Quite a fun if derivative.
Anyway the spice is what powers the ships to travel faster than light (i think its actually more complicated than that relying on alien navigators but im just giving basic overview here of the dune universe) and it enables people to live longer (and make their eyes turn blue) a valuable fuel resource abit like oil to us.
Anyway the emperor is worried that house atredies is getting too powerful and constitutes a long term threat to his own power base because the atreides are making a elite fighting force to match his own but aren't quite as numerous to pose a threat in the near future but it has him worried, so he proposes to allow the Atredies to take over Dune so long as they can keep the spice trade going and Atredies cant help but accept because after all this would mean they would be making much money and increase further in power. However its a trick to allow Harokonnen to attack and destroy them, in the game Dune 2000 its a little different the emperor proposes a challenge for the houses to compete just so the supply of spice is maintained and the houses fighting each other stops them from being a threat to the Emperor although he still wants to see Atreides stopped.
The game is much like your typical RTS, theres the three factions with their own look and feel, own units and supposedly unique strategies but you'll be forgiven for just thinking theyre samey.
You have basic infantry types, engineers , light vehicles, heavy vehicles and a couple of unique units to each faction - harokonnen has a long range missile and longer ranged artillery, atreides has ability to call in air strikes and powerful sonic tanks and ordos has a saboteur which is invisible infantryman that's well, a suicide bomber and they also have deviator longer range tank which takes control of enemy vehicles for a while.
The units function like a paper rock scissors system were light infantry can kill heavier infantry such as rocket troops and engineers no problem but will in turn be destroyed by light vehicles, heavy vehicles will have difficulty killing infantry with primary weapons unless they run them over, special infantry like sardoukar and fremen will decimate any infantry, heavy tanks will destroy light vehicles etc the only way to get round a paper rock scissors system is to have massive amounts of troops/vehicles which means its just a numbers game or careful balanced armies.
Its not particularly involving in terms of tactics because its real time you'll tend to group units together and have them all attack the same enemy at once to quickly kill it and move onto the next were as in turn based games you would delegate targets and have to plan more carefully, were the strategy comes into most RTS's and this one is what you build and in what order you build and when to decide to attack, in this sense its classic RTS game, and it can be quite fun at times but its nothing original its all be done before even back in these days following on the successes of command and conquer a whole host of copy cats came about.
Some interesting points are also that you need to build foundations for buildings otherwise due to the relatively harsh conditions on the desert planet arrakis you're buildings will decay and eventually be destroyed were as with foundations they are secured, also as you progress throughout the game there are some nonplayable subfactions which can give extra units for you dependant on your faction these being the likes of the Fremen and sardaukar, furthermore theres wild life in the form of the indgenous Sand Worms which get attracted to vibrations through the sand which means they'll be attracted to heavy vehicles such as your spice harvesters and eat them.
Thats the core gameplay, but it wouldn't be fair to comment on the single player campaign, its pretty good, I like the dune universe its a blend of the past with the far future (a more sophisticated universe than say warhammer 40k although it shares some similarities in that theyre both far in the future yet rooted in the past - fundamentalist government , emperor figurehead, aristocracy , distrust of some technologies very violent etc) and this game goes some way to reflect this although it is much more about the action, the campaign is structured in such a way that you can select a mission from the map and after a mission that territory will change colour to you're own chosen faction and you can watch the progress of conquering the world and choose what to do next, each mission is unfortunately quite similar in objectives, but out of the choices theres usually a difference in the difficulty.
Each mission will have a briefing and in classic westwood command and conquer style these are a mixture of actors (some good some bad done in a deliberately cheesy way) and computer animations, I prefer mission briefings to be like this, it helps bring the story to life and inject abit more fun into the singleplayer campaign.
As you proceed throughout the campaign the difficulty will obviously increase and you also get access to better units and more advanced structures to build with a few missions requiring the aid of the fremen or to destroy them and a showdown with the Emperor himself!
The story is quite good (it is based on the dune universe afterall)and well explained to the player throughout - the actors refer to you look at you which helps to engross the player in the game, this is typical of westwood I find , an example of a fun yet incredibly weak story in regards to a RTS would be the more recent Dawn of War games which likewise take very solid products which have a wealth of ideas stories etc - this being the warhammer 40k universe yet deliver a fun RTS in terms of skirmish and a lesser extent multiplayer yet the singleplayer campaign is sorely lacking.
Graphically this game still looks quite good, its 2d graphics with small sprites representing troops and vehicles, the terrain looks good its still sharp and vividly coloured - although the terrain is exclusively desert like with some mountains and rocks jutting out from the sand so its fairly basic , the units as I've mentioned are quite small and as a result cant be as detailed as one would hope, the death animations are short but pretty neat as is typical of westwood the infantry collapse/briefly explode with a little bit of gore here and there before disappearing.
Soundwise, the music is pretty good it seems quite fitting for the Dune universe, some soft ambient tracks with a steady beat to the more heavy rock like tunes for the militant Harokonnen the ordos tracks are however the weakest - that faction in particular not belonging traditionally to the Frank Herbert Dune universe but added to bring a little more variety to the games proceedings. -the music overall is great its what you would expect from Frank Klepacki.
The unit sounds are pretty decent, Fremen sound like Fremen from the movie shouting Bi La Kaifa! and the harokonnen sounding very angry all the time and the orods sounding more like the professional soldiers ala GDI from command and conquer.
Overall id say Dune 2000 was a fun game if devoid of much originality, it was a faithful remake of the original Dune 2 game which was its intention but because it was not original the gameplay can feel stale and give you the 'its been done before' feeling, but it plays fine and gameplay is fairly solid so i would recommend picking it up if you liked the original command and conquer and want to play something fairly similar and to people who are a fan of the Dune universe but only because its now at a budget price (albeit quite difficult to find sometimes even on ebay)
Pros:
.Solid RTS gameplay
.Graphically still looks pretty decent
.Story is quite good presented with actors/fmv
.Music is great and sounds in general good
.Campaign structure is quite good
Cons:
.Derivative gameplay whats original?
.The factions play similarly so not much variation in strategy from one faction to the next - this damages longevity
.Too few units to build from, most are basic units shared by all other factions.