Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet From: fhinf@iraul1.ira.uka.de (Thomas Baetzler) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Dune II -- Battle for Arrakis Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.games Date: 17 Jul 1993 13:46:30 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 208 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <228vrm$k69@menudo.uh.edu> Reply-To: fhinf@iraul1.ira.uka.de (Thomas Baetzler) NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu Keywords: game, strategy, war, commercial PRODUCT NAME Dune II -- Battle for Arrakis BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dune II is basically a strategy game in the vein of the classic Empire, or the wargaming aspect of Civilisation. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Produced by Westwood Studios. Distributed by Name: Virgin Games Address: 338a Ladbroke Grove London W10 5AH England Telephone: ++43 81 960 2255 Name: Virgin Games France Address: 223 Rue de la Croix Nivert 75015, Paris France Telephone: ++33 101 331 4842 1919 LIST PRICE 69.95 DM; approximately $40 (US). SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS A flyer states that Dune II requires at least 1.5 MB of RAM and a hard disk. The game somes on five disks. Installation size is approximately 3.8 MB. The game works just fine with OS 2.04. While it is possible to play Dune II on a "basic" 68000 system, a faster CPU is highly recommended. COPY PROTECTION Dune II features an infrequent "look up a fact in the manual" check. The five installation disks are not copy protected, so you can back them up if you feel the need for additional security. I think this kind of copy protection is acceptable. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING I am playing Dune II on an A2500/030 running OS 2.04, using a GVP Series II host adapter. The machine features 1 MB of Chip RAM, 4 MB of 32-bit RAM, and 2 MB of 16-Bit Fast RAM. REVIEW Somewhere in time and space lies the planet Arrakis, also known as "Dune." It's surface is a gigantic desert, inhabited only by the "fremen" and the ferocious sand worms. And yet it is of vital interest to the Empire, because it is the only known source of the spice Melange, a drug with truly wondrous powers. The scenario starts out with the Emperor in dire need of great quantities of spice. In order to increase the harvesting, he offers a contest to the three most powerful families on Dune: the family who produces the largest quantity of Melange will be given exclusive harvesting rights. So the righteous Atreides, the cunning Ordos and the treacherous Harkonnen get down to battle it out among themselves. You play the role as Chief of Staff for one of the three houses of Dune, bound to win nine battles in a war for total domination of the planet. Each house offers its own specialised units, and also represents a different level of difficulty. Each battle starts out with a short briefing by your advisor, after which you get to the main game screen. It consists of a large map area, with a command box to the right. Just below the command box is a small radar screen that can display an overview of whole playfield. From two sort-of menus at the top of the screen, you can get help about the game. An option window allows you to load and save games, set game speed, and such. Scattered around the map are your buildings, vehicles and soldiers - usually called "units" in that genre. You command those units by clicking on them to activate them, and then selecting an action from the command box. Depending on the type of the unit, your choices vary. For example, to create buildings you instruct your construction facility to do so. Step by step, you build up your base complete with factories for armored vehicles, power generators, and perimeter defenses. Most vital of all are the spice refineries, because only by harvesting spice and processing it can you gain the money necessary to build up your outpost. Once you feel up to it - or whenever your opponent feels up to it - the battle starts. Dune II features an impressive array of mobile and stationary weaponry that can be put to good use. Orchestrating a battle on Dune can be much fun, but it also takes up a lot of time. While the earlier conquests can usually be handled in a few minutes, they get rapidly more and more taxing while the game progresses. Also, between conquests, there's a tactical map display that lets you select your next battle, so there are 66 scenarios in all to explore. And the ending? After having finished the last battle, you find yourself in disgrace with the Emperor - so the battle will possibly continue in one or several Dune II Data Disks. Like the original Dune game, the graphic presentation is quite convincing. While the game itself doesn't depend solely on its graphics, they certainly enhance the gameplay. The sound effects accompanying the game are nice, but probably nothing to write home about. Basically, it's atmospheric background music interspersed with "action" sounds like shells going off, and unit commanders responding with "operation complete" and such. Maybe they've gone a bit too far by letting soldiers die screaming when you hit them with a truck.... Overall, the game control is very intuitive, so you can get right down to playing once you have understood the basics of the game. Since each level of the game offers more and more hardware to play with, the fight for supremacy on Dune never gets dull. Your computer opponent isn't too smart, but he's got some quite effective offensive maneuvers up his sleeve. However, at no level the computer player exposes the same cunning as an expert human player would do. DOCUMENTATION Dune comes with a nicely designed 56-page A5 booklet containing basic instructions for the game as well as some "background" information on the political situation on Arrakis. A thorough description of the different units in the game serves as base for the protection lookup. The Amiga version also includes a "quick start" leaflet with instructions on how to install the game. While this is rather short, I found the information presented to be sufficient. LIKES AND DISLIKES I would like to see a version of Dune II that allows two or more players to engage in head to head combat via modem or (even better!) network. However, I don't expect to see this any time in the near future: the additional effort in programming couldn't possibly be offset by extra sales. While I have no conclusive information as to the state of things concerning Dune II Data Disks, I have heard such disks are already available for the IBM PC. I'd just love to see them on Amiga, too. Last but not least, I have to congratulate Virgin on publishing a great game with a reasonable price tag! I hope users all around will catch on and make their experiment worthwhile. BUGS What I really hate about Dune is the fact that the game grabs its input directly from the hardware, no matter if its screen is currently active or not. Basically, this prevents you from using multitasking for anything else but batch jobs. VENDOR SUPPORT Virgin offer customer support for exchange of defective media and such. WARRANTY Virgin does not offer any kind of warranty except as such provided by local law. CONCLUSIONS Dune II is certainly a very good game, and possibly a bargain at the price asked. If you like playable strategy games, this one's for you. With Data Disks coming out, I feel it's got a great long time value. I rate it 4 stars out of 5. COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1993 Thomas Baetzler. All rights reserved. You can contact me at: Medic BSS, 2:241/7454.2@fidonet (safest way?) fhinf@iraul1.ira.uka.de (until October 1993) s_walter@irav1.ira.uka.de (will be forwarded to me) Thomas Baetzler, Herrenstr. 62, 76133 Karlsruhe, FRG Voice: ++49 (0)721 29872 Medic BBS: ++49 (0)721 496821 --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews