Flaming Dune (DUNE 2000 (PC))

Member Name: DavidJWest

Product:	DUNE 2000 (PC)
Date:	11/03/02 (74 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of mission, and units

Disadvantages: Samey

"My time on Dune has been short yet I have accomplished much. Since being placed in charge of Atreides forces my success has brought me promotion.

My first quest was to stem the evil Harkonnen forces, which was easily acheived as their forces were weak. After establiching my base I quickly built a Spice Refinery so that we could harvest Dune's valuable resource.

For those who don't know, the Spice Melange has powerful qualities, kind of mind altering I think you Earthlings would describe it. It is the most valuable resource in the known univers and so the three houses battleing on Dune for it are very ruthless.

My own house, Atreides is noble, the evil Harkkonen our main foe will stop at nothing to command Dune whilst the unsavoury house Ordos will use any means to deceive the other houses to their own ends.

After gathering enough spice I had to build defences, at the start I only had meagre resources and so relied on lightly armed soldiers and trikes.

As the first missions were a success I gained more forces and was able to build larger bases with more useful combat forces, the Sonic Tank being most deadly. I have to leave now, another Harkonnen force approaches."

Dune 2000 is certainly atmospheric, I have yet to read the book but after playing this game I will be doing. The game is a real-time srategy game where you built up forces by harvesting the spice, it's played in the usual top view style of this genre.

What is different is that the scenes between missions tell a story and it all fits together very well. You can be any of the three main houses on the planet and the different units available to them make it quite addictive as you want to see just what new units are to be had.

You are constantly challenged with the question, what do I build next? Of course you need to ensure your base is defended well, with walls and cannon etc but need to ensure spice product
ion is kept up, by building refineries. Of course most missions have the objective of wiping out the enemy base too so you need to build some offensive units as well.

You can build many kinds of buildings when constructing a base. Walls and gun turrets to defend your factories, refineries, power stations and barracks.

Combat units comprise weak but cheap soldiers moving on to better trikes and quads until you get to the tougher units, the combact tanks. Special units become available as you geain more money/spice and the heavy tanks and sonic tanks are really awesome. The Atreides can also build ornithopters, a kind of attack aircraft.

Watch out when harversting spice as thir are giant worms living in the sand all over the desert planet. They are partial to swallowing your units whole, being about 100 metres long with big teeth!

All the facets to the game, coupled with the enemy being quite hard to beat (not very clever though!) and the new units make it addictive, but slightly dated. I have yet to complete the game having got to the later missions with each of the houses and I will be returning to Dune!

Overall I recommend this if you like the book/film or are an RTS fan. It would be quite good for a newcomer to this type of game as the learning curve is fairly gentle.

Summary: