Dune: Awakening Reviews

Dune:Awakening does a phenomenal job of making Arrakis come to life, from the oppressing heat and sand as far as the eye can see, to the terrifying encounters with Shai Halud. Once you get your feet under you, the game has dozens of hours of exploration and content to work through, making it a very enjoyable experience. The combat leaves a lot to be desired, but classes, weapons, and gadgets feel fun. Took some points off for lack of housing decoration options and mods, and for the lack of re...

Funcom's survival MMO delivers on the fantasy of the Dune universe but stumbles in the endgame.

Dune Awakening is an ambitious survival crafting sandbox set on one of the most famously oppressive places in science fiction, the planet Arrakis, also known as Dune from Frank Herbert’s series of the same name that started in 1965 and spans 6 huge books in the original Dune series. Developer Funcom has games like Conan Exiles under its belt, but is Dune Awakening unique enough to stand out in a genre that is growing more saturated by the day? Short answer: This one is one of the best games...

A well-presented story and atmosphere that nails the vibes of Dune, but janky combat and a massive tonal shift in the endgame hurt this experience a little.

Playing Dune: Awakening is an uneven experience. The survival and building loops start strong, then eventually bog down, but experiencing the Dune universe and Arrakis is always engaging. If the game’s combat could reach the heights of its stellar world-building, Dune: Awakening would be very hard to put down. As it is, the game’s crafting/survival loops are just strong enough to keep me playing when its combat tempts me to stop.

A love letter to the world of Frank Herbert, Dune: Awakening has some of the most immersive survival gameplay in recent years as well as an intriguing entry in the Dune lore. However, the game expects a lot from the player and has a very slow grind to get to the best parts of the game. As it stands, Dune: Awakening is a strong foundation for Funcom to build off of and I can't wait to see where the game goes next.

An engrossing survival and crafting game with flawed but engaging endgame systems.

Dune: Awakening is an excellent survival MMO that brilliantly captures life on Arrakis, usually to its benefit.

Dune is a universe absolutely stuffed to the gills with quotes and sayings, enough that fans of the franchise can’t seem to resist bombarding you with them at any vaguely relevant opportunity. This would be more annoying if it weren’t for the fact that most of those quotes are genuinely insightful, poetically written, and raw as hell. I don’t plan to fill this review with Dune quotes because I’m sure if you’re here reading this, you’ve either heard enough of them for a lifetime or...

Dune: Awakening is a survival game where the mechanics feel right at home in its brutal but beautiful fictional world. Between the sunburn, sandstorms, and militant forces leering on your location, there is no shortage of hectic hurdles to fight against as you grow your power and form alliances. Despite the lackluster combat and occasional bugs, Dune: Awakening offers an enticing trial by fire for fans of MMOs and Frank Herbert alike.

Dune: Awakening is a harsh survival game, an intriguing RPG, and a fierce open world PvP game all in one. Somehow, it pulls it off.

As survival games go, however, I cannot call it "bad". Fair warning: there are weird glitches and choppiness (one bug saw me backdashing every time I exited the inventory screen). And I had to abandon playing on a controller because of the obnoxious virtual cursor in menus. But this wasn't enough to interrupt my bloodsucking. Awakening is dense with lore, and loyal to the childlike "sand is lava" flavours of Dune. I've enjoyed it for the strength of its world, and I admire how straightforward...

It’s always hard to predict how a new MMO will do in the market when there are so many popular, established competitors, but Dune: Awakening seems to have hit the sand running

Dune: Awakening is a game that Dune fans will find rapturous but that has a lot of small annoyances that mar it for players who aren't as engaged in the franchise. A solid but not world changing adaptation of a legendary sci-fi series.

Dune: Awakening delivers one of the most intense and immersive survival experiences I’ve enjoyed in years.

Dune: Awakening encapsulates everything I want from a survival MMO game. There’s an interesting storyline, a beautiful world worth exploring, and some grindy aspects to keep me playing for as long as I want. If I’m only limited to an hour, I can quickly gather some resources and progress through a couple of quests before leaving. If I’m available all night, I can get a few friends to tag along to build a massive base in the middle of the desert and laugh when one of them gets eaten by a sandworm. It has some room for improvement with its combat, but with some polish, it can easily stand among the greats within both survival and MMO gaming genres.

Dune: Awakening is a new staple for the survival genre and a new standard for all MMO-like games. It features one of the most intricate and addictive gameplay loops while bringing top-notch exploration to one of gaming's most atmospheric journeys.

Years of Funcom's expertise managing Conan: Exiles have paved the way for Dune: Awakening to be of the most impressive online survival games ever made.

Dune: Awakening was dealt a difficult hand when it came to adapting Dune's combat for a video game. Shields in Dune prevent most projectiles from penetrating them, forcing people to resort to fighting with melee weapons like swords. However, sticking to this faithfully could have proven difficult for balancing encounters. It's much more difficult to face multiple opponents wielding melee weapons than it is to shoot your way through a dungeon. Funcom, therefore, made the right call to limit the number of enemies with shields, and also allow some gun damage to get through them.

Dune: Awakening has impressed me at every turn. Stunning cinematics showcase an immersive story inspired by Dune's award-winning lore and set the scene for a thrilling adventure, focused on exploration, survival, base-building, and politics. In a time full of unfinished, bug-ridden game launches, Dune: Awakening is setting the bar higher for what the release of video games should be. My experience with early access was easily one of the best gaming experiences I've had in a long time, and I firmly believe Dune: Awakening has a very bright future ahead of it. Delivering a game this polished, with such an incredible amount of content right out of the gate, especially as an MMO, is a little bit mind-blowing. With complex and flexible skill-trees that encourage unique playstyles, and survival mechanics that might just be my favorite of all time, Dune: Awakening is worth every penny, and could very well be the new gold standard for MMOs.

Dune: Awakening finds its Voice in the strengths of the universe it adapts and the weirder elements that can’t be found elsewhere even if its early hours and melee combat need more work.

Where things start to come apart is in the combat, which never quite finds the same footing. Melee feels stiff, stealth is undercooked, and the flow of encounters doesn't always match the scale or intensity the rest of the game sets up. But even with that in mind, there's still something satisfying about building your own identity on a planet that feels as dangerous as it does alive. Dune: Awakening isn't perfect, but it's confident in its vision, and that makes all the difference.

Dune is actually one of my favorite literature franchises of all time, and I couldn’t have been happier with the fact the damn thing has finally become mainstream and socially acceptable after having been considered the utmost nerdiest crap for the past sixty years. I am eternally grateful to Dennis Villeneuve and his amazing movies for changing the franchise’s perspective amongst the general populace. With mainstream popularity, come memes, merchandising, and, of course, licensed games. ...

Daring to reshape the desert into a sandbox of power, peril, and player-driven destiny, but not without a few cracks in the armor.