I have restarted my Dune: Awakening review three, maybe four times now. Once when I was 50 hours in, another at 75 hours in, and I bring to you my review of the game as I cross the 100 hour mark. For a father with a full time job, kicking in 100 hours of anything that isn’t work or parental-duty related is kind of astonishing (please clap). Due to this, I feel like I am in a pretty good place to sit down and reflect on Funcom’s latest crafting survival MMO, Dune: Awakening. So sit tight because I am ready to take on this behemoth.
Dune: Awakening is a behemoth of a game. It’s a crafting survival game that leads you to a playground filled with trigger-happy griefers and well-organized teams of spice sand sifters that put me in a state of awe. It tries to do a lot, going against the grain of what we all consider a crafting survival game to be. Dune: Awakening has a story, has a less robust amount of things to build, and it doesn’t take prisoners, especially when you get into the endgame.
A Changed Universe
Awakening wants to tell you a story about what Arrakis is like without Paul and the population of the Fremen. As the opening cutscene states, the lack of Paul’s presence has a lot of implications on the events that unfolded in Frank Herbert’s novels. Because of this, we get to experience a few new elements that we haven’t seen in the books or the movies. Instead of the fall of house Atreides, we have this unique tale crafted from some of the minds now responsible for the Dune universe. Working closely with Brian Herbert, Funcom designed a narrative that not only brings you around Arrakis, but puts you face to face with some of the most infamous names in the books.
A few events unfold in a way that I can only say is “just purely Dune.” If you have read Messiah, the “epilogue” to Dune, or even the much weirder Children of Dune, then you will be incredibly familiar with some of the more outlandish aspects of the series. These bits of flavor make their way into the story, and I find it engaging. Although, due to the “live service” or MMO nature of Dune: Awakening, there are a few more elements missing. We don’t really have a full conclusion here. It ends with a bit of a “see you next time in Dune: Awakening” feel to it. It’s not really satisfying, but the moments just before it blow your mind.
Honestly, I am fine with how they ended it. I think it really embraces the tone set by Frank Herbert and doesn’t apologize for being kind of brash and unforgiving in a way. It wants you to just accept what is going on without holding your hand, and if you get it, then good. If you don’t, well then do not expect yourself to come around to this narrative or walk out with some profound fondness.
But, whatever. It is profound. The later moments of Dune: Awakening’s story is the epitome of Dune. It embraces the entire aura the series has been known for. Dune is a series that is more or less men standing in rooms talking. If Dennis Vellenueve didn’t have the action scenes throughout Dune: Part Two, then it would have been a borefest.
Awakening features conniving, mustache-twirling characters that feel like a slight exaggeration of their in-book counterparts. Some of the foes are actually quite charming, throwing the bald Harkonnen design out and adopting something more humane. Some of the characters you genuinely like embody the more nefarious features you wouldn’t expect, changing the way you would perceive them. Most importantly, due to the massive timeline change, other side characters who are new to this world represent the constant pressures of this timeline.
After joining the Atreides side of the conflict, I saw how this “war of assassins” was playing out and how it had a deep emotional effect on the characters around me, with a few becoming addicted to drugs to overcome their own reality, and how others deserted the cause for a future they thought was better (it wasn’t). Every quest might have the gameplay depth of a child’s pool, with “go here and kill X amount of people” and “fetch me a book at this location” type quests. Despite that, the narrative does draw you in.
Finally, I have to mention without spoilers how the final real chapter of the game changes the way you view your entire journey. As mentioned, Dune has always been a series of slow burns and buildup with a crescendo that feels earned. It is a chess game between two very skilled players. You watch pawns move, rooks taken out, and knights flank the opposition, all in the name of the coveted checkmate. Awakening embodies this fully, giving you a final mission that recontexualizes the entire game and how you perceive the players around you. Not to mention that the goal of the game is to find the Fremen and that goal isn’t achieved within this first (or second) act. It is open and legitimizes every single aspect of the game, including your repeated death. It is impressive, to say the very least.
