Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis   (DOS)

By: The J Man

I should probably begin by stating that I didn't "get" Dune. I saw the movie, it looked great, but I clearly need to read the novel to actually understand the story. I bring this up because Dune is commonly referenced as The Greatest Science Fiction Story In The World. We're not going to focus on that here, and really, neither does the game. You don't need to know much beyond the basic concepts to play. Instead, this is a look at the inventor of real-time "build-n-rush" strategy as it is known today.

In Dune II, the galactic Emperor has fallen into serious debt and opens up mining rights for the planet Arrakis to three rival Houses. Anything goes, so long as the Emperor gets his money, and the House that drives the other two off the rock gets sanctioned control of the planet. You pick which of the three Houses you want to act as the commander for, and set about harvesting spice. Refined spice is the most valuable commodity in the entire universe, allowing for interstellar travel, clairvoyance, prolonged life, sexual prowess, easy weight loss, abolishment of acne, it cures the common cold, and it makes toast delicious. Spice is only found in the sands of Arrakis, requiring you to send out giant harvesters to sift through the sand, bring the spice back to a refinery, and convert it to instant cash for use in purchasing upgrades and building up your war machine.

Just about every RTS standard you've gotten used to over the years is present here, which is a little surprising, because it indicates that Westwood had pretty much nailed the formula right out of the gate. You direct units entirely with the mouse. You have a fog-of-war that gets lifted by passing units. You have logical tech trees you must progress through, with structures that can be upgraded/researched to produce new units. You have a construction path you must follow, starting with your construction yard, adding power generators and refineries, which in turn open up weapons factories, which open up stronger weapon factories. You have a radar bunker that unlocks a minimap of the entire battlefield. You have lumbering harvesters that readily and autonomously seek out the nearest supply of spice, vacuum it up, and return it for processing. You have units that default to a "guard" mode where they fire on any enemy that comes into range, meaning they can act as capable defenders and do not require babysitting. A lot of people declare a lot of fond memories of playing this game, and even decades later, its easy to see why. This is a surprisingly strong title.

I look forward to more of your creepy, ambiguous gender.

But those used to modern RTS games will find it easy to pick out flaws in such an early attempt. Most glaring is the inability to select units as a group, by type, or with a lasso. Every unit is an individual, and must be independently directed with mouse clicks. Furthermore, you cannot automatically perform any of the moves with a click - you must first select a "move" command to get a unique cursor before you can move that unit. You must select "attack" before you can pick a target. I groaned at this when I started playing, but adapted to it pretty quickly. The ability of your units to take care of themselves means you don't have to rush around or risk annihilation. It actually helps the game feel a bit like a Risk-style board game that undoubtedly served as the inspiration for Dune II's gameplay.

There's a plot here that's easy to follow, tracking your House's progression across the impromptu territories of Arrakis. Events on and off the planet are shown through cutscenes, and you can expect some minor turns of events and some surprise units to show up. However, none of this changes your activities in the game. Missions always consist of two types - harvest, or harvest and destroy your opponents' bases. In fact, all three Houses share the same nine missions. It doesn't make a difference which side you're on in the base slugout missions, and only a few toward the end will put one House in a unique situation to the others. Sure, you'll get some different introductory text and an assistant who spouts lines suited to the demeanor of that House (Atreides as the "good guys," Harkonnen as the "bad guys"), but little about your selected allegiance actually impacts the gameplay.

Aside from sharing missions, all three Houses share 90% of buildings and equipment. Some light units are of the same style with different attributes; the Ordos Trike is a faster, less-armored variant compared to other Houses, but the only truly unique units are one or two per House that appear at the end of the game and the peak of the tech tree. It does mean you can play through the game as any of the Houses and never be at a particular disadvantage, but it doesn't encourage replay. Don't pick the game up expecting three branching storylines and vastly inimitable factions.

The Dune license seems well-used, and there are a number of gameplay implications that help make Arrakis unique from other RTS battlegrounds. There's no true weather to concern yourself with, but the inhospitable desert does slowly decay unattended buildings and reduce their effectiveness. Most of the levels are made of sand and unit-slowing dunes, with a few islands of rock that mark the only areas you can build structures on. You are encouraged to first lay concrete slabs as foundations, which must be funded, constructed, and placed separate from the actual building. If you're in a hurry, you can drop a building right on the rock with half its effectiveness, slower production times, and an increased rate of decay. Fremen make appearances and can be controlled by House Atreides later in the game. And even the concept of harvesting something for cash and power makes more sense in the context of Dune than in other military or mission-centric RTSs like Command & Conquer or StarCraft.

