Dune: Awakening has recently been released for consoles. I’ve been wanting to get my hands on this game for sometime as it’s always looked like the survival experience I wanted: Danger, tons of crafting, and the urgency to stay OUT of the sun.

Not As Confusing As The Movies

The story of Dune: Awaken is an interesting one. You are playing out an alternate universe where Paul Atreides was never born. The events of the original story are all changed dramatically and is able to branch out into it’s own thing rather than step on the toes of the already established Dune lore.

This leaves us with our character. We are a prisoner who gets to act as an agent/spy to investigate what has happened to the Freman. We crash land and begin our journey to discover the truth about the Freman and ourselves. Which house do we align with? What paths do we cross? It is all up to us.

Spanning through various Acts, Dune: Awakening takes us on a pretty epic (any maybe a tad overwhelming) journey over hours and hours of content.

Shelter Is Everything

I’ll be honest with you, I love the survival genre. Just one minor thing: I’m not great at it. These games usually require you to be crafty and resourceful. This is something I’m not. I spend my time actively avoiding quests and such because I’m too busy mining. Or fighting. I love combat. Dune: Awakening has changed my mindset as a whole towards the genre.

Not only have I been doing quests, I’ve also been learning how to craft a base that wasn’t just 4 square pieces of foundation, walls, and a flat roof. But why this game? Why is Dune the one that made it all click? The answer is unexpected: I was scared.

You see, at any time during your play through, you can make a little too much noise running through the open sand infested map. When you do such a thing, you anger a giant sand worm to pop out and chase you down. And eat you. And boy does he eat you. When you get gobbled up by this monstrosity, you lose everything in your inventory. Equipped items and all. This was my main source of motivation.

Besides that, you also need to avoid the sun as much as possible. Whenever you get too hot or dehydrated, you lose stamina and eventually, health. Moving at night is the best option but sometimes you just cannot wait. So you have to use everything you have learned to keep you alive during the daytime.

Dune: Awakening requires you to think stealthily and strategically. Place your base too close to the edge of the open sands and you’re constantly in danger of being wormed. Place your base under a spot that consistently has a night raid by some soldiers and they will hunt you until you reach your wit’s end. Being mindful and actually thinking of the best locations for you to build payoff in a big way.

Completing the main story quests often rewards you with research points used to learn how to make newer and improved stuff. A big part of the game is keeping hydrated in a world where there are no real rivers, lakes, or oceans. To do this, you need all the tools at your disposal. Researching blood purifiers to convert your enemies life sources into water is huge and something you’re likely wanting to improve upon early.

Weapons, vehicles, and base construction are all also part of this research and open you up to almost endless opportunities. When I mentioned being overwhelmed earlier, this was part of it. There are so many options to build your base. I flirted with the simple 4 walls at first but after being snacked upon by the sand worm a few times, I learned that I need to make my home viable.

You can scale your buildings to the sky as well which adds another layer of depth to Dune. Eventually, I was sitting on a 4 story home with an attached garage. All of this was born out of fear of losing everything as I had done earlier. At first I was upset but I realized it made me better. What a way to go.

I Walk This Lonely Road

I decided to give the multiplayer mode a go first as I do like to be social. Dune offers 60 players in a world at a time and even though my servers were packed, the first few hours were shockingly lonely. Remnants of old player bases were strewn across the opening area. I’d investigate these only to notice that maybe some one had gotten there before me as the base was empty or broken down.

It was rare that I saw an actual player. And with no real way (at least that I understood) to find anyone on my server, I felt sort of lost. I did play co-op with a friend for quite some time, but he and I eventually had to split and do different things.

But once I started entering some of the big world hubs and trading posts, people sporadically appeared. As I searched for a bank for one of my quests, I ran into players roaming around, shopping, and recruiting people for their own guilds. This is the social experience I want to see in games like this. They do make everything feel way more alive. I even had players following me around and offering help to survive the lay of the land.

Being able to receive assistance for the vast amount of things you can do in this game is extremely nice. Otherwise, I may have taken a lot longer for things to click. However, if I didn’t have a microphone or my friend to assist me, I wouldn’t have known much about the social aspect of Dune.

Draw Your Sword

Combat in Dune: Awakening consists of melee and ranged weapons. You’ll have your standard guns (pistols, assault rifles, etc) to your sharp and pointy objects (swords, knifes, etc). You can mix in some abilities to further assist you in battle as well.

Whenever you level up, you can place skill points in your skill tree and advance to your liking. I ended up going a route that made my poor aim an actual advantage. I would get more damage to legs/chest shots and a deduction to head shots. It absolutely fit my style of panic shooting.

The combat is fine and once you learn that some enemies just cannot be hit with your ranged weapon and you HAVE to use a melee, it becomes a lot easier to deal with. That being said, entering a new region seems to be the most dangerous thing you can do. Enemies will often have jumps in difficulty since you may not have the resource set yet in that specific area. There were a few times I’d place my base down and get wrecked by the new mobs in the area as they were immediately more powerful than I was. Once you get those resources, though, it’s all fine and dandy.

Should You Play It?

Dune: Awakening is a fantastic survival game under a game that has MMO-lite features. It may feel a bit lonely at times but it does include a single player mode if you do not want to be bothered with any of the social aspects. It has a few flaws and maybe some frustrating base building mechanics, but overall it is a solid experience. Even if you have been confused by the books or films, Dune: Awakening offers a fun challenge and rewarding arc that’ll keep you hooked for a long time.