Dune: Awakening review - A successful survival title littered with small annoyances

At long last, my base is looking less like a factory and more like a home, largely thanks to the baby muad'dib who has settled himself in a nearby cage, only disappearing to bury himself into the sand and pop up seconds later.

I have named him Timothée, after Timothée Chalamet who plays Paul Atreides in the Dune movie series, and it is due to my love of the Denis Villeneuve works that I was excited to dive into the newest survival game on the market, Dune: Awakening.

Developed by Funcom, the multiplayer survival game is, of course, based on the Dune books and movies but is instead set in an alternate reality where Paul Atreides never existed and his mother gave birth to a daughter instead.

However, there are still some familiar faces such as Leto Atreides, Lady Jessica, Duncan Idaho, and the Shai-Hulud, the monstrous worms who swim beneath the sandy waves of the Arrakis deserts, threatening to swallow everything and everyone in their wake.

In Dune: Awakening, your overall mission is to find out what happened to the Fremen as unlike the books and movies, they have been missing for quite some time. It will be up to you to uncover their mysterious disappearance as appointed by the Bene Gesserit, as well as to “awaken the Sleeper”.

The beginning of the game kicks off with you meeting the Bene Gesserit elder. Alongside receiving your mission, you will also use this opportunity to customise your character and pick your background. Customisation is quite extensive and I was able to make an authentic character who looked as though she belonged to the desert with her tanned skin, charcoal covered eyes, and muscular physique.

Funcom

You will then get the chance to pick your Homeworld, Caste, and Mentor. Homeworld will give you the choice to choose your origin planet, as well as how this may influence your traits throughout the game. NPCs may react differently to you based on your origins and this will also open up extra dialogue options on some occasions.

Your Caste is your social standing within the world and again, this will influence interactions with factions and NPCs. This could also make trading and political conversations go a lot differently if two opposite social standings clash. Last but not least is your Mentor which involves Mentat, Swordmaster, Bene Gesserit, and Trooper.

Acting as your ‘class’, these will dictate which abilities you will have access to throughout the game. For example, I chose Bene Gesserit and was able to level up the corresponding skill tree to be able to use the Voice to help me in battle. I could command enemies to enter an almost comatose state, and rush towards me so that I could use a slow blade to remove their shields and kill them. Also being Bene Gesserit is just cool, okay.

As for Homeworld and Caste, I don’t think it makes as much of an impact as you would think. Yes, there are different dialogue options and you can “bond” with NPCs who have the same background, but it doesn’t change things too much to warrant booting up another playthrough to see how the others fare.

This same problem happens with Dune: Awakening’s story but I feel as though this was to be expected with it being a survival game. Put simply, the story will always take a backseat in a survival title as players are too busy gathering materials, building bases, and in this case, running from a giant worm to worry about the narrative that is going on in the background. As a result, I found my eyes glazing over on the rare occasion that a cutscene was happening; I don’t think it was necessarily the developer’s fault but as with any survival game, I had more pressing matters than some missing Fremen.

For example, I had just crafted a top-of-the-range Stillsuit and a brand-new bike and decided to try and cross the dunes in order to get to my next Contract (I will come back to these). However, I promptly drove into some quick sand and thanks to the vibrations of my bike, a worm descended upon me and swallowed me whole.

The good news? Your first death to a worm will land you in a magical place with a cutscene and you will also be awarded a worm’s tooth for your sacrifice. The bad news? You will lose everything from your inventory, including the clothes off your back.

Funcom

If you die to enemies in Dune: Awakening, you will have the chance to revive yourself if you are quick enough. If not, your body and loot can still be returned to after you have respawned. However, if you die to the worm, your stuff will end up in their digestive tract and you will never see it again.

Although this was extremely frustrating at the time, I do enjoy this mechanic as it makes the Shai-Hulud all the more terrifying. All in all, the worms in Dune: Awakening are some of the scariest enemies I have come across in a video game.

Having to cross the dunes, especially at night, and seeing the expanse of sand before you and keeping one eye on the vibration bar at the bottom of the screen as it begins to pulse … that is true fear. The music begins to build and you can hear the sands begin to part behind you as you put your foot down and hope and pray you reach the various rocky expanses before you get eaten.

The worms are definitely your biggest enemies as other enemies in the game won’t give you too much trouble. You can use daggers, swords, and guns to take them down and although enemy health bars and abilities soon begin to scale up as you enter deeper regions, you are not going to get any soulslike combat here. I will say that enemies who are equipped with shields will give you the most trouble but learning to parry them or use your abilities will make the fight tip into your favour.

So why was Dune: Awakening not a 10/10 game for me?

I want to preface this by saying that I would definitely recommend Dune: Awakening as despite being over 20 hours in, I have barely scratched the surface of the game. I still have Contracts to be completed (think of these as side missions), the main story to actually follow on with, as well as the many survival quests I need to unlock.

I have a base that still has early-game machines in, I don’t yet have a decent ornithopter and most of my map is still covered over by a sandstorm, meaning I need to travel to the new areas and survey the land.

To say this game is massive is an understatement and as a result, I am not overly upset with some of the few annoyances that I did stumble across.

My number one issue is the climbing mechanics. In Dune: Awakening, you are able to climb almost any structure Spider-Man style and use a gravity-esque belt to cushion your fall if you happen to lose your footing or run out of stamina.

However, the climbing can be very awkward and glitchy with it sometimes feeling like Groundhog Day when you would climb a few metres just to ‘respawn’ back at the bottom. This was enough to have me putting my controller down to take a few deep breaths and it is something that I hope will be patched in a future update.

Other than the lack of exciting story and issues with climbing, there are just a few minor quality-of-life changes that I would like to see for Dune: Awakening as well as a fix for the multiple stuttering and lag issues I ran into.

Funcom

That being said, Dune: Awakening is a success when it comes to the survival genre as it offers an incredibly full open-world despite the majority of it being covered by inhospitable desert. There are main quests, side quests, Contracts, even a journey which consists of getting high on Spice.

Building never ends as there is always something new to upgrade and unlock, and exploration is a delight thanks to the ornithopter which allows you to soar over the expansive open-world filled with populated hubs, caves, facilities and even the homes of your neighbours.

It is impressive that Funcom has managed to make a world feel so alive despite being set in the sands of Arrakis so other than a few small annoyances, Dune: Awakening is an utter success story.

Pros: massive and detailed open-world, fun combat, hours of gameplay

Cons: lacking story, buggy climbing mechanics, small quality-of-life improvements needed

For fans of: Conan Exiles, Rust, Ark: Survival Evolved

8/10: Excellent

Dune: Awakening is out now on PC (version tested), and will be available on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S at a later date. Read a guide to our review scores here.