It's interesting to look at if you're the kind of person who wants to see what possible directions a FPS can take in terms of gameplay, even if they're slight. It'd be inappropriate to call it a straight-up Doom/Quake clone given how the enemy design overall is much more projectile-based. The closest ancestor to DUSK gameplay-wise would be Marathon if anything, though there's no enemy-unique weapon resistances or reloading and that kind of thing. There is no hitscan or pseudo-hitscan like in Ion Maiden either. Simple AI is compensated for with enemy placement and numbers as expected, and when all of them are of the projectile-throwing kind you can end up in some proto-bullet hell situations, as the projectile speed can be quite high.
You can actually complete each level on the highest difficulty without taking a single hit and when starting with the default loadout, which I don't think most other first-person shooters are even balanced around, or even offer as NIGHTMARE+-ish challenge mode like DUSK does, called DUSKMARE. I think the game is the most fun on that difficulty with Intruder Mode enabled, since I feel the game is a bit too forgiving on more normal difficulties and somewhat overly plentiful health pickups. You also get a sliding move which lets you slide under enemy projectiles, which I think is the coolest fucking shit when you pull it off.
Level design in Episode 1 is mostly ok, in terms of encounter design and architecture. It's just too easy, even on DUSKMARE, and most of the levels do not have something really unique that makes them stand out. The levels themselves are quite varied in terms of situation, the free space you're given to move around in, and the general concept of the levels themselves, though if you aren't a shitter you might feel that things blend too much because nothing really pushes you outside your comfort zone in this episode save for a few exceptions.
Episode 2 is where things off the rails proper and things start to get a lot more creative. The levels start to become a lot more outlandish and some new enemy types are introduced to fill some of the missing niches in the enemy roster which E1 suffered from, and the difficulty is tuned up by a good notch. Some new power-ups like climbing gear and a syringe which turns the game into SuperHot are introduced, which work neatly as they're used sparingly rather than having entire levels be centered around them, which would be plagiarism.
The boss fights are mostly drek, as is to be expected from any first-person shooter. The second episode final boss has something interesting going on as it's essentially Bomberman, where you're in a maze of very narrow corridors and have to flip some switches to progress, but the boss can teleport around to chase you and spam dozens of grenades down a corridor. Unfortunately it goes down rather easily.
The graphics look like shit but the weapons themselves do feel great to use. The super shotty can turn enemy to a cloud of blood FEAR-style, which is especially cool when you slide through their bloated corpse at the same time. It does manage to be proper atmospheric at times, as in E2M4 where you crawl through the guts of some infernal machine processing the blood and innards of even the enemies you're fighting, as you constantly hear the mashing of machines around you and one of the best songs in the soundtrack plays. I like that it's actually honest with itself and not trying to be constantly self-aware and referential all the time as some other games do to make up for being shitty on purpose.
I do like it more than Ion Maiden. Ion Maiden just has nothing interesting going on in terms of combat, though it does eke out in terms of exploration there being more fun to hunt secrets in because they are placed in very tricky places (though they do end up upsetting the resource balance because of how many secret armors you end up finding in all these secrets). But then DUSK has seen the release of 2 out of 3 episodes consisting of 10 levels and Ion Maiden only 1 out of 7(?) 'zones' consisting of around 4/5 levels of various sizes, so I can't really judge Ion Maiden accurately in comparison yet.
DUSK's multiplayer component is also quite fun, reminds me of HLDM in terms of its map design, speed and chaoticness, though I don't think it's any different from any multiplayer mode released for any first-persons shooter released in the past.
The singleplayer campaign and overall design is done by one guy who I know nothing about, and the multiplayer portion is done by a bunch of antifa furfags. Take that as you will.
Attached: DUSK E2M5.webm (768x432, 15.93M)