Desert Survival and Exploration

Experiencing the raw intensity of Dune: Awakening is like stepping into a living, breathing desert epic. Among its most unforgettable moments is the terrifying encounter with the colossal Shai'hulud, where I was swallowed by the mighty sandworm not once, but twice, each time leaving an indelible mark on my memory. These interactions highlight the game's core: the desert of Arrakis is not just a setting but a formidable force that commands respect and awe.

Throughout my extensive playtime—over 60 hours—the desert's harsh beauty and perilous environment constantly remind players of their small place within this grand universe. Whether navigating vast sands to evade the deadly maw of a sandworm or expertly piloting an ornithopter for the first time, Dune: Awakening immerses players deeply into Herbert's world, achieving a realism that surpasses even the acclaimed cinematic adaptations. The game boldly tackles the challenge of translating a complex sci-fi masterwork into an engaging interactive experience, balancing ambitious storytelling with gameplay that can sometimes feel repetitive or lacking clear direction in its later stages.

From the moment you begin, it’s evident that Funcom respects the source material. The game’s visual design draws heavily from Denis Villeneuve’s films—ornithopters, the Harkonnen's menacing architecture, and imperial bases all echo the cinematic aesthetic. Yet, the developers also inject their own creative touches, blending familiar imagery with fresh interpretations to craft a universe that feels both recognizable and unique—an authentic yet inventive take on Dune.

Set in a parallel timeline where key events diverge—most notably, the absence of Paul Atreides—the game creates a new battleground between House Atreides and House Harkonnen. This divergence grants Funcom the liberty to explore different storylines and surprises, enriching the narrative beyond Herbert’s original scope. The opening sequence exemplifies this approach: players are thrust into a Bene Gesserit reverend mother’s gom jabbar test—an iconic scene reimagined as a character creation ritual. Here, choices about appearance, background, social standing, and starting class (be it Mentat, Bene Gesserit, Swordmaster, or Trooper) are made, with the flexibility to unlock all roles through gameplay rather than restrictions at the outset.

Your first mission sets the tone: find the mysterious Fremen, the indigenous people of Arrakis who have vanished under strange circumstances. But it’s not long before reality hits hard. After a ship crash-lands you on the unforgiving desert surface, you’re left with only a battered knife and ragged clothing. The relentless sun beats down, hostile patrols scan the skies with searchlights, and the lurking sandworms are always hungry, ready to swallow any unwary traveler daring to cross the dunes. Every moment is a fight for survival, capturing the essence of Dune’s brutal, awe-inspiring wilderness.While I generally do not consider myself a fan of survival games, I found Dune: Awakening to be surprisingly engaging during its initial hours. The game begins with familiar mechanics—resource collection, crafting, and shelter construction—yet it introduces a clear overarching goal: survival on the harsh desert planet of Arrakis. Players are guided to craft specific items and gather essential materials, providing a sense of direction amidst the survival chaos.

One of the game's innovative features is its resource gathering method. Instead of traditional mining or chopping, players craft a device called a cutterray. This tool scans objects and uses a laser beam to dismantle them, adding a high-tech twist to resource collection. Despite its simplicity, this mechanic kept me invested for dozens of hours, highlighting how even basic gameplay elements can captivate when well-executed.

Water management is at the core of Dune: Awakening's survival system. Staying hydrated and avoiding direct sunlight are crucial, as prolonged exposure leads to sunstroke, dehydration, and ultimately death. Early on, survival involves scavenging dew from plants and even extracting blood from foes when desperate. However, as gameplay progresses, water transforms from a mere survival necessity into a valuable resource and currency. Crafting increasingly complex items demands more water, making efficient water collection an essential loop.

Building a more advanced base enables the creation of better equipment, requiring additional water and power. Although base-building is often my least favorite aspect of survival games like Fallout 4 or Valheim—feeling more like a chore than fun—Dune: Awakening simplifies this process. For players opting for minimal effort, base construction remains straightforward. Larger structures with more machinery necessitate investment, but the process of connecting walls, roofs, and floors is seamless. Power management is streamlined, as cables are unnecessary, and fuel is easy to obtain. Storage modules keep inventories organized, and transferring power between structures is intuitive, allowing players to focus on progression without tedious micromanagement.In my experience, building small outposts solo was surprisingly effortless compared to the larger bases I relied on friends and guildmates to develop in the late stages. This ease is partly due to a clever feature—shareable blueprints. Once you've constructed a base, you can save its layout as a blueprint and replicate it instantly in another location when you have the necessary materials, saving significant time and effort.

