Where time erodes everything under the eyes of the player
Each level will take no more than half an hour and you’ll find yourself breezing through the game pretty quickly, with the only real difficulty coming from the moronic villagers that can swim, yet refuse to paddle across little more than puddles that stand in front of them which becomes all the more infuriating when you have to complete a timed objective. The gameplay itself can get pretty repetitive too; ‘pick up x and place it at y to allow villagers to get to z’. Mix this with the fact that there is no dynamic story to join these worlds together and you get a pretty unfulfilling procession of missions. If feels like you’re playing the game to get somewhere, but you never do. If you complet the game you unlock a sandbox mode, but this just highlights the games repetitiveness by not giving you an ultimate goal. There is also a challenge mode to try and pad the game out, but due to the nature of the story mode, there is little difference in terms of gameplay.Having said that, graphics are very nice, and From Dust does make for a very pretty game that is probably nicer to look at than to play with. The water both looks and acts realistically, and there is a nice, varied set of aesthetics, ranging from lush jungles to harsh deserts. The world feels alive, and if left unchecked can shape itself, creating rivers from overflowing lakes, and bridges of rock from cooling lava. The sounds however, are almost comical. The sucking up of water sounds like a child slurping a drink, and when juxtaposed with the nature of the game (which takes itself far too seriously) it can be almost jarring.
All in all, From Dust is another one of those games that are a good concept but fall down when put into practice. There are games that do similar things but better. Black & White for example, which gives you a true feeling of Godliness where you feel like the villagers serve you, not the other way around. While From Dust provides a few hours of mediocre fun, it has little to no replay value and unfortunately, it doesn’t justify spending £12 or so on something you won’t even play for 12 hours.
The Good
Beautifully crafted landscapeIntuitive control scheme
Concept is solid enough to build on
The Bad
Poor camera anglesComical slurping and non-sensical jibberish, not uncommon in games such as The Sims and Age of Empires, do nothing to draw you into From Dusts miniature world.
Repetitive missions
HEXUS Rating
From Dust
HEXUS Where2Buy
Limbo is available to purchase from STEAM .
HEXUS Right2Reply
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