Awakening Is More Intense And Spectacular Than Most Survival Games

Awakening Is More Intense And Spectacular Than Most Survival Games



Views: 0

Summary

  • Dune Awakening offers unique survival mechanics like thirst management and sandworm threats.
  • The game features visually stunning environments and exciting exploration methods.
  • The third-person shooting mechanics and weapon crafting enhance the gameplay experience.

Being a multiplayer survival game set on a vast desert planet, Dune Awakening has to work hard to avoid being repetitive. There’s only so much sand you can run across before it grows boring. While starting the player with nothing at all – no gear, no personality, and no backstory – what has Funcom done to ensure the politics, lore, and epic storytelling of Frank Herbert’s Dune isn’t lost amidst all the busy work?

Related


Every Dune Video Game Ever Made, Ranked

Dune is one of the most important novels ever written, and there have been several games based on it. Find out which are the best.

Having played six hours of the upcoming survival outing, it’s clear the experience isn’t designed to be a slog. With more than 100 hours of content coming at launch, Funcom says there are few distinct phases to expect. While the first 20 or so hours will be survival-first, you’ll then focus on controlling the deep desert through combat and managing the political landscape of Arrakis as part of the endgame.

Unique Survival Mechanics

Picking flowers for water in Dune: Awakening.

Having experienced little more than the base level survival aspects, some tweaking during the ongoing closed beta periods will be needed. The majority of the objectives I was tasked with asked me to find specific resources, which were usually plentiful, and then return to my base to use it in crafting. Rinse and repeat. The sort of stuff has been the staple of this genre for years now.

Thankfully, Dune Awakening doesn’t make the mistake of asking you to fill your inventory with resources for hours at a time without doing anything else, instead ensuring each resource you collect is instantly used for something that helps you progress. However, there’s still a repetitiveness to general tasks that can’t be ignored.

Thankfully, Awakening’s Arrakis itself is great fun to explore. Not because of any unique visual choices – it’s a lot of rocks and sand dunes as you’d expect – but because of what you need to think about as you go from waypoint to waypoint.

Funcom has chosen to forgo a traditional hunger meter, you must think about your thirst at all times instead. Being in the sun dehydrates you faster than standing in the shade, and water supplies are finite. You can consume particular flowers to fill the first bar of your hydration meter, or extract and drink the water of enemies you’ve defeated once you’ve built the means to do so.

Then there’s the constant threat of sandworms to think about. Always roaming the desert, they offer an intense threat at all times. When you’re walking across the dunes, an indicator shows the noise you’re making and the likelihood of a sandworm approaching, while the creature’s red icon is a constant presence on your compass.

The Spectacle Of Sandworms

A character looking up at a camp inDune: Awakening.

These wild animals make menial survival busywork a lot more exciting, and spotting a sandworm diving above the surface in the distance is an incredible sight to behold. You’re torn between a desire to see what it’s found and also avoiding near-certain death. Get killed by a bandit and you can head back to the location of your demise to retrieve your stuff. Get eaten by a sandworm, though, and your gear is gone forever. It’s a constant treat that’s much more literal than the hunger and thirst meters survival games normally rely on.

Therefore, every time you must head out into the desert to find something, you’ll be weaving between islands to avoid the worm, checking in corners for resources to scavenge and sticking to the moving shadows to avoid dehydration. Funcom has done a great job of adding a level of excitement to what are otherwise standard survival activities that feel like they belong in this iconic universe.

I only saw a fraction of the world, too. Beyond the desert in which your adventure begins, there’s the deep desert where PvP occurs alongside various cities you can eventually travel to. What I played was sparse in its presentation and content, so it’ll be interesting to see how the more populated locations incorporate survival mechanics. Will the ability to meet other people and buy resources make everything easier, or will having to share resources make us fight even harder to survive?

Whether it be the scorching desert or the few underground laboratories I stumbled upon, Dune Awakening is visually stunning. Funcom told me it is planning to “elevate the game above the jank of most survival games,” and for the most part that intention is obvious when you play. The lighting in the desert, particularly at night, is gorgeous, while the inhabited areas are far more detailed than you might expect from the genre.

I’ll Fly Everywhere I Can

Standing next to a base in the desert in Dune: Awakening.

As the world opens up, traversal also gets easier. I was only given a brief chance to test out the Ornithopter and Sandbike, both of which were a lot of fun, and they also make exploration less stressful. When the full game is released, I’m going to be using the Ornithopter at every opportunity instead of trawling through the sands on my own two feet. It’ll keep me safe from patrolling sandworms too.

However, staying on the ground gives you the chance to fight NPCs and other players. Dune Awakening’s third-person shooting feels surprisingly good – there’s a satisfying level of weight and control to eac action, so I was actively seeking out encounters instead of avoiding them which is so common in other survival titles. Fights aren’t simple either, so you need to be prepared for each one.

Unlike water, ammunition is plentiful and you’re introduced to weapon-crafting early on. With unique tools for blood extraction, placing respawn points, and resource mining, your inventory is full of gadgets. Rather than using pickaxes to farm copper ore, you use a lore-certified laser cutter. While I’m far from a Dune expert, nothing that Awakening introduces feels out of place in this universe.

Dune Awakening’s biggest change to the world is its story, and unfortunately, I wasn’t able to see much of it. Staying away from the world of Denis Villeneuve’s films, you play as a generic prisoner who’s sent to the desert. Of course, political intrigue quickly rears its head, but I’m told it becomes the focus later in the game as more characters and narrative arcs are introduced. I can’t comment on how the story will play out, but I wish the player character had a voice. One-sided conversations are always awkward in games like this and Awakening could have bucked this trend.

Since Dune Awakening will become much more than a multiplayer survival game after you’ve spent dozens of hours with it, it’s hard to judge the experience after I’ve only just scratched the surface. As someone who often finds survival games dull and daunting, I’m glad Funcom has strived to make every venture into the wilderness intense yet rewarding.. I just hope that continues as you progress and slowly but surely follow in the footsteps of Lisan al-Gaib.

Next


Dune: 10 Best Quotes From The Series

Learn the best quotes from the Dune series!

Source link