Easily the most immersive Dune game to date
But Forgotten amongst gamers is the original dune, released only a few months before its sequel many overlooked this forgotten classic, ported to the amiga and the sega CD but its epitome of greatness was attained when the CD version was launched for the MS-DOS.
This game was mixture of genres, it was a real time strategy game, it was an RPG, a point and cliker and an adventure game. The story loosely follows the book and its movie, it is an unknown year in the future and man has discovered the secret to space travel, for that they use a special technique called "folding space", that is, to go anywhere you want without moving, but in order to use this technique it is required one precious and rare substance, the spice melange, the spice extends life, expands consciousness, it is vital for space travel and it can only be found on one planet in the entire universe, a vast waterless world, filled with deserts, sand storms, and giant spice worms, this world is called arrakis, also known as Dune.
You are Paul Atreides, son of Duke Leto Atreides, you and your family has been sent to Dune to replace the baron Harkonen and its 20 year Rule of Arrakis, for this you will have to rally Dune´s natives, the Fremen, they will work for you, collecting spice, spying the harkonen, fighting for you and even
plant fauna in hopes of someday make the planet suitable for life.
The game controlls function like a point and cliker, you need to talk to your family, they will give you your next objectives and information on your status in the game, as for the fremen when you eventually rally a leader to follow you then may issue him orders, thus beginning the strategy part of the game, you must command your army to destroy the harkonen, buy weapons and vehicles in order to increase spice production, send shipments to the emperor, talk and negotiate with other fremen leaders, interrogate Harkonen captains, the list goes on, this will often require you to stay near the conflict points in order to issue your orders, which may result in your character´s death (the only way to get a gameover).
A strong point in this game was its free-roaming abilities, you can just pick up an ornithopter and fly to any area of the plannet, you can also walk to the immediate areas in the desert near you, and see how the land changes due to your actions, maybe you will see many harvesters collecting dust, maybe you will see wildlife, maybe a fremen sietch, or an harkonen fortress.
Graphically the game was amazing for its time, all of the characters had facial expressions that shifted as they speak, the travel sections were an incredible sight (especially with the CD version) and the artwork reflected everything that you had read in the book. The CD version also had FMV´s which were just small portions of the movie created by David Lynch at a very low resolution, but still impressive for its time.
The sound in this game was amazing with techno and tribal music depending on your location however the cd version had poor voice acting, also all of the characters voices have an eco in their dialogue.
Overall this is a great underrated and forgotten game, and like i stated earlier its easilly the most immersive dune game to date