V-22 Osprey
11-01-2006, 02:57 PM
For all those Arrakeen out there, which Dune game was your favorite? Which came closest to capture the spirit of the novels (or the movie if you get confused by big, fancy words like CHOAM or the Weirding Way)? Which was just the most fun?
Dune, the adventure game? I never actually got more than about five minutes into it, but I have the soundtrack (Spice Opera, by Exxos) and it is excellent. I could listen to the song Free Men all day long.
Dune II, for the Sega Genesis:
The graphics were crude. The sandworm was a pathetic little mound no bigger than a tank. The bases were huge and unwieldy, and you had to lay down concrete before building so much as a turret if you didn't want to lose the structure from erosion. You couldn't select more than one unit at a time, so if you wanted to mount an large-scale attack, you had to click on a missile tank, then click on a siege tank so it would follow the siege tank, then click on a combat tank so it could follow et cetera et cetera, and then when the gaggle of units finally arrived, you had to frantically re-issue orders to ensure that half of your force didn't blunder into the path of enemy turrets. You couldn't target anything specific with your superweapons. The final mission was a three hour slog against the Emperor who somehow had access to every single unit of every house.
I LOVED it. Dune II was the game that single-handedly ignited my love for the RTS genre. Ah, the memories... the first time an enemy trooper attacked my spice harvester and was simply run over with a delightful squishy sound. Managing to nail Emperor Fredick's construction yard with a Death Hand. Frantically ordering reinforcements that blundered onto the map right next to the enemy base to retreat to base and falling over laughing when a sandworm helpfully devoured a Harkonenen Devastator about to demolish a badly-damaged tank. Good times, good times.
Dune 2000
Not much to say about this one. Quite frankly, it was just a fancy-shmancy Dune mod for Command & Conquer: Red Alert. But it was kind of fun, and the cinematics featured John Rhys-Davies as the Artredies mentat. Nobody tosses a mentat. :D The scene where the Emperor's concubine reads his mind was also pretty hilarious.
Emperor: Battle for Dune
I thought this was not just the best Dune game, but one of the finest examples of the RTS genre, period.
Dune 2000, and indeed, a lot of strategy games use the cliche of having the same basic unit for each side, with only slight variations. Harkonnen tank is powerful, but slow, Ordos tank is fast, but weak, Artedies are in between. You know the drill.
Emperor turns this cliche on its head. Every House's basic combat unit was unique, and the entire army of the House was geared to its philosophy.
The Harkonnen's basic combat unit is a huge cannon on treads. The Atreides use a walking mech with quadruple artillery pieces that can swivel 90 degrees to either side. And the Ordos have an extremely maneuverable hovercraft with a Lasgun on a 360 degree pivot. And to top it off, it came with Holtzman shields. Woot!
When you're playing as the Harkonnen, you feel like you're a feared General of Giedi Prime. The anti-infantry units are giant buzzsawswith machine guns coming out of the side and speedy noxious chemical launchers, your infantry are equipped with flame-throwers and armor-piercing missles, and you are faced with tasks like dropping nukes on enemy bases and destroying battalions on Guild ships in flagrant disregard for the Great Convention.
When you're playing as the Ordos, you feel like you're from Draconis IV. Sneaking saboteurs into the enemy base so that you can destory the windtraps at just the right moment so that your Eye in the Sky can destroy the factory to provide the distraction for your stealthed APCs full of infrantry with tracking missiles to take care of the patrolling Ornithopers to insure that :eek: ...
And to top it all off, you can ally with other major powers, so even knowing which House your enemy chooses in an on-line battle wouldn't be much help... for example, using brute force against the stealth and technology-oriented Ordos could result in a colossal smackdown when you ran into Sarduakar in every corner in the base or the brutal Harkonnen could pull a fast one on you with devious Ixian units.
Emperor was the also the first RTS I played where the overall battlefield and previous successes influnced your current mission. Strike into a spot deep into enemy terrority and you had one hell of a battle on your hands. Taking over a section of map right next to ones you're won a few hours before, and you could concerate on building your base worry free as free units poured onto the map every few minutes. Of course, you still have those massive tornadoes to worry about...
Go ahead and laugh at me and point at games from 1996 that already did that, but it was a big deal to me at the time to watch two expsensive Devastators stroll onto the map free of charge to provide free base defense, or to scroll back to my base to order more units to hurry to a pitched battle, and goggle in amazement at the new army waiting for orders.
I've ranted enough, so go ahead and scramble to your bargain bins to search for a copy of Emperor: Battle for Dune. Or dig out your Sega Genesis to see how much Dune II influenced games such as WarCraft III or Civilization II.
Or pound off posts like "OMG House Ordos?!?!?!}! that was only mentioned once in page 246 of the non-canon Dune Encyclopedia you stink worse than Kevin J. Anderson Brian Herbert would be rolling around in his grave in he saw Dune for the Sega Genesis you sux0rs!"
