Dune Awakening review – An exhilarating adventure in a deadly yet beautiful desert – Destructoid

While many Survivalcraft and MMO games have come before it, Dune: Awakening is a remarkable example of an experience that builds off preexisting ideas and transforms them into its own identity.

Dune: Awakening takes place in the world of Arrakis, a harsh desert planet inhabited by scavengers, scrap resources, and perilous sandworms. You, on the other hand, are a foreign prisoner sent to Arrakis to learn more about the Fremen’s disappearances. All the while, you’re forced to survive on this planet by gathering resources, avoiding its various dangers, and either working alongside or fighting other players.

Even beyond gaming, it takes an established story, Dune, and builds off it using modern game mechanics and beautiful visuals while still maintaining its core idea. Whether you develop a civilization with numerous other players or go on a solo adventure and fend for yourself is entirely up to you, giving you a few different paths that will affect your experience.

I’ve been a fan of MMOs and survival games for most of my life. I started with Runescape in early 2006, with Dune: Awakening being the latest entry in my ever-growing library. I was mostly a solo player, making my playthrough more challenging yet exhilarating as I worked extra hard to gather all the resources I needed to stay alive, let alone progress. If you want an MMO with gradual progression and a noticeable lack of hand-holding aside from initial tutorial pop-ups, Dune: Awakening will be right up your alley from the start.

At its core, Dune: Awakening is all about survival. While there are questlines that dive more into Arrakis’ environment and the circumstances of the Fremen’s disappearance, survival is your top priority until you get your bearings and establish yourself enough to safely explore without stressing about water and shelter. Once you’re there, you can get to the fun part: the danger.

Everything about Arrakis is dangerous. It’s a desert, so you need to constantly think about having enough water on hand to stay alive and finding shade to avoid burning to a crisp. Along the way, you may accidentally stumble upon a scavenger’s base of operations and have to fight or run away from them. Even if you survive that, there’s the chance of a sandworm finding you and gobbling you up or a sandstorm killing off your character, making you lose everything on hand. It’s unforgiving and cruel, which is exactly what makes Dune: Awakening so captivating.

Where there’s fun, though, there are some downsides. Dune: Awakening heavily relies on gunplay when fighting enemies, with melee being a somewhat viable, albeit noticeably weaker option. NPCs also aren’t particularly difficult to battle, making them more of a mindless obstacle like in most MMOs. Even the sandworms pose little threat, as you can easily avoid them unless you go out of your way to draw their attention.

Dune: Awakening encapsulates everything I want from a survival MMO game. There’s an interesting storyline, a beautiful world worth exploring, and some grindy aspects to keep me playing for as long as I want. If I’m only limited to an hour, I can quickly gather some resources and progress through a couple of quests before leaving. If I’m available all night, I can get a few friends to tag along to build a massive base in the middle of the desert and laugh when one of them gets eaten by a sandworm. It has some room for improvement with its combat, but with some polish, it can easily stand among the greats within both survival and MMO gaming genres.