After establishing a modest base and crafting essential gear like water stillsuits, Dune: Awakening truly begins to shine. At this stage, you'll face the challenge of crossing vast desert expanses—dangerous territory inhabited by the legendary sandworms. Running across the open sands without caution is a quick way to attract these colossal creatures. Generally, dying in the game isn't overly punishing, with lost resources and durability recoverable upon return to the death site. However, being devoured by a sandworm is a different story: it results in the total loss of all equipment, weapons, resources, and currency carried at that moment—nothing can be reclaimed. This high-stakes risk injects a persistent sense of danger into desert traversal, even after acquiring your first vehicle.

The game excels at conveying a sense of progression and mastery over the harsh desert environment. Starting with nothing but rags, players can soon craft a suspensor belt, leveraging anti-gravity tech to navigate cliffs and avoid falls more easily. Within hours, players can build their first sandbike, dramatically expanding their exploration potential across the sands of Arrakis. The sense of advancement continues as, after many hours, players gather enough resources to produce their first flying ornithopter. This airborne vehicle transforms the gameplay, enabling quick access to distant, previously unreachable locations and streamlining resource collection across the main Hagga Basin map.Navigating the desert landscape in Dune: Awakening can be a double-edged sword. While vehicles like bikes offer speed and agility, they also come with significant risks. I personally experienced two critical moments where my sandworm-related deaths occurred while riding my bike. One incident was a result of my own negligence—trying to follow friends across the sands and underestimating the proximity of a lurking sandworm. Believing I could reach the safety of nearby rocks in time, I pressed my luck, only to be swiftly consumed by the creature, losing both my life and my vehicle.

Such setbacks can be deeply disheartening, often leading players to abandon the game altogether after suffering such losses. Recognizing this, Funcom seems to have incorporated some mercy into the gameplay. After my first encounter with death by a sandworm, I was offered a Fremen vision, providing a rare opportunity to recover my lost sandbike once. I eagerly took the chance, only to meet the same fate hours later—this time, by driving into quicksand. As I struggled to escape, the sandworm reappeared and ended my attempt. Fortunately, I managed to save my vehicle beforehand by storing it in what appears to be a pocket dimension, using the game's vehicle-backup feature—an exception to Dune lore that emphasizes gameplay convenience over realism.

Progressing past the initial vehicle unlock marks a turning point in Dune: Awakening, opening up the world for exploration. Early in the game’s main storyline, players are tasked with uncovering Fremen shrines scattered across different regions. Visiting these sites deepens your understanding of Fremen culture and unlocks the ability to craft essential desert survival tools, such as thumpers.

Advancing your crafting capabilities involves collecting specific materials found exclusively in certain regions, which encourages thorough exploration. Unlocking advanced recipes requires earning intel points—gained through leveling up and discovering hidden intel within enemy NPC camps. As someone who prefers to clear entire regions before moving forward, I often found myself accumulating more intel than I could immediately utilize. Roaming from enemy camp to camp, fighting through foes with a melee-focused sword mastery, became the core loop of the experience: survey an area, eliminate threats, gather intel, unlock recipes, craft better gear, and then move on to the next zone. This cycle—exploration, combat, resource gathering, and progression—drives the gameplay forward, making the vast desert feel alive and full of purpose.

Game Mechanics and Combat

The gameplay loop in this game revolves around a self-sustaining cycle that can last for many hours, even amidst combat scenarios. However, it’s important to note that combat isn’t the game’s standout feature. The game’s setting, rooted deeply in the Dune universe, offers a distinctive experience where combatants still rely on traditional weapons like knives and swords thousands of years into the future. Shields that render firearms nearly useless add an intriguing layer to encounters, creating a strategic rock-paper-scissors dynamic. For instance, using slow, lore-accurate heavy attacks—akin to Dune's version of a heavy blow—to bypass enemy shields is particularly satisfying, especially since the game visually and audibly echoes the iconic Dune films by Villeneuve.

Players also have access to a variety of ranged weapons, including dart-guns that come in forms such as pistols, assault rifles, snipers, shotguns, and miniguns. My personal favorite is the drillshot, which fires slow, penetrating darts effective at disabling shields. Once shields are down, I can swiftly close the gap to engage in melee combat, making for seamless combat flow.

Gameplay mechanics are relatively straightforward—there’s a stamina bar, a parry button, and a short-range dash—yet they are sufficient to keep encounters engaging. The presence of heavily shielded enemies who are nearly invulnerable unless approached with proper tactics prevents battles from becoming monotonous, despite fighting a limited pool of enemy types in similarly styled structures throughout the game.

However, staying true to Herbert’s lore posed limitations for Funcom, resulting in a somewhat monotonous variety of enemies and locations. The universe lacks robots or "thinking machines," and aside from sandworms, there are no alien species or fantastical monsters. This restriction confines enemies to a handful of human archetypes—knife-wielders, ranged assault enemies, snipers, and heavily shielded foes wielding miniguns or flamethrowers. Some late-game adversaries share abilities with the player, such as anti-gravity fields or Bene Gesserit combat techniques, but these differences rarely alter the overall combat experience significantly.

