Ranking the Dune video games, from worst to best
destructoid.comDenis Villeneuve’smovie adaptations of Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novel, Dune, has become a cultural and commercial hit. That’s big for Team Hollywood, but I still have a hard time believing that Dune has done more for movies than it has for video games — so long as you ignore the kerfuffle over whether it influenced Star Wars.
Even though the Dune games are far from occupying our most vivid memories of the real-time strategy boom of the ’90s, the whole genre owes its existence to this series. Also, there’s more to Dune games than just RTS. Not all of the series’ forays into other genres generated success, but even its failures have stories worth telling. Let’s rank all Dune games out there.
This was Cryo Interactive’s final game, a French studio that now solely exists in the memories of many as the creators of average to not-very-good games. That’s an unfairly uncharitable description, but more on that later!
Even though it was not their best work, most knew Cryo for the Atlantis series of adventure games — which they wrote off as boring Myst ripoffs. Whether the haters were right or not, even at their blandest, those games were at least playable. Frank Herbert’s Dune was not. Cryo developed it during its death knell and the game ended up coming out in a clearly unfinished state. The result is an attempt at a stealth-action game with political elements woven in that didn’t work on any level.
Frank Herbert’s Dune got an expectedly poor reception from players and critics alike as a myriad of bugs prevented players from even getting to the just mediocre parts.
It’s saddening that the worst possible adaptation is the one that puts the name of the poor guy who came up with the story right there in the title. If even David Lynch disowned his merely average adaptation of Dune and credited it to Alan Smithee — a nonexistent guy Hollywood directors made up to pin their failures on — then imagine how much farther poor Frank Herbert would’ve tried to distance himself
Read more on destructoid.com
