Frank Herbert's Dune

aka: Dune
Moby ID: 5456

Windows version

No life can grow in this game.

The Good
The game's graphic textures and the character models look convincing, and have a good style.

The Bad
The tutorial was not complete; it lacked the lesson how to control the camera (nothing is said about wich button should be used, only that you should use it).

The second 'level' or 'mission' looked incredibly spectacular; but was totally unplayable; the player cannot use logic to see what is the right path to cross the sandy plain to escape being squashed by a sandworm. He/she has to guess enough times to uncover the right moves bit by bit.

The characters in the cutscenes are animated without expression. While the protagonist and his mother are chased by a gigantic sandworm, he says to her; 'run' in a calm, 'reading the word' kind of way; not in the screaming-for-your-life kind of way i associated with the scene (wich only looked spectacular). The optional subtitles are not consistent with the speech. The introduction ended before the storyteller finished the sentence, also it played two sentences at the same time.

The keys used to control the game are not configurable. The player enters his or her name by using the arrow keys to choose the individual letters from the list (to enter my four-letter name i had to press the keys about thirty times) and this seems to come from the 'designed for console, also thrown to the pc-user' design of the game.

I was annoyed by this game's lack of game - there is no 'play' - only irritation.

The Bottom Line
A word of warning; i did not get past the second mission (trying four times) and the only other part of the game i saw was the 'tutorial'. My opinion of the game is based on this very limited experience with it. "Frank Herbert's DUNE" seemed very interesting, described by the cover as an action/adventure, yet the designed way of playing it is not right and it fails to amuse me.

by re_fold (291) on June 27, 2003

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