Climbing the Crafting Ladder
That is enough about the story! Some of you are really here for the crafting and survival mechanics! What I found here is quite interesting but also incredibly tough for me to wrap my head around. Crafting survival games are logic games. They are puzzles meant to be solved by figuring out how to best gather materials for mass production of high-tier items. You would then use these tools to take on the most powerful elements of the world, but let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here.
If you have played one crafting survival game, you have played them all, for the most part. You climb up this ladder of materials, starting with scrap metal and graduating to copper, iron, and steel. This is where you make a leap up to aluminum, and that is where this entire experience changes. While there are so many items that can be built using aluminum, there are a ton of utilities that still require steel. That means you have to go back and make sure you have enough iron and carbon ore to make more steel. It could be a big logistical nightmare that borderline requires a spreadsheet and a fair share of ADHD meds. Luckily, you can build one large base and two smaller ones to help with your production line. Although you might not want to use all three in the Hagga Basin— the main area for your collecting needs and where you’ll spend 90% of your time.
I like how I have to strategize where I drop these bases. I have one main forward base up north near Aluminum which must be harvested like crazy with another base right near the outskirts of Sheol, a radioactive wasteland to help make the material considered the best for this area. And another base rests outside the long stretch of land that leads into a massive cavern where I could easily spend hours harvesting all the materials to make steel ingots and cobalt paste— materials you may need even though you are leagues above their tier grade. Unfortunately, with my traversal into the Deep Desert, one of these based had to go, but more on this later.
There are other items that you’ll need for sandbikes, ornithopters, and buggies. The map tells you exactly where you can find these materials. You can easily set your course and obtain the materials you need. This streamlines the experience, making it easy for someone like me to follow. But, due to you needing everything all the time, it can be easy to be overwhelmed, leading to a choice paralysis situation resulting in you just cycling around your bases aimlessly for hours. Dune: Awakening requires you to push yourself and find what it is you are looking for. The Hagga Basin isn’t as full of risky gameplay as one might think, and overcoming this mental hurdle can be challenging. But, nothing is as challenging and harder to push into than the game’s Deep Desert.
Getting to the Top
This is a section I had to re-write completely after my review was almost finished. That is because Funcom changed the way that the Deep Desert worked. The idea was to have a huge playable zone made up of PvP battles over the game’s rarest material: spice. The plan was to have guilds fight each other, but it turned into something completely different.
My experience with the Deep Desert is entirely my own. I cannot say that what I saw would be different compared to what you will experience. By the time I was ready to take on the challenge of dealing with other people, it changed. Instead of being a full PvP zone, half of it was dedicated to PvE. Although, a lot of the end game resources were placed on the PvP side of the map while a couple of morsels were left for the PvE players. This change didn’t go without some heavy feelings from the development team. But the players who thrived on griefing others within the PvP area felt the most betrayed by the change.
But the truth is that if this was such an integral part of the game, then why wasn’t there a better way to ease a player into it? Because others (myself included) felt that by jumping from the PvE experience directly into a PvP one without any sort of expectation, that it was a rug pull. And, if I am to be honest, I felt that way too. At least the PvE area of this huge map now introduces players to the whole concept in a much easier way. You can dip your toes in and not get them blown off. I’ll even say that you can go all the way to the deepest sections without getting assaulted, but that is a unique experience and never a guarantee.
The Deep Desert is where you will build one of your three bases and use it to harvest materials. Any cost relating to building is significantly reduced in the Deep Desert, and anything you break down rewards you with the full cost of what it took to build it in the first place. It is a great feature, but when you are a solo player, things get complicated.
You get the chance to have one really big base and two smaller ones. You can go into the Deep Desert and sacrifice the one large base for that zone or use a smaller outpost-like base. It’s not easy making this decision, which is why the game suddenly expects you to befriend others and create a guild. One member of this guild would have to devote their advanced sub-fief to the Deep Desert.
While the whole game can be done solo without issue, it is the Deep Desert that has you rely on others. You need to have that guild if you are looking to manifest as much spice as possible and build the best gear you could make. Otherwise, you are left to the mercy of other players.
