I played this to completion a few years ago after the release of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. The combat, while not entirely fulfilling was satfisfying enough to get through the game, eventually however, I hit a brick wall where my build was foul, and I was unable to push the necessary damage to finish out the rest of the game without beating my face against the wall and praying for RNG to be my guide. Coming back to this recently, it feels significantly better, the gunplay is more satisfying, the enemies on the higher difficulties are less bullet spongy han before and the ability to execute more diverse builds has made this game overall signifcantly more enjoyable. I'm on my third playthrough overall, and I'm excited to play through the DLC for the first time.
I had played dusk about a year ago and I was looking for something else to scratch that boomer/movement shooter itch. This is made by the same developer, so I bought it sight unseen without doing much research. Dusk, in its inspiration and its setting is far more akin to Quake 1 than any other boomer shooters. This on the other hand, is closer to a mix of Unreal Gold/Hexen than any of the other boomer shooters to take inspiration from. While I enjoy this, combat is far less central to the experience in comparision to Dusk. The focus here is the navigation of the well designed, but large and mazelike levels. For what it's worth, I think I would have appreciated a vector map ala Brutal Doom. To my knowledge, there isn't a map, but I haven't found any of the first 5 worlds that have resulted in being lost for an extended period. The prevalence of instant death pits in some of the later levels necessitate quick saving and loading more than I would like, but I'm still solidly enjoying this. On the second to highest difficulty, it hasn't been too challenging, nor have the enemies become bullet sponges. This is a vastly better experince then I had in Boltgun which in my opinion, was not designed to be played on the highest difficulty. I'm excited for Overkill, but disappointed that I haven't found something that isn't a continuation of Dusk.
