It does seem appropriate that for a series about the fight over a planet filled with a rare resource, Dune Awakening has played tug-o’-war with the interest of MMO gamers ever since it was announced. Funcom’s already a divisive studio with plenty of fans and critics, and the studio’s waffling over whether or not this is a proper MMO (it is) certainly put off some prospective players.
So is Dune Awakening a full-fledged MMORPG? A survival game? A building sandbox? A happy or hapless mixture of the three? And most importantly: Is it a good time reminiscent of Funcom’s past heights that lives up to the hype? That’s what I wanted to find out for myself as I jumped into launch week.
I let out a sobbing kind of laugh when I saw this popup right at the start. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a permission form to let a game hoover your information sound downright patriotic. Explain to me, exactly, how you spying on me will “create a thriving community?” Eh, anyway, I had to share.
Character creation is the same mostly decent system that it was when I first checked it out a couple months ago. You are limited to human (although there are variations and backgrounds), and I’m still not that impressed by how little information they give you when it comes to selecting a class. I went with Mentat, the Freshmaker, solely for this pun.
Incidentally, creating a character on a ship orbiting this alien world and then sent down during the opening cutscene gave me pretty strong Anarchy Online vibes. Anyone else?
The tutorial accomplished its dual mission, which was to tell an interesting story while teaching the player the ins and outs of this game’s varied systems. There’s a lot to absorb here, including survival mechanics (hydration, shadows, stamina), movement (climbing, dashing), crafting, and combat. It all came together very smoothly, and there was little that I didn’t understand. I really appreciated how slick the gathering/crafting loop is, especially how you can queue up multiple crafting jobs at the same time.
As an aside, the graphics are far more attractive than I anticipated. Seeing the sand shift around my feet as I walked forward was a neat touch.
I thought I had finished up with the tutorial, but… I guess not? Sucker just kept on going and going and going. I didn’t mind for a while, because I was getting into the groove of exploring, fighting, and salvaging, all while avoiding the sunlight and the big ol’ sand worms that everyone seems to fear. It was, and I want to stress this, a pretty good time all around.
But then then Dune Awakening stopped me in my tracks to say, “Hey, were you having fun? Let’s stop that right now and spend the next 30 minutes building the ugliest base that you’ll ever see with tools that, frankly, aren’t quite up to snuff.” BEHOLD MY BASE OF DOOM! It comes complete with a shield generator that didn’t protect me from a sand storm, despite my dumping fuel cells inside of it.
I can’t express enough how much my growing interest in Dune Awakening plummeted at this point. Perhaps I didn’t have the right expectations going into this, but I thought this game would be more of a traditional MMO with some optional base-building on the side — not flipped the other way around. Seeing how this is the case, I would then wish for the option to select a prefab base for people like me who don’t want to build one from scratch.
And since I’m on the topic of flailing about for a footing, I’ll admit that at some point, this beginning stretch simply lost me. I’m not much of a Dune fan and haven’t seen the newer movies, so getting bombarded with a ton of lore and names means very little to me. That would actually be a selling point of this game as a way to immerse yourself into the setting and get a feel for it. This is a much different sci-fi world, where it’s actually a gameplay feature to siphon and drink enemies’ blood to stave off thirst.
After I set up a base, I looked around and had no idea where I was. The desert? I kind of assumed that Dune Awakening would dump me out in a semi-populated town after the newbie section, but instead, the map revealed only an island of interest points in the middle of an unknown expanse.
So perhaps the approach here is one of base building, gradual exploration, and following quest markers. I’ll tell you that I got a chuckle out of seeing all of these ramshackle, half-built player bases dotting the landscape. Good luck trying to figure out what’s actually content and what’s someone’s DIY project.
Performance was another issue that I monitored. My computer, which seems to run most MMOs fairly well, struggled hard at times with Dune Awakening. Even in a solo instance, there was stuttering and hitching, which made things like combat and platforming far more chancy than they should have been.
It also took a long, long time to load. Perhaps this was due in part to the first week patching, but we’re talking a good half-hour wait from clicking on the icon to getting into the game at times. Whole lotta shaders to count, I guess.
There are aspects to Dune Awakening that I genuinely liked, including the ease of crafting, the visual fidelity, and the unusual sci-fi setting. But it’s a confusing experience with a lot of clunky and ill-explained portions, and I found it quite easy to get disconnected and stop caring about the next step. As with a lot of these hybrid RPGs, perhaps it simply takes pushing through the unknown and discomfort to find that illumination “light bulb” moment of getting it, but after several hours into this, I certainly hadn’t arrived at it yet.
At least I’m quite good at drinking blood now. Call me Desert Dracula.
Do you love spectating and speculating about upcoming MMOs? We do too! Every week, Justin tackles another upcoming title on the MMO Hype Train with opinions, analysis, and blind fervent hope. Choo choo all aboard!
