Emperor: Battle for Dune Review

The Harkonnen are fun, both for their ruthlessness and dirty tricks they use in warfare (Our editor Bane is a sneaky bastard, but we like him - Ed). Their units are primarily offensive and ideal for taking control of enemy bases. For instance, their basic Buzzsaw vehicle is equipped with a huge buzz-saw used for exterminating infantry, and two cannons that can damage buildings or vehicles. The Devastator tanks and the Inkvine catapult are ideal for quick and efficient demolition jobs, while the Flame tank presents a great method for getting rid of enemy infantry units. Their infantry is not too useful. Fortunately, they can ally with the Imperial Sardaukar units and wreak havoc. The Harkonnen have the best-balanced units.

The Harkonnens are on the move.

A battle on the sands.

Ordos are pretty weird, and their "alien-like-distant-future" vehicles are mostly hovercrafts, which means that they do not fare well against infantry, as they cannot crush them like tanks. They have high-speed laser tanks, but they are quite helpless without an alliance with any of the sub-houses. Their most interesting infantry unit is the gas soldier equipped with a gas-thrower, who acts identical as the Harkonnen flame thrower soldier. Another important thing is that they can produce ghola soldiers, which are replicas of their enemy units.

The real fun starts once you create an alliance with any of the sub-houses. The Atreides can ally with the Fremen (fremen warrior and fedaylin), the natives of Dune which give them extra punch and stealth recon units. In time, they gain ability to summon the sand worms that can destroy enemy units.

House of Ix is in possession of old technologies and can provide you with stealth tanks, sentinel kamikaze Ixian Infiltrator. House of Tleilaxu resemble Alien creatures and use flash vats in which they breed and clone the zombie-like Contaminators which turn enemy units into their clones, spreading the disease. The Leeches are much the same, only they affect the vehicles.

I once managed to destroy about forty enemy infantry units with a single contaminator (no flame/gas thrower soldiers as they can hinder the disease). The Guild enables faster unit transport.

The Imperial Sardaukar infantry will surely be your favorite allies. They can be ordinary or veterans, but they always present the best infantry units in the game. The ordinary Sardaukar wear long-range machine-guns, and the elite Sardaukar are armed with knives and laser guns. They are ideal as an offensive support and they can also prove highly efficient in defending your base. I guess it would be a spoiler revealing some of their other features.

The graphic engine is a special eye-candy on its own. Everything works smoothly in 3D with simple camera controls. You can rotate or zoom the camera freely. There are a lot of details that can only be seen at maximum zoom. These tiny details are what I liked best about this game. The way the worm emerges from the sand or the way the hurricanes look really seem impressive. These features influence gameplay as the worm can devour your units, and the hurricane can swirl them away. Every soldier and vehicle is loaded with small details. The buildings have either lights coming from their production facilities or flames blazing into the skies like the factories in Bladerunner. Emperor supports hardware T&L.

Sound FX an the music themes are top quality, but the unit samples, however imaginative ("chop- chop" for the Buzzsaw was my favorite), get to be tiresome after some time. The themes improve the atmosphere of epic battles. The movie cut-scenes were always Westwood's trademark. Emperor is no exception here. The cut-scenes feature Michel Dorn as Duke of Atreides (he played Worf in u Star Trek), Michael McShane as the Baron Harkonnen (he played Friar Tuck in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) and a number of other famous actors.

All in all, Emperor is an extremely fun game setting new standards in 3D technology and good Westwood-like gameplay. They just had to put a label "Westwood Proudly Presents" on this game instead of a Red Alert 2 commercial.