Frank Herbert's Dune

The Good
I read many reviews of this game before I bought it, so I thought I knew what I was in for - or did I? As a fan of the Dune universe owning this game was a must for me. I got into the everything Dune when I saw the original movie in the early 1980's; then I read the books and played the great Dune video games published by Westwood, (Dune II and Dune 2000 respectfully). I eagerly awaited the TV mini-series on the Sci-Fi Channel, but was quite disappointed. (For more reasons than I have time to get into here).

So I read the reviews for this video game before buying it. Every single review panned the game from top to bottom. Only the visuals were sorta praised. But before I forget, I should talk about what was good in this game. Ok, here goes:

The player controls the main character, Paul, from the behind the back perspective in 3D. All of the costumes and sets are from the TV mini-series. The visuals, as I said before, aren't too bad; there is some detail to the models and textures, and the lighting is decent as well. There is music through the game, lifted from the TV miniseries; that should be a good thing except the music was terrible. And instead of little dialogue bubbles the characters all have voice actors.

That's about it for the good stuff. I know this is an abrupt ending, but I think it rather fits the subject matter.

The Bad
I am not exaggerating, but it would be nearly impossible for me to list everything that is broken in this game. Please note, I did not say that I couldn't list everything I didn't like, I said I couldn't list everything that was broken in this game. Here is what I mean:

This game isn't finished. That is the only explanation for what I have played. There is simply no way a sentient human being would release a game with the amount of flaws that abound in this game. What kind of flaws you may ask? Well the controls make no sense in the way they are situated on the keyboard. So moving from walking, to running, to stealth, to combat is nearly impossible. The melee attacks are just bizarre, and the range attacks look and feel static. The puzzles require you to kill somebody and open a locked door. And usually it takes longer to position your character in front of the door than it does to kill the guy that had the key in the first place!

So right now you should be asking, what kind of game is this? Is it an action/adventure, action/stealth, or adventure/puzzle game? I have no idea! All I know is this video game is some bizarre child birthed from the unholy marriage of the worst elements of games like Tomb Raider and Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire.

The Bottom Line
Let me recount for you what I experienced the first time I played this game. I pop in the CD and waited. Eventually I was thrown into some sort of training scenario in which I had to run, jump, hide, fight, and open a locked door. The controls were hideous but I decided to push ahead anyway. Eventually I found myself in a desert level - in it I had to run from the giant sandworm. So I ran far away. Then I ran back to where I started. I realized at that point I was not going to get past this desert level. Ever. At that moment I had a profound thought, and it was, "this game looks pretty". My emotions were stable, I was neither angry nor happy. I then switched the game off with a contented feeling of knowing I owned a piece of rare Dune universe, and I think how lucky I am to have a dusty video game sitting on my shelf called Frank Herbert's Dune. Will I ever play it again? Maybe if I am in the mood to look at pretty visuals.

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.