Dune II: The Battle For Arrakis

DOSBox, Dune II: The Battle For Arrakis (1992) game

Playing through the original 'Dune' for the first time only increased my appetite for revisiting one of my favourite games, the sequel, 'Dune II: The Battle For Arrakis.' I could have gone for the much-loved Amiga version, having got the old computer up and running again after a year out, but I chose to play on DOSBox for the convenience and novelty of playing it on my Mac. In deference to the first time I ever played it in the late nineties, I chose House Ordos to make my conquest with. I completed the game on the Amiga with all three Houses, which shows how much I enjoyed the game, but I must say it did seem on this occasion to be a much shorter game: only nine missions test you to the end, and a couple of the early ones are typically undemanding, but I was soon thoroughly engaged with what was the original real-time strategy title.

It looked as good as I remembered it, but it was a quite different experience when following directly on from the first 'Dune' - the end of that game suggested a close tie in story and style, but actually the two games are pretty far apart. The fact that you have the choice of three House, Atreides, Harkonnen or Ordos, perhaps limited the story potential, because at the end of the first 'Dune' Paul Atreides has become Emperor, and it's clearly not him in the throne this time around, it's more like a parallel or alternate story, with improved gameplay mechanics. There are a lot of things the RTS genre would come to take for granted, but which isn't in evidence here, and noticeably so: usually things like the fact you can't group units and must laboriously click on each one and assign it a task individually, so that RSI is a real danger in the heat of battle! But I still remember the thrill of hearing digitised speech and all those "Acknowledged!" and "Yes, sir," communications from your troops. It's also memorable for giving you the choice of which playing style you want, with Atreides being the aboveboard good guys, Harkonnen the avowed villains, and Ordos the treacherous middle ground (rather like the Romulans, which also fits the green House colour - that would make Atreides the Federation and the Harkonnen the Klingons…).

The music on this version wasn't as atmospheric as the Amiga's that I remember, but then that machine was famed for its superior audio quality. The attraction of Arrakis' yellow sands, orange Melange, the spice of life, literally, counterpointed by the bright unit colours of blue, red or green were always a visual delight and still have a pixellated beauty to them even now. The game was a challenge, but not insurmountable, even though it was always wise to keep track of how much spice was on the map, since once it was gone, the attempt was pretty much over: without spice to convert into credits there'd be no more repairs to your slowly degrading buildings in the harsh desert world, no more armies to build and destroy the opposition, and no more point to be there, and a couple of missions were right down to the wire, with attempts to destroy the last one or two enemy buildings reliant on the scarce remaining credits and existing resources. In regard to RTS, the game isn't a patch on 'Age of Empires,' yet it's still an astonishingly playable and complete gaming experience, highly worthy of the attention of any student of games history, and even anyone that fancies a fun title.

The introduction of improving military units and facilities is very well-judged, doesn't overwhelm the player and instead fills them with curiosity over what each new advance will bring, tactically. There's also the fact that each House has different strengths and weaknesses to add, yes, spice, to the pot. But it's very much a race against time to develop and upgrade in each mission, get defensive structures up so you can gather resources in order to build an army of sufficient strength to strike the enemy from the face of the map. And it is so much of an improvement over the clunky system used in the first game. Even though it doesn't have quite the visual impressiveness of 'Dune' (the 3D flying sections, for example), it focuses down onto the key gameplay and improves the experience no end. Would I rate the game now as one of the best I've ever played if I had no prior attachment to it? No, I'd probably think well of it, and certainly as a significant upgrade to the first instalment it wins hands down, but with the nostalgia attached it remains a very special game in the same conversation as 'The Settlers' and 'UFO: Enemy Unknown,' not to mention the first two 'Age of Empires' titles, and one that was a real pleasure to revisit, though not one that I was so enamoured with that I wanted to jump straight back in and play through as the other Houses.

*****