Dusk Xbox Review

DUSK (XBOX)

Developed By: New Blood Interactive

Published By: New Blood Interactive

Date of Release: 10/31/2025

Price: $19.99

So as you can already surmise by the name of this site, I absolutely LOVE the original Quake game from id software. The mixture of fast shooting, awesome level design and lovecraftian elements complete with an utterly atmospheric soundtrack by Trent Reznor has always kept me coming back for more. In 2018 New Blood Interactive decided to blow the world away with DUSK, an absolutely raunchy love letter to fans of all things Quake. With retro styled graphics, awesomely sprawling level design, badass enemies, bigass guns, and even badder enemies, plus a banger of a soundtrack by Andrew Hulshult, DUSK is a perfect example of what can go right with a retro FPS throwback.

And now that glorious experience has been ported to the Xbox. Normally it seems that ports make sacrifices to shoehorn an experience into another platform it was never designed for. Not DUSK though, it totally feels like it has transcended it's original medium. The Xbox version is most certainly an evolution, a tour de force, a magnum opus. Beating out my previous favorite version on the Nintendo Switch, it eschews the gyro controls in favor of raw performance. Running in 4k at 120 frames per second, it almost feels too hypersmooth to be real. It's a real frigging masterpiece, right down to the new Dusk Gulch map.

People usually will complain until they're blue in the face that games using the Unity engine are slow and janky, but DUSK is absolute proof that the engine can be used to craft incredibly fluid experiences. It absolutely plays as smooth as any other boomer shooter like Doom or Quake, and would completely feel at home on the PC in the 90s. The PC version was already frigging awesome, but the Xbox port running at 120fps goes just the extra mile and makes it in my opinion the definitive DUSK console experience.

11 Big John's out of 10!