It's been over a year since Dune Awakening debuted on PC (you'll never guess in which month). Depending on who you ask, it was either a fantastic, atmospheric survival game, or a tedious desert trek even more boring than someone trying to explain Children of Dune to you unsolicited in a crowded bar. Now, alongside a big update on PC, it's arrived on PS5 and Xbox Series X, just in time to binge during the wait for Dune: Part Three.
Regardless of what you thought of it, there's no denying Funcom created an impressive open-world take on Arrakis, Dune's super-deadly desert planet. We called it a "true Dune love letter" in our Dune Awakening review. A beautiful recreation that nailed the look of Villeneuve's films, all made with a clear love for the source material and a clear hatred of onboarding anyone not familiar with said source material. Yeah, fair warning – if the words 'Bene Gesserit' are gibberish to you, do not start here.
The good news is it's still a visual treat on PS5. You can choose between lovely silky-smooth 60fps, which we all know is the mode a true Messiah would play. Or you can blaspheme and play at 30fps, which admittedly adds more visual detail and suffers less pop-in I suppose. As you've probably guessed, I'm a 60fps stan. The game feels far better to play, still looks terrific, and the pop-in is minimal enough to be a worthwhile compromise.
The setup; you're some nobody who's being shipped off to Arrakis to enjoy a life of endless slavery. But then your ship is blasted out of the sky, leaving you stranded in the middle of the desert (to be fair, Arrakis is basically all desert). The sun wants to burn you alive, water is seemingly scarcer than a first-party PlayStation game release, and a walk on open sands will likely end with you in the belly of a giant worm. Yikes.
It's a great hook for a survival game. My genre favourites, Subnautica and Grounded, love throwing you into a desperate situation, knowing that it'll be far more rewarding when you somehow survive against impossible odds. Considering Arrakis could only be more hostile if the ground was made out of freshly-unpinned grenades, Dune Awakening has the potential to be one of the best survival games and a true all-timer.
Except, over a year since release, this still feels like a game that's spread itself too thin without nailing the basics. It doesn't want to be seen as 'just' a survival MMO – it now even has a strictly single-player mode. It's also got stealth, shooting, climbing, flying, vehicle combat, and more. But, all those moving parts aren't as polished as they could be, meaning the core survival experience suffers.
Take the water system. Water is everything on Arrakis. It powers your base, your tech, your powers, and you quickly start to suffer when you run out. You can drink the dew from flower patches for some limited hydration, but it's clear from the disgusted bark your character makes that Dune Awakening considers this gross. That's why it encourages you to murder people and harvest water from their blood instead. OK then.
هەفتانە هەرسکردنەکان، چیرۆکەکانی ئەو کۆمەڵگایانەی کە خۆشت دەوێن و زۆر شتی تر
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.gamesradar.com/games/survival/dune-awakening-is-slick-on-ps5-but-its-still-a-paul-of-all-trades-rather-than-a-survival-messiah/
