The Good Stuff:
- A nice update of a classic RTS.
- Large tank battles can be fun.
The Bad Stuff:
- Dated graphics with little animation.
- Unfair and unforgiving AI.
- Little in the way of stragety.
- Little depth in gameplay.
- Very bland, borring and dull maps.
Back in 1992, Dune II revolutionized stragety games forever. One of the first real time strategies, it allowed you to select multiple units and attack with the click of a button. You would build buildings and place them within the radius of your base, and harvest spice to gain money and build an large force to eliminate the opponent. Since then, there have been many great games expanding on this formula such as Command and Conquer, Warcraft, Starcraft and the most innovative real time stragety yet Total Annihilation. It has been over eight years before a sequel to the hit classic has been made, but was it worthwhile?
Westwood has more of less made the same game, but with improved graphics and AI. The graphics are certainly a big improvement, but are pretty weak by todays standards. All the maps in the game look identical, with a different layout. There is a large quantity of maps, but thats probably because all the developers needed to do was lay down a bunch of orange rock all over the place with sand and spice mixed in-between. The levels are very uninteresting and are lacking in any sense of atmosphere. The level design is generally poor and careless. You will be mostly wondering flat orange and white lands with hardly anything to affect your stragety on the map, other than to rush into the enemy's base. There are the few cliffs that make you a tad higher, but are generally randomly scattered around the place. Each map might aswell of been made with a random map generator, because that's how uninspired the maps are.
Maps aside, the game looks pretty decent. The buildings look sharp with alot of detail in them, tough they are mostly static. Each vehicle is distinguishable, but lack depth as most vehicle look like they are the same height as each other. Some vehicles don't appear to have any turrets or source for weaponry, which makes it look like rockets and shells are popping up mysteriously above the vehicle. Aside from the eight directional movement, vehicles remain unanimated and nothing more than static moving boxes on wheels. Most of the games affects are weak aswell, which makes for unspectacular battles - save for a few explosions from airstrikes and buildings getting destroyed.
If your looking for a really exciting, and innovative stragety game, then Dune 2000 will not cut the cake for you. Dune 2000 is essentially Dune II, this includes the same houses with the same units and buildings. The only real differences between the factions is slightly different building skins and a few unique units. The factions share many of the same units and buildings which leads to stale and predictable action. There isn't much stragety to the game other than to build as many units as possible and charge at your enemy. Once you get to the heavier tanks, just keep on spamming because they're not too expensive and can easily run over infantry since they all stand closely together packed in squads of five. Aircraft is almost non existent in the game, apart from an airstrike support power and carryalls which can move your units around the battlefield and bring in reinforcements. Engineers are almost pointless, since most buildings can be destroyed in seconds. Your engineers cost up to eight times more than basic infantry units and even cost more than some buildings. However, when up against the computer, they like to send in an engineer or two with every attack squad and take over your entire base.
The AI is unforgiving in this game, even when using the easy difficultly, the AI can build units much faster than you can. This is probably due to the fact that for some strange reason, you cannot queue units. Instead, if you want an army of light infantry, you got to keep clicking the button whilst managing your buildings and tanks. You also have to take into account you have to place building on concrete, otherwise they loose health over time. This takes more time to build an additional building, find an place you can build the concrete and then build the building you want. Should one square of the building be off the concrete however, and that building will loose health. It would also be much easier if your build radius wasn't very limited, coupled with the fact you have very limited build space since you can't build on sand and it becomes a big annoyance.
Facing off against one AI opponent isn't too much of a problem, but more than one and it becomes a frustrating nightmare. You will be getting waves from each AI opponent every opportunity they have, and you will have engineers all over you along with their force to cruse your own units. Because of the hassle it is to build buildings, it can take a long time to get base defenses, especially considering you need to keep building power plants... er I mean wind traps (And the fact there is enough wind on a completely deserted planet to power all thoose refineries and vehicle factories is ludicrous). Infantry is pretty useless. Although very cheap, they do little damage and have a very short range and are easily crushed by the huge number of tanks you will likely be facing. Should you try and attack the AI, they will most likely pummel your attack force with a ready force of their own, all of course whilst pumping out units the moment they are available.
There are so many features missing in Dune 2000 found in a typical RTS, despite the fact Westwood themselves have incorporated such features in the past. There is no garrisoning units of any means, not even APC's. There are no hotkeys to speak off, so everything must be done by hand. Because their are no way-points, you have to micro-manage every single aspect of your units to make sure they don't suddenly stop in the middle of an army doing nothing but getting obliterated. Infact, you can't choose any stances for your units other than guard mode, which selected units will all attack a threat within line of site, instead of them all sitting there only attacking when enemy is within firing radius. There is one support power for each faction, but all of which barely reduce a building to half it's health which makes using them almost pointless.
The sound in the game is hardly anything remarkable either. Each automatic weapon uses similiar washed out beats and rockets sound very unbelievable; it sounds like you dropped a tin cased selection box. The music tries to mimic that of in the film, but uses similiar tones around a narrow pitch that hardly raises the mood in atmosphere in anyway, other than to remind you that you are indeed on the most deserted planet that could ever be found in a video game. The game even rips a monster sound from the game Doom used for the worm, which was made seven years earlier. Does Westwood not think that sound technology may of advanced onwards from then?
If you were a fan of Dune II, and are looking for another great RTS game set in the Dune universe, then don't bother looking here. The game can be fun, but dated graphics, bland map design and very uninteresting combat really tone the game down. It's hard to think that in the era of Command and Conquer, Starcraft and Total Annihilation, that Dune 2000 even exists.
