From Dusk Till Dawn Review

As for their timing, the entire game is scripted, and each monster will appear at a certain moment in a certain location. This has been perfectly devised, and it will scare the shit out of you; monsters will appear behind you exactly when you do not expect them... there were really a couple of terrifying situations. You can really tell that the game had been done by someone who really knows how to frighten an average player. In this case it was Mr. Hubert Chardot, the creator of the Alone in The Dark serial. The only way to successfully cope with the vampires is to use their short sight, and shoot them from afar before they even spot you. And keep in mind that most of them are able to hang from the ceiling in the hallways, so keep a keen eye and a ready shotgun.

The vampires aren't the only creatures that you'll get to meet in this game; you will occasionally run into workers, soldiers, priests and other human character who are trying to achieve the same goal as you... wait for the dawn. The scenes where you have to accomplish something with them can really be interesting, and somehow give you a chance to get rid of the claustrophobic feeling that you are alone in a huge prison full of vampires. If any of those helping characters dies, it will be the end of the road for you too, but it is somehow easier to know that you have someone beside you who doesn't burn if sprinkled with holy water.

You start the game armed only with a tazer, but you will soon find your first handgun, shotgun, uzi, crossbow, flamethrower, disk and grenade launcher, AMG and Riot Gun. This is a very interesting assortment of weapons, but I have to say I wasn't too pleased with the way it had been implemented, including the fact that all weapons have a laser pointer. You would normally expect the tazer to be a weak and inefficient weapon, the handgun to be relatively useless, and every consecutive weapon to keep getting better and better. That is not the case here. Uzi, crossbow and flamethrower proved to be complete disappointments, and tazer proved to be a fine weapon which requires no ammo, and is able to halt more than one enemy at a time. This weapon will probably serve you better than any other. You will also be able to use a mounted machinegun to repel a horde of vampires...

The sound is mediocre. I wasn't thrilled with the music, in fact I never realized it was actually there, and the sounds are average quality at best. Seth will constantly try to improve the atmosphere by passing comments like "Well, the Adams family", "I'm gonna Fed-Ex you back to hell", "Die, you scum!", "You Aren't Man Enough, You Pack Of Idiots", "These guys don't look to cool!" and so on, but this thing has been over done, too. The one-liners are far less interesting than what Duke Nukem or Shadow Warrior had to say, so I saw no point in him repeating them every two to three seconds; not to mention how annoying this gets after a while.

As for the controls, From Dusk Till Dawn has both its upsides and downsides. The thing I had a lot of trouble with in a lot of games, controlling a character from a 3rd person view, was quite OK here. Still, there was something that prevented me from really getting into it, regardless of the view... First, I was somehow used to be able to jump in games like this; well, no jumping here. Not that I needed this feature, but the lack of it made me feel somehow limited. When you add the fact that walk bobbing was overdone (in the first person view), that it takes you a lot of time to switch weapons (and reloading is instantaneous) the overall impression is not that good.

There. One month after I got the CD, I finally finished this review. The great expectations I had when I heard about this game withered away. From Dusk Till Dawn is a game that will certainly leave no mark on the gaming scene.