'Dune' Video Games Need Another Chance

Dune 2000 (1998)

Sandcraft: Brood War

Dune 2000 was a heaping pile of worm dung. Six years after Dune II blew the doors off of the RTS genre and showed everyone how it’s done, Dune 2000 promised to do the exact same thing.

… the only problem is that it did the exact same thing– it’s basically the same game as Dune II, but six years later. Six years between games is a long time now, but six years between games in this era is the difference between the SNES and the N64. Games that came out even two years previously might age badly, but six? Nobody wants that. 

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Emperor: Battle for Dune (2001)

The secret to a successful game is making it nighttime.

Westwood, the company behind Dune II and Dune 2000, had learned their lesson from remaking Dune II and not modernizing it. Players weren’t happy, and they did what any reasonable game company would do: they doubled down and made basically the exact same game again. The graphics are nicer, and the story is way meatier, but Emperor gets absolutely panned because it has bad multiplayer, terrible pathing, and AI, and wasn’t up to date on what players of RTS games expected from their controls. If Dune 2000 bombed, Emperor went atomic, and had its own feature in Computer Gaming World titled “The Emperor Has No Clue.” This is the beginning of the end.

'Dune' Video Games Need Another Chance
Source: Pinoy Daily News