Dune 2 Review: The Original RTS

cf. History of 1990s Computer Games.

Dune 2 Review

Developed by Westwood Studios and released in 1992 for MS DOS PCs, Dune 2 is a realtime strategy game (RTS) famous for formalizing the feature-set of the RTS genre, thereby paving the way for WarCraft and Command & Conquer [1].

cf. Real-time Strategy Games PC.

The Battle for Arrakis. The planet Arrakis, known as Dune.

Land of sand. Home of the Spice Melange.

The Spice controls the Empire. Whoever controls Dune controls the Spice.

The Emperor has proposed a challenge to each of the Houses. The House that produces the most Spice will control Dune.

There are no set territories. And no rules of engagement.

Vast armies have arrived.

Now three Houses fight for control of Dune.

The noble Atreides. The insidious Ordos. And the evil Harkonnen.

Only one House will prevail.

Your battle for Dune begins! -- Westwood, 1992.

As suggested by Dune 2, the basic aspects of RTS or arcade strategy games are:

• Faction selection
• Acquisition of resources
• Base Building
• Military build-up
• Battle

cf.

• Precursor to Dune 2: BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge Review.
• RTS wargame that predates Dune 2's genre formalization: PowerMonger Review.

With commands given via a combo of mouse and hotkeys, all actions are conducted in full realtime with arcade-action gameplay. That is, there is no active pause and there are no discrete turns as there are in the more meditative turn-based strategy genre, with which RTS games are often contrasted.

Named after and drawing loosely from the sci-fi novel, Dune (1965), Dune 2 consists of a series of realtime strategy build-and-battle missions that are linked together by a world map and narrative cutscenes. The world is given some depth through references to Dune lore.

In Dune 2, the player assumes the role of military commander for one of three conquesting noble houses [2] that are warring over the spice resource on the desert planet known as Dune, aka Arrakis. The object of the game is to:

• Harvest Dune's spice (a valuable commodity)
• Convert the spice into credits by means of a refinery (a monetary unit)
• Use the credits to build installations and military units, as well as upgrade them
• Use those military forces against the other two AI-controlled rival houses on Dune, as well as elite Sardaukar Imperial forces (House Corrino)

Dune 2's "battlescape" is presented in top-down perspective at a viewport resolution of 320x240 in 8 bit color depth or 256 colors. The battlescape depicts the surface of the planet, Dune, whose terrain is made up of tiles upon which structures (buildings) are placed and combat units are moved about, positioned, and set against rivals.

There are five different terrain tiles in Dune 2:

• Sand: The most common terrain-type. Easy to cross but are the province of sand worms
• Spice Field: Bronze-colored tiles that for movement purposes are the same as sand
• Dunes: Slows the movement rate of ground units
• Rock: The only tiles that can be built upon. Off-limits to sand worms
• Mountain: Only infantry units may cross mountain tiles

Impressively, terrain becomes scorched and cratered from battle. In addition, ground vehicles leave tracks in the sand and become smoldering wrecks when destroyed.

The four-way avatar-anchorless screen-scrolling of Dune 2's battlescape is so slow and jerky as to be all but useless. Instead, it is more efficient to click on the minimap to jump to a position or either right-click the viewport or employ cursor keys in order to move the view about in accurate tile-sized increments.

Below left: The Harvester vehicle is harvesting the spice. A hostile infantry unit is attacking the harvester. Allied trikes quicky move in to neutralize the threat. Note the fog of war or black-space. More on that later.

cf. Sid Meier's Civilization 1.

AI-controlled commanders and players each start off with a pre-built Construction Facility from which concrete slabs and all other structures are built. As foundations for structures, concrete slabs must be built first and then placed down upon the tiles (rock tiles only, not sand tiles).

Then, structures can be built and placed down upon the slabs. The larger the structure, the more concrete slabs it requires.

The construction of most structures consumes time, credits and power. Once placed, the buildings are represented as icons with little in-icon animations, which is a nice visual touch that is taken for granted nowadays (if noticed at all).

In order to limit avenue of approach, concrete walls can be built and turrets can be installed around bases.

Dune 2 units (infantry and weaponized vehicles) are represented by animated sprites that move across or fly over the terrain in eight directions in response to mouse-driven commands, assisted by hotkeys. Combat unit movement rates differ from unit to unit, and terrain-type can reduce unit speed or block movement entirely.

Adding to replayability, some combat units are House-exclusive: Ordos favor stealth and mobility, Harkonnen are the heavy-hitters, and Atreides constitute the middleground.

Both buildings and combat units have durability ratings with viewable HP bars -- and are destructible -- but both buildings and units can be repaired (units require a Repair Facility).

Indicating the commander's lack of intelligence as it pertains to terrain, fog of war is represented as black-screen or blank, unseen tiles of terrain which are revealed as mobile units explore the uncharted territory in their quest to locate spice farms and enemy locations.

Dune 2 is a fast-paced game. Indeed, it can feel frenetic at times. The realtime gameplay demands quick thinking and quick reflexes from the player. As a rule, there is little time to sit around twiddling our thumbs. We're not just building, but also exploring or at least tweaking combat unit positions. We're always thinking ahead, consolidating, predicting and adjusting: players are often forced to modify their strategy in response to enemy activities.

If our strategy becomes unworkable, we can always reload to an earlier savegame until a workable strategy is devised. Thus, casual gamers should be able to make considerable in-roads if they have the patience to retry. After the first few, plodding missions, Dune 2 hits its stride and becomes more engaging due to hosting larger battles and increasing considerations through unlockable and upgradeable structures and combat units. Bases get big, evoking not so much Herbert's Dune but rather Asimov's Trantor in Foundation.

