Get it for $5 and have some fun...sorta.

User Rating: 5.5 | DUSK-12 PC
By wkduffy | Review Date:
If you're playing a game like "Dusk-12," you know what you are in for. Anyone giving this game a low score went into this experience completely unaware of reality. If you just finished playing "Bioshock 2" and someone told you to look for more thrills by playing "Dusk-12," you got played and someone is laughing at your expense. But for the rest of us who are in touch with reality, "Dusk-12" is what it is--another super-average, yet perfectly serviceable sci-fi FPS from eastern Europe that about 15 people have heard of. As with all these kinds of titles (You Are Empty, Kreed, Exodus from the Earth, Scorpion Disfigured, shall I go on?), you get bad voice acting with even worse translation, graphics that hover somewhere between HL 1 and 2, atrocious music (turn it off in the menu right away), a slim but OK selection of firearms that vary from nuclear-powered to peashooter, silly "let's charge him!" AI, and the requisite collision errors around every linear corner.

On the plus side, "Dusk-12" runs like a charm on a low-end machine, there is some variation in locales and game-types (some very minor platforming, some unchallenging on-rails shooting), there is nothing overtly broken about it, there are moments of unintended hilarity (which always helps), and (as I have found with many of these titles) the story is actually somewhat interesting if you can manage to make it through the entire game before losing interest. In this case, it is not only the story that is fun, but the structure of the narrative is equally unique and satisfying (which is good, since little else is satisfying about it).

There are 2 main protagonists: An average-Joe soldier (voiced by a guy who sort of knows English), and a not-so-average supermutant (I mean, you can pick up cars and toss them hundreds of feet into the air to nail a stalking helicopter-what's not to love?). You play each character alternating back and forth from chapter to chapter. The way the story is structured, it *appears* as though the supermutant (escapee from a supersecret government lab, of course) is heading OUT OF the city (fighting through crazed townsfolk who have been infected with some government-sanctioned test virus), while the soldier is heading INTO the city towards the supermutant to subdue him. Wanting to see what happens when the two cross paths actually creates a lot of motivation to continue. Smart structure, I think.

(SPOILER BEGINS)
But that is not the case at all. Actually, the two different perspectives are not happening simultaneously. While the supermutant sections happen in present time, all of the chapters where you play the soldier have actually already happened in the past (but nothing in the gameplay alerts you to this fact). Maybe I'm naïve about these things, but as it eventually turns out, when the soldier reaches his destination (the government lab), he is subjected to tests, his brain removed and put into the supermutant body. So, surprise, you actually ARE the supermutant. Once, as the mutant, you come to this understanding, then your sole mission is to whoop up on the individuals responsible.
(SPOILER ENDS)

Again what you get here is an unremarkable game with a really neat idea that, maybe with better tech or better developers, could have been something special-or at least unique. But as it stands, if you get "Dusk-12" as a download for $4.95 from someplace like Gamersgate or Steam like me, it's still worth the pennies and the 8 or so hours of play. What the hell does "Dusk-12" mean anyway? More translation problems, apparently.

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