From Dust Review
By Kyle Mann | August 23, 2011 | Reviews | 2 comments | Share
I recently got the chance to see the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space capsules at a museum, and while they were an impressive historical sight to behold, they were ensconced in thick plexiglass to protect their fragile frames from vandalism and decay. The spacecrafts’ importance and weightiness were not diminished in any way by the artificial barrier, but rather obscured ever so slightly. So it is with Ubisoft’s From Dust: the game is well-made, beautiful, and innovative. It’s a breath of fresh air in a stale gaming atmosphere; it’s both a retro renaissance and–I hope–a new beginning for god games. Unfortunately, so much of its potential is hidden beneath a smudged plexiglass surface of poor presentation and dodgy controls. In the end, its greatness shines through, but players will need to prepare to slog through some issues.
God Mode
From Dust plops the player into the throne room of a deity taking care of a native tribe. This deity has the power to manipulate the environment, elements, and disasters surrounding the insignificant tribe’s meager comings and goings, his ultimate goal being to transform the small band of natives into a sprawling network of villages. Of course, they won’t be able to stay in one place long if this goal is to be realized; the player must guide them in their nomadic search for enlightenment. The driving force behind the gamer’s interaction with the band of natives is a sphere of energy dubbed “The Breath.” Clicking on various types of matter across the map allows the player to mess around with the environment, reshaping mountains into valleys for safe passage, damming rivers to form pathways, and bringing water to the villagers’ precious vegetation.
Make no mistake, though, From Dust isn’t the sandbox of your dreams. Players are given very straightforward, often linear objectives to complete, with more open levels being reserved for the latter third of the game. While those later stages alleviate some of the first half’s problems, it can be a chore to hack through the first six or seven levels before Ubisoft takes off the training wheels.
That’s not to say those missions are a total waste; in fact, Ubisoft nails the concept of progression in game design: key gameplay mechanics are introduced gradually, one at a time, until the player has a firm grasp on all the concepts. Relocating matter is just the first of the powers the deity is granted; later on, special bonuses are granted depending on how many villages the player has been able to set up. These range from putting out raging fires to evaporating entire lakes with the click of the mouse. It’s times like these when I felt most engaged with the game, when I felt I had a true impact on the game world. Too often, though, the player is frantically setting up tiny dams of sand, hoping his villagers won’t stupidly get stuck right in the middle of it before it all goes tumbling down into the stream. The most significant constructive failure of From Dust is its all too common tendency to make the player feel like a powerless regent rather than a god.
Primitive Porting
While the concept is brilliant, and the results are sometimes breathtaking, too often it’s an exercise in frustration. When porting the game from the consoles to the PC, the developers clearly didn’t think to optimize the controls to take advantage of the mouse’s precision, or the keyboard’s many hotkeys. Moving the mouse is a sluggish affair, a problem compounded by the twitchy camera: move a tiny bit, and the whole player viewpoint comes along for the ride. It’s a bit nauseating, and makes navigating the map quite a bit of work. Alternatively, the player can scroll with the keyboard, but when moving the camera that way, the mouse is locked from movement, negating any advantage this method holds. What’s more, input responsiveness is all over the place: some commands worked right away, some took some mad button mashing before they would do my bidding. A little extra time in the PC porting oven would have done wonders for the playability of this one.
Piling on the presentation problems are canned CGI cinematics–wait, correction: one canned unskippable cinematic that repeats itself between almost every mission. I get it: the tribespeople walk into the magic door, through a dimly lit cave, and then pull themselves up into the bright sunlight warming the next set of islands. It’s such a disappointment to have to sit through so much of the fluff when the core game is really quite excellent. The innovation and passion of the game developers are simply bursting to get out of its rough, stitched-together shell. It’s also worth noting that the game’s controversial DRM, while an added level of nuisance, isn’t restrictive enough to make a big deal out of. Besides, it’s being patched out altogether in a couple weeks.
Godly Graphics
Though not perfect, the visuals in From Dust are easy on the eyes. Some low poly counts and texture resolutions are a non-issue against the gorgeous, glaring desert wastelands or the vibrant, roaring lava flows. But even all of this pales in comparison to the water physics and effects. Massive tidal waves loom large in the distance, threatening to swallow the tiny tribesmen whole and drag them to a watery grave; rivers flow and shift exactly as would be expected. It’s a testament to the strength of the game’s design that I could be emotionally affected by the sight of towering walls of water ready to burst forth from dams of sand and destroy the villages I’d worked so hard to create. Lava, forest fires, and the creepy, crawly wildlife are all equally impressive.
It would be a sin to omit any mention of the game’s soundtrack: subtle, pulsating, and beautiful, it complements the other aspects of the presentation well, and it fits perfectly with the tribal aesthetic. I don’t know that it’s memorable in any sense, but it’s the ideal aural backdrop for a gorgeous game.
A Worthy Purchase
It would be foolish to ignore the significant problems in From Dust, but I think it’d also be unfortunate to skip out on one of the more imaginative games of the year because of some technical issues. But had a little more time been devoted to making the game fit the PC platform like a glove, I could give this one a wholehearted recommendation; in its current form, I recommend it as long as you’re ready to deal with some rough edges. Skip out on that next Call of Duty DLC and plop your hard-earned $15 down for an enticing, outside-the-box experience that you won’t soon forget.
Score: 7/10 | Read our Scoring Policy |
Well, the game is short and has only a campaign mode with a challenge version of the mission map.
It has not actual rts advancement in techology or actual foes
You are a snake and gather up everything on the ground and use it to make your way to the next village and on to the portal to the next level.
It felt lacking in many ways
No story, no challenge or an enemy to fight no advancement, nothing interesting to unlock or read awful ai who will complain about a hole of water or a small rock in their path despite the fact you ALREADY made not one but TWO, TWO freaking paths to go to the area you tell them to go and they STILL decide to go their way and DEMAND that you seperate oceans clear lave and littleraly create earth where there is none.
Also you cant really tell them where to go, only at the few points you can actually click and some levels are a time consumer based on battling with lava and water to keep the area CLEAN of both so you can move on. Overall dissapointing, if you like zombies, then year get the new cod dlc rather this.
@dakan45 - I agree; the pathfinding was sometimes an issue. I couldn't figure out if it was the sluggish input or something I was doing wrong, but often they wouldn't go where I told them to. It's a shame that the idea was so strong, but sometimes the execution fell flat.