At each mission's end, Dune 2 players are given a summary of their performance in comparison to the enemy: overall score, time taken, spice harvested and units destroyed. The player also attains a rank and can enter their name in what amounts to a Hall of Fame, which is a nice touch similar to shmup High Score tables.

Employing bevelled panels with gold trimming, the user interface of Dune 2 is functional, logical and well-presented. The Mentat tab is sort of like the Civilopedia but for Dune -- and nowhere near as extensive. Still, I like its informative presentation of buildings and combat units, the depictions of which have held up well despite their low resolution.

Given tech-limits of the time, the only fair criticism I can level at the user interface is that it lacks tactility. But such is symptomatic of MS DOS games in general. I am a firm believer that, when we click an icon, there should be an audiovisual confirmation that we have done so -- that something should happen in the way of feedback.

Dune 2's combat controls are under-developed. For example, we can't just click-select combat units and immediately move them or have them attack. Instead, we have to click-select them, click the Move or Attack icon in the sidebar and THEN click the destination or target -- which isn't clearly indicated once confirmed.

Therefore, since Dune 2 gameplay demands quick reflexes, it is practically a requirement to learn its hotkeys by heart as a more efficient substitute to the slower mouse-driven control, where supported.

Lack of Bandboxing & Bounding Boxes

But even with the employment of hotkeys, micromanagement is still an issue in Dune 2 due to the lack of Shift-key group selection and marquee selection group bandboxing of combat units. It gets old moving each infantry unit and tank on the battlefield, one by one. In addition, there are no bounding boxes to indicate selected combat units. 

Such important additions to RTS control were made by Blizzard in their subsequent WarCraft: Orcs & Humans RTS (1994), and have long become mandatory in most realtime or pausable realtime games that feature multiple combat units.

Dune 2 Aesthetics

Background music and sound effects are well done. The Ad Lib soundtrack of Dune 2 pales in comparison to the sountrack of the in-name-only prequel, Dune 1, however. Punctuating Dune 2's soundscape, there is even digitized speech for confirmation of combat unit selections, as well as for various announcements such as the deployment of the harvester, incoming enemies and the warning of worm-sign.

Dune 2 wisely employs its limited color palette. Note the dithering technique:

My only graphics-based gripe is that its sprites are too small and toy-like in design, but again, that is a symptom of early strategy games coded for MS DOS.

One nice touch is the animated event of the Shai-Hulud, a giant burrowing Dune 2 sandworm that emerges from beneath the desert to devour combat units with its gigantic jaws! Such an event can occur even as our base is being besieged by rival factions, heightening the already-frenzied activity.

Dune 2 Ports

Due to being a port of the MS DOS version, the HDD-installable Amiga version (1993) has inferior non-AGA graphics as well as music that fails to impress. If running WHDLoad in WinUAE with an emulated A1200 chipset, the game runs much faster than the PC version does on DOSBox. However, saving and loading is much slower. The other difference is that the Amiga version has better targeting confirmation than the MS DOS version.

Even though the Genesis version (1994) doesn't push the console's custom chipset much at all, it at least features smooth screen-scrolling of which early MS DOS games can only dream. The graphics were completely redrawn, the audio was recomposed for the Yamaha YM2612, the UI was redesigned to accommodate the 3-button console controller, and the overall game balance has been modified accordingly. However, there is no ability to save and load the game. Instead, a code-entry system is employed.

Needless to say the PC versions remain superior due to having proper UIs and a mouse/keyboard control system, with hotkeys.

Dune 2 Conclusion

In conclusion, Dune 2's historical significance is readily apparent, its polish is evident, and it deserves to be held in high regard even 30 years subsequent to its release.

Putting its influence aside and assessing Dune 2 by itself as a game, its playability holds up in 2024 if we can get past its cumbersome combat controls and jerky animations.

It could be argued that Dune 2's ambitiousness outstripped hardware technology and control systems of the time; that it perhaps came too early in MS DOS gaming history.

In my opinion, the 90s RTS is not on par with turn-based strategy games (TBS) of the 90s. Nor do I think the RTS genre is as deserving of the prestige that turn-based games garner. 

Back in the day, Dune 2's celebrated accessibility as a pick-up-and-play arcade strategy game could have resulted in a devaluation of turn-based strategy games, but TBS continued to flourish decades on regardless, and for that I'm thankful.

While RTS is not my genre of choice, I'm also thankful for the entertainment that Dune 2 provided me back in the day as well.

[1]

While Dune 2's full title is Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty or Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis, for brevity's sake Westwood's seminal RTS is referred to simply as Dune 2 in this retrospective review.

[2]

House Atreides of Dune 2 RTS

House Atreides Caladan, home planet of the Atreides, has a warm, calm climate and the lands are lush and green. The rich soils and mild weather supports an extensive variety of agricultural activities. In recent centuries industrial and technological development has added to the prosperity of the Caladanian peoples.

House Harkonnen of Dune 2 RTS

From the dark world of Giedi Prime the savage House Harkonnen has spread across the universe. A cruel people, the Harkonnen are ruthless towards both friend and foe in their fanatical pursuit of power.

House Ordos of Dune 2 RTS

The home planet of the Ordos is a frigid and ice-covered world. We presume the Ordos import their agricultural and technological goods from nearby star systems. Acting as traders and brokers, the Ordos produce no physical products of their own and rely upon their merchandising skills to survive.

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