14 DAY TRIAL // I have a romantic view of the winter months as a moment when no new video games are launched and I have plenty of time to try out the experiences that were launched in the busy fall of the previous year and maybe even spend time reading more than I usually do.
But leaving aside the fact that quite a few games are being delivered right now, I have been almost compelled to abandon all other titles in order to take a step back in time in order to play the Dune Wars mod for Civilization IV.
The reason for my virtual time travel was that I re-read a superb game diary created by Tom Chick and Bruce Geryk and I wanted to see whether the mod, which represents the best game contact based on the classic series of novels from Frank Herbert, really manages to bring something new.
The bad news is that active development for it is no longer ongoing and an enhanced version seems to have been lost to the ages.
But the most recent release of Dune Wars runs very well and manages to deliver an experience that adapts the features of Civilization to accurately represent how the various houses would act while trying to control Arrakis.
The combat is a little weird, with a stack focus that I have not dealt with in a while, but there’s so much lore included that I am planning to spend all my weekend with the mod.