He's beautiful. A real destruction machine...
DUSK-12 (Dusk-12: Deadly Zone) is a First-Person Shooter developed by Orion Games and published by Buka Entertainment for computers.
2028 - Chernozersk, Russia, has been wiped off the map. In a covert government-owned bio-lab hidden underneath the city, the "Dusk-12" project, researching a newly-discovered mutagenic viral strain with the same name to create the perfect super-soldiers virus went haywire, leaking into the streets and mutating everyone in the same area into feral, mindless monsters and Chernozersk being quarantined as a result.
Years later, a Russian special ops team led by Russian Special Forces member Lieutenant Andrey Yegorov is sent to Chernozersk to recover samples of the Dusk-12 virus, amidst dealing with terrorists and local gangsters who took over the now-abandoned city. While in the ruins of Chernozersk, a remaining subject of the Dusk-12 experiments named Gorin regains consciousness.
Bland, generic backstory aside, it's worth noting players can assume the role of two different characters simultaneously; the escaped Super-Soldier, Gorin, who kicks ass exclusively with his bare hands and has powerful, telekinetic abilities as well as accelerated reflexes thanks to the experiments performed on himself, and Lieutenant Andrey, who follows the usual FPS template of shooting things left and right, with 12 levels alternating between Gorin and Andrey randomly.
Unrelated to DUSK.
DUSK-12 contains examples of:
- Abandoned Hospital: One of the stages is the local Chernozersk Hospital, now empty thanks to the outbreak. Andrey is the player's character at the time, and gets to shoot every mutant infesting the building.
- Amnesiac Hero: Gorin wakes up in a lab from cryo-sleep with no memory of who he is. He spends the whole game piecing together his memories while ripping enemies apart with his newly-discovered superpowers.
- Bio-Armor: Gorin has a layer of thick, organic armor with spikes growing all over his body as a result of the mutation.
- Bullet Time: Gorin's Slow-Mo Mode.
- Car Fu: Andrey has a few missions where he's on a truck and shooting enemies as it crashes through Chernozersk's empty streets. Mooks tend to get squashed into a pulp under the wheels constantly.
- Conspicuously Light Patch: Stages where the player controls Gorin has walls with different colour textures. Destructible walls are in a lighter shade and can be broken in a few hits, so Gorin can proceed to the area behind. Normal textured walls on the other hand can't be interacted with - Gorin can spend a day punching to no avail.
- Container Maze: The factory exterior have players (controlling Andrey at the time) navigating their way through the loading area, filled with containers serving as walls. It's expectedly filled with mindless mutants.
- Deliberately Monochrome: As Gorin, whenever his power level is insufficient the game defaults to X-Eye mode, where everything is in greyscale. It turns back to normal after a few minutes.
- Doesn't Like Guns: Subverted; you'd expect Gorin to have an aversion towards guns since almost every level where he's playable he can't collect firearms from slain human mooks, but in the final stage he hoists a Minigun.
- Escaped from the Lab: Gorin, the Super-Soldier in the opening scene after regaining consciousness in the government laboratory where the Dusk-12 viral strain is being investigated.
- Fictional Province: Set entirely in the non-existant Russian city of Chernozersk. It appears to be based on Chernogorsk, who does exist, however.
- Fight Clubbing: As Andrey the prison stage sees him getting cornered by local thugs who took over the place, where he's relieved of his weapon and must face The Kingpin, a burly Giant Mook in a fistfight. If he wins, The Cavalry arrives and bails him out.
- Gatling Good: Gorin grabs a Mini-gun and uses it to mow down enemies in the final stage, which seems odd considering he appears to prefer using his bare hands for most of the game.
- Life Drain: When Gorin performs the Psychic Strangle on enemies, he restores his own health as well. This is notably the main method to restore Gorin's Life Meter, while Andrey on the other hand uses conventional health packs and medi-kits like every other FPS.
- Mutant: Besides terrorists and local gangsters who took over Chernozersk, mutants spawned from the Dusk-12 virus are another recurring enemy type. They're hunchbacked, spindly creatures who moves and leaps like monkeys, makes hissing noises and attacks Gorin and Andrey by clawing.
- Never Bring a Gun to a Knife Fight: At least, when Gorin is in play. Against mooks armed with weapons, he's a near-indestructible super-soldier who can crumple flesh and bones like paper, and his super-fast reflexes (by triggering Slo-Mo Mode) allows him to move in Bullet Time. He'll easily wipe out platoons of gun-wielding enemies without any weapons of his own.
- One-Hit Kill: Gorin can kill most mook-level enemies with a single punch thanks to his genetic enhancements.
- Psychic Strangle: Gorin has a ranged attack where he targets enemies close enough to his vincinity and use his telekinetic abilities to choke them. Affected mooks will glow with a red aura while holding their necks as Gorin wrings their trachea dry; however he can target only one enemy at a time and other mooks can shoot at him while he's performing an execution.
- Rapid-Fire "No!": In the opening cutscene, this is how Gorin responds when he finds out he's been turned into a mutated abomination."Why? No, no, no, no, no!"
- Soviet Superscience: The Dusk-12 project, developed by Russian scientists in a secret lair underneath Chernozersk, meant for creating the perfect Super-Soldier. Unfortunately it Went Horribly Wrong...
- Super-Speed: Gorin can move with extreme speed thanks to the virus enhancing his reflexes, which he can activate allowing him to see everything in Bullet Time for a few seconds. Against gun-wielding human enemies firing at him, he can even Dodge the Bullet with ease.
- Switching P.O.V.: Levels tends to shift from Gorin to Andrey at random, without the two interacting for majority of the game until the final stage.
- Synthetic Plague: The Dusk-12 mutagenic virus, initially researched in a lab before it leaks and mutates an entire city.
- Throw a Barrel at It: As Gorin doesn't use firearms, he uses this method to take out enemies from a distance, including helicopters. Luckily, the docks, factory, and ruins of Chernozersk has barrels everywhere.
- To Serve Man: Gorin encounters the mutant enemies for the first time in the factory stage, where three mutants are messily feasting on a dead human. So that's what happened to the rest of Chernozersk's non-mutated human population...
- Two Lines, No Waiting: The game tells both the stories of Gorin, an escaped test subject of the "Dusk-12" project, and the soldier Lieutenant Andrey investigating the reason behind all this mess.
- Was Once a Man: All the mindless mutants and zombie-like humans infesting Chernozersk as result of the Dusk-12 viral leak, and one of the two player characters, Gorin, who's more mutant than human.
