Dune: Awakening

Progress in Dune: Awakening can be divided into two distinct parts: before and after flight.

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As though dragging your way through human history, you have to work your way up from hunter-gatherer status for the privilege of being airborne. The pre-flight era is dominated by solo exploration, mining for resources, crafting and PvE combat within the Hagga Basin. In Frank Herbert’s novel, the Basin is the area of Arrakis most populous with cities and villages, including those of the hardy Fremen, who are (relatively speaking) native to the planet. In Awakening’s alternate timeline, the Fremen are missing, driven away by the pogroms of the Imperial elite troops. Without their cleansing influence, the Basin is infested with riffraff: scavengers, slavers, smugglers, cultists. Other players can be seen scurrying around, but there’s little incentive to buddy up at this point (and if you'd like a private server to enjoy with your friends, you need to pay for the privilege).

The unsavoury inhabitants organise into countless outposts, which you can clear out in exchange for loot, experience and resources. This is one of the game’s main stumbling blocks, its open-world laundry list, inviting fatigue. The Basin’s geography is pleasingly varied, but each region contains a similar spread of caves, forts, terraforming labs and shipwrecks. The game's prose and voice acting are consistently excellent, so there are genuinely interesting, well-acted stories tucked away in these dungeons. But repetitive settings and predictable AI mean firefights rarely feel worthwhile. Some enemies don’t react until you're breathing down their necks. Others spam grenades and rush right at you.