This uniformity extends to the game's dungeon-like imperial testing stations, which feel nearly identical across different locations. While the depiction of Arrakis is impressively authentic and visually striking, the gameplay experience tends to plateau after about twenty hours. Major milestones—such as unlocking new vehicles or class skills—offer some fresh elements, but much of the game’s content feels recycled and predictable.

Combat is where the class system becomes most apparent. Players can equip three active abilities at once—additional ones are unlocked through the main storyline—and three "techniques" that provide various benefits. Passive abilities, which constitute the majority of class trees, can be learned without limit. My initial focus was on the Swordmaster class, which enhanced melee capabilities through special parries, increased damage, and stamina boosts. Over time, I expanded into other class trees by completing quests offered by class mentors, deepening the gameplay.

Beyond the main storyline, these trainer missions are the primary narrative drivers, featuring voice-acted NPCs and storylines that draw heavily from Herbert’s lore. Sadly, I wish there were more of these narrative-rich quests. Most of the other missions—referred to as contracts—are simple fetch-and-kill quests obtained from mission boards at outposts, often feeling like filler content typical of MMOs—such as killing a set number of enemies or collecting items. While the main story does deviate from this pattern with more engaging and atmospheric quests, like the Fremen vision quests that emphasize platforming and environmental challenges, much of the questing feels like busy work. Overall, the game’s quest design offers moments of depth but is predominantly repetitive and routine.In Dune: Awakening, players will find class trainers strategically located across the Hagga Basin and the game's two central social hubs. The game rewards dedication by granting experience points for various activities such as resource gathering, exploring uncharted territories, or defeating foes, which in turn unlock skill points. However, early gameplay can feel somewhat restrictive, as players often accumulate more skill points than they can immediately utilize due to limited access to trainers. This creates a bottleneck in the sense of progression, especially since the initial class trainers are not conveniently located—most notably, the Bene Gesserit trainer is situated on the far side of the map, making early skill development less intuitive.

Fortunately, Dune: Awakening offers a respecialization system that allows players to reallocate skill points with minimal penalty—only a 48-hour cooldown—permitting experimentation with different builds. This flexibility enables gamers to invest points temporarily and adapt their strategies as they unlock new class trees over time. The Bene Gesserit skill tree, in particular, stands out with its flashy abilities, including the iconic "voice" powers that can stun opponents or grant superhuman speed, adding a layer of tactical depth to gameplay.

Despite these features, the utility of class abilities diminishes in the game’s endgame, which revolves heavily around ornithopters. Once players craft their own flying machines, they gain access to the Deep Desert, a dynamically changing map that rotates weekly. This area is a hotspot for the most valuable resources, including large quantities of spice—the essential currency for crafting top-tier gear and base upgrades. Gathering these materials involves considerable effort; the process can be described as a grind, especially since high-quality equipment requires substantial resource collection.

Originally, much of the Deep Desert was a PvP zone where factions clashed over resources. Large guilds or groups of players used their ornithopters to dominate solo players from the air, while ground combat was rarely seen. Recognizing the issues caused by this imbalance, Funcom introduced changes to make the zone more accessible; now, approximately half of the Deep Desert is PvE, allowing solo players or those less interested in PvP to gather resources without constant threat. Still, the most lucrative deposits remain within the PvP zones, maintaining a competitive edge for organized groups.

While some of these adjustments improve the endgame experience, a core issue persists: the grind for spices and resources feels disconnected from tangible goals. The game lacks challenging PvE raids or endgame activities that reward players with the best gear, making continued effort seem somewhat pointless beyond resource accumulation. Much of the endgame involves repetitive tasks such as clearing camps, mining, or raiding imperial stations for recipes—activities that can become monotonous. Although acquiring powerful gear and running spice-mining operations can be satisfying, there’s little incentive to push further unless players seek dominance in PvP.

Most players are likely to conclude their journey after completing the main storyline and reaching the Deep Desert. Nevertheless, the hours spent exploring and experiencing the game’s universe are worthwhile. Funcom has successfully transformed Herbert’s legendary planet Arrakis into a vibrant and immersive setting. Dune: Awakening blends elements of RPGs, MMOs, survival, base-building, sci-fi helicopter simulation, and third-person shooting into a complex yet cohesive experience. Although it suffers from limited enemy variety and a lack of meaningful endgame goals, the game excels at capturing the essence of the Dune universe. When the spice flows, it’s easy to lose oneself amidst the vast dunes for hours—just be cautious of attracting the wrath of Shai-Hulud.

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