Title: From Dust

Platform:
Xbox 360 -27 July, 2011
Microsoft Windows -17 August, 2011

So what’s the point of video games? I’ll tell you, it’s to perform activities and indulge our imaginations with conduct improbable or impossible in reality. From Dust is a game developed by Ubisoft that satisfies the improbable and impossible, and keeps it enjoyable. In From Dust you get the opportunity to indulge yourself in the role of a deity. You must lead your people through perilous lands of conflicting elements where the survival of your people depends on your interaction with the environment, and their willingness to follow your guidance.

The game is considered sandbox where you have the freedom to move about the environment at will, but that doesn’t come without restrictions, but it requires some problem solving and some strategy to be worthy of your people worship. Each map you lead your people into is restrictively contained within a specified area which cannot be ventured beyond. Still you will find that this is more than enough to have fun. The immediate interactions of the game reminisce of Populous from the early 90’s, which From Dust is considered the successor. It isn’t, honestly it is much more, and the game is very much its own entity. You find granularity in the game play, adding a little earth here, diverting lava there, and flooding such and such basin. Nothing is done on a grand scale, but every action can influence the entire environment.

It’s clear you are not the creator of the world, so I assume the play is as a lesser deity. This becomes obvious as your tribal people are threatened from map to map with tsunamis, floods, wild fires, earthquakes, and volcano irruptions. Your job, in all your glory, as a small snakelike cursor called “the breath”, is to induce minor influences on the environment that benefit and protect the tribe people you guide. The breath is a kind of spirit which represents the player in the third person. When you use your mouse over an element it becomes a sphere gathering the resource until you release it at your divine discretion.

The game mechanics are sound. You can transfer soil to different areas for life to grow, or construct land bridges across lakes and pools. Use water to put out wildfires or increase plant life. You can also gather up lava from raging volcanoes to build rock formations staying off dangerous tsunamis or constructing permanent hill ranges to divert lava or water flow. Your people identify their villages with animal totems spread throughout the maps.

You need to guide your people to the totems and they establish a village while pounding on drums and performing pagan dances in your honor, which gives you additional capabilities to manipulate the environment. Some of these capabilities include an increase in your storage of resources within your sphere for a brief time called Amplify the Breath. You also get the ability to put out all the fires on a map at once, or evaporate all the water, which is handy after a tsunami or torrential rains, reshaped the earth you’ve been moving around. My two favorite totem powers are Infinite Earth, and Engulf All. Infinite Earth turns your sphere into an endless supply of “dust” for you to distribute as you please, this is one of the most helpful capabilities, especially when your map is an archipelago, and you need land for your people.

Engulf All is the exact opposite, it sucks up a resources into a temporal black hole, which curiously doesn’t implode the entire planet and the solar system with it, I guess it just isn’t dense enough (I’ll be looking for that capability in the sequel). It does get the job done when you need to eat up all the lava streaming from a nearby active volcano towards your worshipping minions.

From Dust plays out as a puzzle game of this age, simulating the protective power of a minor god defending your worshippers from the diabolical and evil attacks made by nature. Instead of erecting skyscrapers and dishing out taxes, you’re diverting volcano irruptions and findings a means of survival against walls of water.

The only real issues I’ve found so far with the game involve the controls, and the installation. The controls are difficult, and it took me a while to realize what I needed to do to navigate my view around the maps. The game comes with Digital Rights Management that seriously won’t let you get any game time without an internet connection. No, no, kiddies, not just the first time either, every time you start up the game. It connects to your new Ubisoft account (great, another game account), and E.T.’s home before it launches.

The graphics and sound really emphasize the game and the experience. Sounds are tantalizing and visuals are worthy of the highest praise, just not by my in game followers. I can be a jealous god.

For the fifteen bucks you shell out for this game, it’s worth it. You’ll be amazed at the environment you play in, the capabilities you earn and love, and the addiction of leading yourself proclaimed people from one map to the next. Sometimes, just sometimes, you’ll be spiteful, and let that lava flow right into one of your villages, cackling while you Sodom and Gomorrah your way back into SimCity style endgame. In the end, you may find yourself being a vengeful god.

Graphics: A-

Sound: B

Gameplay: B

Story: C

Controls: D+

Additional Considerations: I would add an extra minus for the DRM issue, but I can be a merciful god.

Overall: a solid B

By Justin Blackstone