And of course, there are the sandworms. Worms are attracted to the vibrations of battle, and any unit traveling on sand stands a chance of being eaten. You'll actually see the worm snake around as a shadow of moving sand, and then break out of the surface to instantly destroy any loose unit. Staying on rock is your only sure defense, and they're never so aggressive as to make the game unfair, but they can offer a welcome distraction for your enemy and change the balance of a battle.

As it takes place in a sprawling desert, there's not much here to look at. But the important details are fortunately easily distinct - deserts, spice field, rock and dunes all are clearly seen and hazards avoided. Structures aren't terribly detailed, and units even less so, but again, you won't mistake one for another. If you do get confused, a picture of the unit you've selected and a text name appears in the sidebar, showing you their current health and orders as well. Since units are mostly identical across all the Houses, bright, primary colors instantly show which unit belongs to which faction. Explosions and animations are fairly simple and certainly not too "shiny," but if you think of this as an animated board game more than a video-card melting shockstraganza, then the whole look is pretty neat.

Sound Blasterized digital voices and effects are the order of the day, with some death screams I recognized from Wolfenstein, and frequently-reused "Moving out!" kinds of acknowledgments from units. While units all share these same phrases, each House does get a unique "narrator" updating you on the status of building and constructions. Music is staunchly awesome and fits the game perfectly with dark, sci-fi themes. About the only annoying tune is the frenetic action MIDI that plays whenever enemies or sandworms start to encroach on your territory. Perhaps its because it's the most overplayed of the bunch, but it's also a little too fast for the game. This is movie car chase tempo, and your interface holds you far back from reaching that intensity. On a side note, the fact that you can run over infantry with vehicles is hilarious, but the squish they make is priceless.

The AI is surprisingly good considering how little established precedent this game had to draw on, and what it must constantly keep track of. It's capable at attacking and self-preservation, quite good at pathfinding, and offers a fairly tenacious challenge as your opponent. It also appears to actually build its base in most of the levels, eschewing a pre-built, pre-placed scenario you're meant to overcome. I read complaints that the AI was pretty inept, but these appear to be in regards to way it's able to be cheated. I think it does just fine in standard play. It's not flawless, of course, and you'd be wise to keep an eye on any of your major attacking or defending groups. Units can't fire over each other, and must often be repositioned to get them all to fire on approaching enemies. Some in "guard" mode just outright ignore enemies right next to them for no apparent reason, and must be manually targeted. This can cause a fair amount of trouble with large attack or defense groups, and especially if you're not at least monitoring their progress.

Your enemy also charges directly from their base to yours - head in the direction they came from and you'll find their base. They occasionally drop units behind you by air, but they never flank. They also elect to send a steady stream of units out after you, rather than massing an unstoppable armada, and are pretty weak at defense (they'll just keep rebuilding whatever structure you destroyed instead of attacking from a second base or rebuilding in a different area). RTS vets might get bored with its simplicity, but overall, the AI puts up a competent fight.

Strategy is required, but in an admittedly limited sense compared to later games, or heavier simulations like Panzer General. I love the little touches, like how fighting over a spice field destroys the spice - which you can do intentionally if you want to try and deny your opponent some money, but you'd better be damn sure you don't need it yourself. But the full considerations of a strategy title aren't made yet. Lifting the fog of war over an area keeps it lifted, whether you have troops there or not. Units really don't have a specialty as in later games; infantry don't get a boost to attacking other infantry, tanks don't have a significant disadvantage against rocket troops, etc. Basically, your equipment just gets generically better as you progress. I abandoned infantry at all, to the point of not even building a barracks, once I learned that heavy quad bikes and tanks don't need their support. This can also result in somewhat prolonged battles. Infantry still take obscene amounts of tank shells and stay alive (a problem I have with almost all RTS games), but without a specialized anti-unit to cut through them like butter, it's mostly a case of building a fleet of your best units and ordering them all to pound one target after the other until you win.

Dune II is a masterpiece for its time. It didn't popularize the RTS genre simply for being first, it did so because it did the concept surprisingly well. Unfortunately, while the gameplay is timeless, the interface and the AI are not. These issues alone, coupled with the fact that RTSs really haven't changed all that much since this game's release, limit this recommendation to RTS fanatics and the curious. Later games are far more streamlined, but even with its faults, its still an excellent way to put Dune to a game, and a fitting start to a new weekend General genre.

-reviewed 7/24/07 - game copyright 1992 Virgin Games, Inc.

Surprisingly complete defining RTS title. Excellent adaptations of the themes from Dune.

Functional interface and AI, but not as refined as later titles in the genre. Few missions with extremely limited differences between the three factions.

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	76%

Dune II on MobyGames
Manual on replacementdocs
Intro and Gameplay video on YouTube