- A nice update of a classic RTS.
- Large tank battles can be fun.
The Bad Stuff:
- Dated graphics with little animation.
- Unfair and unforgiving AI.
- Little in the way of stragety.
- Little depth in gameplay.
- Very bland, borring and dull maps.
Back in 1992, Dune II revolutionized stragety games forever. One of the first real time strategies, it allowed you to select multiple units and attack with the click of a button. You would build buildings and place them within the radius of your base, and harvest spice to gain money and build an large force to eliminate the opponent. Since then, there have been many great games expanding on this formula such as Command and Conquer, Warcraft, Starcraft and the most innovative real time stragety yet Total Annihilation. It has been over eight years before a sequel to the hit classic has been made, but was it worthwhile?
Westwood has more of less made the same game, but with improved graphics and AI. The graphics are certainly a big improvement, but are pretty weak by todays standards. All the maps in the game look identical, with a different layout. There is a large quantity of maps, but thats probably because all the developers needed to do was lay down a bunch of orange rock all over the place with sand and spice mixed in-between. The levels are very uninteresting and are lacking in any sense of atmosphere. The level design is generally poor and careless. You will be mostly wondering flat orange and white lands with hardly anything to affect your stragety on the map, other than to rush into the enemy's base. There are the few cliffs that make you a tad higher, but are generally randomly scattered around the place. Each map might aswell of been made with a random map generator, because that's how uninspired the maps are.
Maps aside, the game looks pretty decent. The buildings look sharp with alot of detail in them, tough they are mostly static. Each vehicle is distinguishable, but lack depth as most vehicle look like they are the same height as each other. Some vehicles don't appear to have any turrets or source for weaponry, which makes it look like rockets and shells are popping up mysteriously above the vehicle. Aside from the eight directional movement, vehicles remain unanimated and nothing more than static moving boxes on wheels. Most of the games affects are weak aswell, which makes for unspectacular battles - save for a few explosions from airstrikes and buildings getting destroyed.
If your looking for a really exciting, and innovative stragety game, then Dune 2000 will not cut the cake for you. Dune 2000 is essentially Dune II, this includes the same houses with the same units and buildings. The only real differences between the factions is slightly different building skins and a few unique units. The factions share many of the same units and buildings which leads to stale and predictable action. There isn't much stragety to the game other than to build as many units as possible and charge at your enemy. Once you get to the heavier tanks, just keep on spamming because they're not too expensive and can easily run over infantry since they all stand closely together packed in squads of five. Aircraft is almost non existent in the game, apart from an airstrike support power and carryalls which can move your units around the battlefield and bring in reinforcements. Engineers are almost pointless, since most buildings can be destroyed in seconds. Your engineers cost up to eight times more than basic infantry units and even cost more than some buildings. However, when up against the computer, they like to send in an engineer or two with every attack squad and take over your entire base.
The AI is unforgiving in this game, even when using the easy difficultly, the AI can build units much faster than you can. This is probably due to the fact that for some strange reason, you cannot queue units. Instead, if you want an army of light infantry, you got to keep clicking the button whilst managing your buildings and tanks. You also have to take into account you have to place building on concrete, otherwise they loose health over time. This takes more time to build an additional building, find an place you can build the concrete and then build the building you want. Should one square of the building be off the concrete however, and that building will loose health. It would also be much easier if your build radius wasn't very limited, coupled with the fact you have very limited build space since you can't build on sand and it becomes a big annoyance.
Facing off against one AI opponent isn't too much of a problem, but more than one and it becomes a frustrating nightmare. You will be getting waves from each AI opponent every opportunity they have, and you will have engineers all over you along with their force to cruse your own units. Because of the hassle it is to build buildings, it can take a long time to get base defenses, especially considering you need to keep building power plants... er I mean wind traps (And the fact there is enough wind on a completely deserted planet to power all thoose refineries and vehicle factories is ludicrous). Infantry is pretty useless. Although very cheap, they do little damage and have a very short range and are easily crushed by the huge number of tanks you will likely be facing. Should you try and attack the AI, they will most likely pummel your attack force with a ready force of their own, all of course whilst pumping out units the moment they are available.
There are so many features missing in Dune 2000 found in a typical RTS, despite the fact Westwood themselves have incorporated such features in the past. There is no garrisoning units of any means, not even APC's. There are no hotkeys to speak off, so everything must be done by hand. Because their are no way-points, you have to micro-manage every single aspect of your units to make sure they don't suddenly stop in the middle of an army doing nothing but getting obliterated. Infact, you can't choose any stances for your units other than guard mode, which selected units will all attack a threat within line of site, instead of them all sitting there only attacking when enemy is within firing radius. There is one support power for each faction, but all of which barely reduce a building to half it's health which makes using them almost pointless.
The sound in the game is hardly anything remarkable either. Each automatic weapon uses similiar washed out beats and rockets sound very unbelievable; it sounds like you dropped a tin cased selection box. The music tries to mimic that of in the film, but uses similiar tones around a narrow pitch that hardly raises the mood in atmosphere in anyway, other than to remind you that you are indeed on the most deserted planet that could ever be found in a video game. The game even rips a monster sound from the game Doom used for the worm, which was made seven years earlier. Does Westwood not think that sound technology may of advanced onwards from then?
If you were a fan of Dune II, and are looking for another great RTS game set in the Dune universe, then don't bother looking here. The game can be fun, but dated graphics, bland map design and very uninteresting combat really tone the game down. It's hard to think that in the era of Command and Conquer, Starcraft and Total Annihilation, that Dune 2000 even exists.