Chip and Shatter
When faced against opponents in both the Hagga Basin and the Deep Desert, you will engage with the combat system. Shooting feels great, and I really like a handful of the abilities available for the given classes. You must use the Hagga Basin as your tutorial space for these abilities in many cases, learning the ropes as you figure out how different aspects work together.
You have four combat classes, consisting of Trooper and Mentat, which both operate in the ranged weapon area, and Swordmaster and Bene Gesserit as your melee options. There is also the Planetologist class, but it mostly focuses on gathering and collecting materials. The classes are very fluid and flexible, but the decisions you make don’t always feel all that compelling. I unlocked a throwable device— a hunter seeker mine that never felt like it did damage to any of the Hagga Basin enemies. Meanwhile, the Shiggawire grappling hook felt amazing to use!
Pair that with the weapon style you personally like, and you have yourself a pretty good system even though some of the talents aren’t as good. You do have to play around and figure out what is worth it to you. If needed, you can re-spec your classes, but then you can’t do it again ’til 48 hours are up.
Combat doesn’t just take place on foot, at least not in the Hagga Basin. When you get to the Deep Desert, you will mostly be flying around. The Ornithopters feel great to control, and there is a lot of versatility within their use. Some can have cargo containers, boosts, rocket pods, and sometimes a mix of all three. You have to think about what you are doing with these because there are a lot of pros and cons to each.
Another change that Funcom enabled was the speed of Scout Ornithopters. Depending on what you had equipped determined the maximum speed of your ‘thopter. Cargo would always be faster than rockets, for instance. This also caused a lot of grumbling in the Awakening community.
In the Hagga Basin, you will mostly stick to the Sandbike and the Buggy, both awesome vehicles. The Sandbike feels like you are riding a motorcycle across the great expanse, while the buggy is the optimal choice for mining and collecting resources. You can attach a rocket pod to the Buggy, but it feels ultimately useless. The only scenario where it seems beneficial is in the Deep Desert, but it is so vast and filled with sand that driving a Buggy there is a death sentence because, and I will not repeat myself, you can never outrun a worm.
Praise the Maker
Worms are an ever present threat in the sands. You will get eaten, one way or another, so prepare yourself for that immediate sense of dread and despair now. The worms tell you when they are coming, but when they get you and you are left with nothing in your inventory, it can hurt a whole lot. Recovering from this early in the game feels tough, but later in the game you should have enough materials at your base where it only feels barely like an inconvenience.
Nevertheless, the worms are still as threatening as ever. You think you mastered how they operate, and one day you make a dumb mistake where the only one you can blame is yourself. This has happened to me as I didn’t fly high enough to avoid the gaping mouth of the great old one— a ringmouth out in the Deep Desert.
You will always think you are better till you are not. It is a very humbling experience.
Spice Dreams
Now, while the game is great all around, there are tons of glitches that occur and scenarios that put me in a weird place. I have noticed that climbing up mountains sometimes puts my character in awkward poses that somehow drain my stamina more than usual. Other times I would get stuck in places. Sometimes, my ornithopter slides downward despite there not being an incline anywhere. Music will play loudly and then stop instantly. Every time I drive in a certain area, I can hear an audio log automatically repeat itself over and over. In the Deep Desert, my ornithopter did a couple of bounces like it was getting ready to dance. In some cases, people recalled their ornithopter getting hijacked by hackers, having resource nodes get blocked to prevent others from collecting from it, and so on.
There are so many issues with the game that, if it was a bigger studio making this game, it would have been seen as a complete failure. Yet, I’m not really holding it against them. Dune: Awakening is a complex game with a complex environment, and you are bound to have these issues pop up. A few of these issues, plus other glitches like item duplications, are being worked on. It is a bit on the slower side, but the amount of issues that Funcom is trying to solve makes it feel more like their own version of wack-a-mole. I don’t know much about programming, but I do know a lot about idioms.
