Dusk is a retro shooter released last year by New Blood Interactive. It is heavily influenced by Quake and Blood, and it is designed to sit alongside those classic ninties shooters. Dusk has a pixelated look reminiscent of Quake in software mode; it looks pretty good, in my humble opinion, and it gave my antique PC no problems. The levels are intricate, packed with secrets, and often require you to go key hunting in order to progress. This design approach has been abandoned by modern games, but I seldom found myself lost, since the level design is pretty good. Sometimes it is hard to tell where you are because of the limitations of the graphics, but I enjoyed exploring a level without having an npc up my ass or obvious barriers bar my way. The shooting is pretty good and features a classic arsenal inspired by Quake. The Lovecraftian/backwoods cult theme is excellent, and Dusk really feels like an artifact of a prior era in the best of ways. All in all, I'd recommend it to any retro shooter fans looking for something to play.
After finishing Dusk, I thought I'd play a ninties shooter that I'd never played before, and since I love pulpy dinosaur adventures, I bought Turok, a classic for the N64 recently remastered by Nightdive studios for the PC. The original Turok was infamous for its heavy fog that obscured vision past ten feet (the N64 couldn't handled the game, basically), and Nightdive have cleaned up the graphics and implemented support for modern resolutions, mouse and keyboard control, and Steam achievements. Honestly, I have no idea how anyone played this game at 320 by 240 resolution with heavy fog using an N64 controller. I'd really love to know if anyone finished it, because at normal difficulty, Turok gets pretty hard on the later levels. The best thing the game has going for it is the setting and its enemy design. You fight cybernetic dinosaurs (raptors, Triceratops, and a T. Rex), lizard people, aliens, and mercenaries. The end boss is a alien terminator dressed like Conan the Barbarian. It's pretty awesome. What's not awesome about Turok is the ridiculous amount of platforming involved. Having been designed as a console game on Mario's home system, the original developers probably thought they had to implement some jumping puzzles, just in case anyone thought they were playing a pure first person shooter. Lots of ninties shooters had the occasional platforming bit; Half-Life's Xen levels come to mind, but I've never played a shooter that had as much jumping in it as Turok. Most of the jumps aren't hard, but Turok has random save points, so if you fail a jump, you might have to repeat a whole section. The levels are vast, which is cool, but using the automap feature is a requirement if you don't want to get lost. Enemies respawn constantly, often seconds after you've killed them, which makes harder difficulties really unfair, because you'll run out of ammo quickly. The arsenal is pretty great, featuring shotguns, an assault rifle, a minigun, quad rocket launcher, and some alien weapons. The shooting is fine; getting lost looking for keys, not so much. You can easily miss a key and have to repeat an entire level.
Turok is a hard game to review. I almost loved it, due to the unique setting and excellent enemy design. I also have more patience for combing through levels to look for keys than most people. If you've played Doom and its ilk, then you'll probably enjoy much of Turok. If you've been raised on modern shooters, then you probably should skip it.
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