Dune, the adventure game? I never actually got more than about five minutes into it, but I have the soundtrack (Spice Opera, by Exxos) and it is excellent. I could listen to the song Free Men all day long.
Dune II, for the Sega Genesis:
The graphics were crude. The sandworm was a pathetic little mound no bigger than a tank. The bases were huge and unwieldy, and you had to lay down concrete before building so much as a turret if you didn't want to lose the structure from erosion. You couldn't select more than one unit at a time, so if you wanted to mount an large-scale attack, you had to click on a missile tank, then click on a siege tank so it would follow the siege tank, then click on a combat tank so it could follow et cetera et cetera, and then when the gaggle of units finally arrived, you had to frantically re-issue orders to ensure that half of your force didn't blunder into the path of enemy turrets. You couldn't target anything specific with your superweapons. The final mission was a three hour slog against the Emperor who somehow had access to every single unit of every house.
I LOVED it. Dune II was the game that single-handedly ignited my love for the RTS genre. Ah, the memories... the first time an enemy trooper attacked my spice harvester and was simply run over with a delightful squishy sound. Managing to nail Emperor Fredick's construction yard with a Death Hand. Frantically ordering reinforcements that blundered onto the map right next to the enemy base to retreat to base and falling over laughing when a sandworm helpfully devoured a Harkonenen Devastator about to demolish a badly-damaged tank. Good times, good times.
Dune 2000
Not much to say about this one. Quite frankly, it was just a fancy-shmancy Dune mod for Command & Conquer: Red Alert. But it was kind of fun, and the cinematics featured John Rhys-Davies as the Artredies mentat. Nobody tosses a mentat. :D The scene where the Emperor's concubine reads his mind was also pretty hilarious.
Emperor: Battle for Dune
I thought this was not just the best Dune game, but one of the finest examples of the RTS genre, period.
Dune 2000, and indeed, a lot of strategy games use the cliche of having the same basic unit for each side, with only slight variations. Harkonnen tank is powerful, but slow, Ordos tank is fast, but weak, Artedies are in between. You know the drill.
Emperor turns this cliche on its head. Every House's basic combat unit was unique, and the entire army of the House was geared to its philosophy.
The Harkonnen's basic combat unit is a huge cannon on treads. The Atreides use a walking mech with quadruple artillery pieces that can swivel 90 degrees to either side. And the Ordos have an extremely maneuverable hovercraft with a Lasgun on a 360 degree pivot. And to top it off, it came with Holtzman shields. Woot!
When you're playing as the Harkonnen, you feel like you're a feared General of Giedi Prime. The anti-infantry units are giant buzzsawswith machine guns coming out of the side and speedy noxious chemical launchers, your infantry are equipped with flame-throwers and armor-piercing missles, and you are faced with tasks like dropping nukes on enemy bases and destroying battalions on Guild ships in flagrant disregard for the Great Convention.
When you're playing as the Ordos, you feel like you're from Draconis IV. Sneaking saboteurs into the enemy base so that you can destory the windtraps at just the right moment so that your Eye in the Sky can destroy the factory to provide the distraction for your stealthed APCs full of infrantry with tracking missiles to take care of the patrolling Ornithopers to insure that :eek: ...
And to top it all off, you can ally with other major powers, so even knowing which House your enemy chooses in an on-line battle wouldn't be much help... for example, using brute force against the stealth and technology-oriented Ordos could result in a colossal smackdown when you ran into Sarduakar in every corner in the base or the brutal Harkonnen could pull a fast one on you with devious Ixian units.
Emperor was the also the first RTS I played where the overall battlefield and previous successes influnced your current mission. Strike into a spot deep into enemy terrority and you had one hell of a battle on your hands. Taking over a section of map right next to ones you're won a few hours before, and you could concerate on building your base worry free as free units poured onto the map every few minutes. Of course, you still have those massive tornadoes to worry about...
Go ahead and laugh at me and point at games from 1996 that already did that, but it was a big deal to me at the time to watch two expsensive Devastators stroll onto the map free of charge to provide free base defense, or to scroll back to my base to order more units to hurry to a pitched battle, and goggle in amazement at the new army waiting for orders.
I've ranted enough, so go ahead and scramble to your bargain bins to search for a copy of Emperor: Battle for Dune. Or dig out your Sega Genesis to see how much Dune II influenced games such as WarCraft III or Civilization II.
Or pound off posts like "OMG House Ordos?!?!?!}! that was only mentioned once in page 246 of the non-canon Dune Encyclopedia you stink worse than Kevin J. Anderson Brian Herbert would be rolling around in his grave in he saw Dune for the Sega Genesis you sux0rs!"