Dune 2000

I must start off by saying I'm a fan of Frank Herbert's Duniverse novels and as such my perception of the game is largely coloured by how well it adapts its source of inspiration. 

Dune 2000 is the remake of Dune 2, popularly accredited as the original Real-Time Strategy game. The number two in the title came about because of a Dune adventure game that had come out shortly before but the two games are unrelated apart from sharing source material. Whereas, however, Dune mimicked the plot of the original novel almost entirely, Dune 2 (and in turn Dune 2000) takes many creative liberties. The key components of Dune are still there: there is the desert planet, the spice, the giant sandworms, the Atreides, the Fremen and the Harkonnen. But to spice things up, Westwood Studios added the Ordos - an alliance of several great houses - and created their own flexible plot. 

The plot is flexible in a sense that it assumes only one perspective is true - the side you decided to go with for the campaign. Personally, I much prefer the Blizzard way of doing things: having a single epic plot spanning campaigns of all available races; although that was executed poorly in Starcraft 2, I thought. Either way, certain things are constant and for the most part the only difference in the plot based on the Great House you side with is who wins and how. 

The plot is told through live action cut scenes with a lot of the actors resembling those from the cult classic movie Dune. For all I know, they're actually the same actors but I despised the movie and decided to intentionally keep myself in the dark about the casting choices here. I feel the game does a better job of adapting its source material than the movie if only by not pissing all over it. 

One of the highlights of the game is the art. The game sports a stylish 2D design that still looks good even in its original form. Units and buildings are crafted beautifully with what little resources the artists had and each has its own character and quirk but also looks functional and just RIGHT. There is nothing in anyone's arsenal that stands out as absurd or stupid or out of place - every unit and building belongs on the desert planet and has its clear purpose. 

My personal favourite, though, is the environment design. The sand looks dry and deep, the rocky expanses look solid and elevated, the spice is clear and the little touches are breathtaking. Every so often you might spot a dead Sandworm or an old crashed Carryall; some levels sport sunken buildings just beneath the sand. A thing of note is how these indicators of on going combat and spice-mining occur more as the game goes on giving a real sense of time passing. 

I'm no RTS expert, I tend to play these games mostly for their plots and to scratch that economic and strategic itch but from my noobish perspective Dune 2000 is mechanically interesting and solid. Ultimately, most missions came down to me building huge armies of tanks and overrunning the enemy with them but reaching that stage was, more often than not, nail-bitingly exciting. The game is based on resource gathering and distribution. The three resources the player has to manage are power, manpower and Spice. Spice is mined by harvesters and converted into money which lets you purchase units (the manpower) and buildings. Buildings, in turn, require the power generated by windtraps to function properly although the exact amounts are never specified. When low on power, your radar shuts down and all construction slows, units and buildings both. 

Base building is made even more complex thanks to the concrete mechanic. When building your base you have the choice of laying concrete foundations to support your buildings or placing the foundationless at a health penalty. Laying concrete foundations requires extra time and money but without any foundations new buildings start off with only half maximum health. Windtraps, which serve as your power plants, generate less power at lower health. So early on the player is faced with a dilemma as to how to best build their base quickly and effectively. 

There is a massive snag in the gameplay, a real liver spot on an otherwise well-preserved old face, in that a mission is only over once the entire enemy force is destroyed including harvesters and usually buildings. There is a very easy and clever solution to that problem however: the game speed slider. This slider lets the player adjust the game speed at any given moment and is an absolute God-send early and late on in missions. Slowing the game down early on helps to make things more manageable for someone even as clumsy as myself and speeding it all the way up once your forces are overwhelming saves frustration of searching the entire map for hours trying to find that last harvester. 

As I said at the beginning, I'm a big fan of Frank Herbert's Duniverse and that's what brought me to Dune 2000 but having completed all three of the campaigns, I went and got the freeware Command & Conquer games and are finding some enjoyment in those too. Dune 2000 is a decent adaptation of the Duniverse and a pretty good game in its own right; thanks to the game speed slider it never felt like a chore and thanks to its art and base building mechanics it never bored me. 

Dune 2000 is: playing toy soldiers in a sandbox with an emotionally disabled kid/10