> ‘Dune II seems very old and clunky by today’s standards,’ says Joe. ‘The biggest single thing I should have added to it was the ability to drag-select units to allow a player to issue one order simultaneously to multiple units. Even though that seems like a simple feature, it was the key change that made C&C such a leap ahead of Dune II.’
That's what I was concerned about before I played through one of the three campaigns a few years ago — that the UI would seem unbearable after having played a lot of Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2. I found it actually quite OK after learning the keyboard shortcuts (of the Dos version). What actually ruined it for me and made me not want to play the other campaigns is the poor AI. Easy enemies would have been alright; I'm not that good at RTS games anyway and being able to finish each level on the first try was nice. But the opponents are so exceptionally stupid that it just got boring.
There are a few open source clones of the engine that have online multi-player and some other additional features (such as the standard multi-select). But I'm not aware of one that lets you play the single-player campaigns against a decently fun AI. Waiiit a moment … just found out that I had missed something big: Dune Legacy lets you play the campaigns, not just single-player skirmish, against its improved AIs. I just tried selecting ‘hard’ and (with game speed at maximum) got completely wrecked on the second map. Wonderful!
Dune (the adventureish one), on the other hand, is still a good game in its original form.
That's what I was concerned about before I played through one of the three campaigns a few years ago — that the UI would seem unbearable after having played a lot of Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2. I found it actually quite OK after learning the keyboard shortcuts (of the Dos version). What actually ruined it for me and made me not want to play the other campaigns is the poor AI. Easy enemies would have been alright; I'm not that good at RTS games anyway and being able to finish each level on the first try was nice. But the opponents are so exceptionally stupid that it just got boring.
There are a few open source clones of the engine that have online multi-player and some other additional features (such as the standard multi-select). But I'm not aware of one that lets you play the single-player campaigns against a decently fun AI. Waiiit a moment … just found out that I had missed something big: Dune Legacy lets you play the campaigns, not just single-player skirmish, against its improved AIs. I just tried selecting ‘hard’ and (with game speed at maximum) got completely wrecked on the second map. Wonderful!
Dune (the adventureish one), on the other hand, is still a good game in its original form.