10 Essential FPS Levels Every Fan Must Play

Cynics might see Dusk as yet another retro-shooter revival title looking to ride the coat-tails of DOOM, Quake and Duke Nukem 3D to greatness. But fans know better: Dusk is no pretender, and makes excellent use of modern technology to innovate in ways those titles never could.

The basics are all here: movement is fluid, the gunplay is satisfying, and Dusk’s unique horror-esque brand of enemies are an ideal blend of kill-them-in-style canon fodder and pants-wettingly terrifying nightmare-inducing murder machines.

But what sets it apart is the level of creativity put into its level design. The Escher labs, as the name suggests, is set in an ethically challenged lab with more than a hint of Half-Life in its DNA. That’s the only sane thing about it, because before you know it the level goes from spooky but familiar to mind-meltingly non-Euclidian, where the floor is the ceiling, the ceiling is the floor, and reality is twisted like a pretzel. It’s the kind of trippy, disorientating brain-masher of a level only Half-Life: Alyx executes anywhere near as well.

Time will tell if Dusk becomes one of the greats but with levels like the Escher Labs it definitely deserves to.