Performance
I want to briefly mention how this game runs before we wrap this all up. On a 9000 Series Ryzen 7, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, a 2TB PCIe 5.0 SSD, and a Radeon RX 9070 XT, the game ran smooth as butter. If anything, I am impressed by Dune’s mostly optimized design. I haven’t had many issues and the ones that I did are so baked into the code that it becomes more of a developer issue rather than a player one. If anything, what I took the most out of this is how it feels like a test for the console version. Dune Awakening plays very well on the Steam Deck, which surprises me. It can be a taxing game at times when you have a slew of bases all around, but otherwise it runs incredibly well. It will only look better when it hits consoles later down the line.
Conclusion
As I finally wrap this review up, I don’t have a straight forward conclusion for you. It’s a good game. I like it a whole lot, but I am a huge Dune fan who likes crafting survival games. It might not be as deep as others, but there is a ton here to enjoy.
Instead of just leaving numbers at the bottom of the page, I am going to share with you an instance I had that changed the chemical composition in my brain like I drank the Water of Life.
I went into the Deep Desert during the weekend, a time where it should be overwhelmed and overtaken by the worst of the worst players. I went to the largest spice blow in the Deep Desert. Before I showed up, I was hailed by others telling me not to go. A small regiment of players overtook the area. They were armed to the teeth with top-tier Assault Ornithopters equipped with rocket pods and boosters. I flew right near them, and, before I could turn, it was too late.
But nothing happened.
Instead, I watched them work. A Carrier Ornithopter would drop and pick up a Sandcrawler— a vehicle designed solely to vacuum up sand. Guarding it were a handful of those Assault Ornithopters. I burned fuel watching them operate. Picking up the Sandcrawler and dropping it when the worm came and went, it was a well-oiled machine. I was in awe.
Then, one of their Assault Ornithopters came near me. A voice spoke, “Hey, you can gather some sand down there if you want. But if you change from cargo to rocket pods, we will light you up.”
I heeded the warning, and I had no rocket pods on me. They made no sense to me logically. I would rather haul tons of materials than blow enemies up. Plus, I was faster with cargo. So I go down, and, for about ten minutes, I was on edge.
I shot my compacter into the sand, watching all the spice gather up into a dirty pile. I would grab it, then the pile next to it, and the one next to that. The worm would come, and I hopped into my Scout Ornithopter. I watched it occur in unison with the 20 or so others who were there. A few minutes go by, my head is on a swivel, and I expect something to happen any minute.
I hear an explosion in the distance, followed by radio chatter. Another guild comes into the area, trying to lay claim to all that we have harvested! I hop in my ‘thopter immediately and take off. I am now praying to the maker that I return safely to my base. I am surrounded by the guild who started this process, and they wished me luck as we parted ways. It was an experience unlike any I have ever had.
I don’t know who they are, and I don’t know if I will ever see them again. But that is how these things go, an experience that had me on the edge of my seat, shouting commands into my microphone that wasn’t necessarily active when I hit the hotkey to talk. These are rare instances in games that make me believe in the vision of Funcom.
Even though my last run ended with my Ornithopter exploding due to my own actions, I am still eager as ever to jump back in and try again. Because Dune: Awakening is not a difficult game. It is one that wants you to respect it. And even though other players can ruin the fun and the experience, at least I know that I am having even the tiniest bit of fun.
One last thing… I said I had 100 hours of playtime at the time I am writing this review. I lied. I’m currently at over 160 hours as of finishing this sentence.
Thank you to Funcom for the review code for Dune Awakening. You can find our review policy here.
Extra Editorial Note
I don’t normally like to leave extra notes at the end of a review, but I felt it would be disingenuous of me if I didn’t make one final statement. One of the reasons why it took a while to review this game was due to a few internal issues with Funcom’s servers and a few updates. The team is working diligently to fix them so my experience changed quite often. I continued to remove old information and update it to properly reflect that of the current state of the game. Currently, it may suffer from some issues that I didn’t experience in my time with the game. I wish to extend a warning that if you choose to jump in, at least read up about the current experience. As you may be reading this months down the line where some of these elements may have changed. When larger updates and expansions do release, I will be covering those as well. Thank you.
