience. Fun if you are into stuff like that.

The premise is somewhat interesting and the game's atmosphere definitely oozes low-budget janky charm, which is why it got me interested in the first place. BUT In gameplay, this is just an incredibly incompetent slog to go through. Enemies are bulletsponges that usually spawn in big groups. You have to dump half a magazine into 1 basic bad guy unless you go for the head. Even the auto shotgun requires about 3 point-blank shots in the chest for 1 simple dude to go down. And bad dudes are the least of your problems. From time to time, you will get attacked by group of raging monkeys, who are just as bulletspongy as everyone else, but much quicker and smaller. So you walk in reverse circles across the room, dumping mag after mag, putting down one crazy monkey at a time until you can go to the next room and... repeat the process :( One time you will ride in the back of the truck, which should be a nice change of pace - but it is just as bad as everything else. The truck's own collision box is slightly bigger than the truck model itself and will block your own bullets. And enemies are just as tough as ever, but now you have much less time to deal with them, as your truck is constantly pushing forward. So you will just pass by half of them hoping that your health bar will last longer than the sewer we are driving through... Yeah, the truck level is also a sewer level - such an innovation ;p Then, for a short time you land behind the wheel... to experience the most rudimentary, stiff and basic truck driving you can imagine - and your steering wheel doesn't even turn when you turn - why even bother with putting this whole thing into the game? It's clearly broken and doesn't add anything... maybe they wanted an excuse to brag about 'drivable cars' in the marketing material? That's just my wild guess ;p And when you control the mutant, it gets even worse. You have few special attacks, but your fists are the main weapon against all basic enemies. Mutant combat becomes very annoying very fast, because your range is extremely restricted, your punches have a significant delay, you have to be pixel-precise and put your crosshair exactly on the thing you want to punch, and usually 1 punch is not enough. On top of that, your walking speed is a joke, so in many cases you will absorb 3–4 bursts of unavoidable damage, before you even reach the enemies. And to be fair, one of your special powers is 'super speed', which switches your mutant from his usual snail's pace to the solid fit grandpa pace, but it costs so much special energy that you can't afford anything 'special' afterward. And when the raging monkeys attack you, the game turns into a ridiculously chaotic whack-a-mole challenge. What makes it even more frustrating - the small, fast monkeys have longer meele reach than you. So you have to be the one cutting the distance, despite being physically bigger. Dealing with 5 raging monkeys at the same time becomes a real test of your mental resilience. Your slo-mo special power can help you a bit, but usually it's depleted after the second monkey goes down, and there's still 3 more to go... Whaaat a joooooke. Iroically, the garbage AI often works in your favour, bc half of the freshly re-spawned enemies will just get stuck on random trash which gives you a bit more time to react. Or sometimes - just walk past them. If not for that, some of the levels would be just endlessly frustrating. There's much more I could write about this game, but none of it would be positive. Maybe it's worth trying if you really love trash games, but let me tell ya - as a fellow trash game enjoyer, I was approaching this game with nothing but good intentions... But under the surface of charming slavjank aesthetic you will find only crappy, frustrating slog, unbalanced and broken in very fundamental way. Be warned.

**read the pcgamingwiki before playing this game it tells you how to get the latest version with widescreen support** you need to be incredibly smart to beat games this stupid at many parts during the game i had to drop everything i know just to think like a moron, so i could try and understand where these developers wanted me to go. Theres no quest markers or anything and i managed to get lost every 5 minutes, The flow of this game just might be the worst ive ever played it has some pretty locations and good graphics i suppose, the water looks nice but a game like this without quest markers is just a sin in the universe