Posted by Conor Duffy on Aug 20th, 2008
My apologies for not posting a review last week, personal issues got in the way. But the doctor says I’m all better now, even if I’m still not allowed near small animals, so let’s get back to business!
Having never played Dust, I have no idea how it measures up to Dust 2, its little-desired sequel. What I can say is that Dust 2, a blatant rip-off of Madness Interactive and its ilk, is a frustrating little bitch of a game that hides its shoddy gameplay behind decidedly average graphics in the vain hope that no one will notice its complete and utter pointlessness.
Well, I did.
Things seem promising at first, but then they always do when the developers tack on a customisation screen. Still, it gives you a few more options than the Madness games, but if that’s all you’re going to add to the mix, why bother?
Half the time it doesn’t even look right, so again, why bother? The tutorial puts you through all the steps to successfully control your character, from the basics of movement to advanced weapon use. There are two methods of control, taken from the Madness and Thing Thing games respectively, but since neither option is all that easy to use, nor really appropriate for this game, it makes doing anything a real pain in the ass.
The tutorial also shows you how to perform completely useless tricks like stealing an enemy’s weapon. First of all, if they have a gun there’s no way I’m going to get to them fast enough to disarm them. It doesn’t help that our hero runs with the speed of an arthritic sloth. And anyway, once you’ve killed someone their weapon drops to the ground, available for you to pick up, so why would I try to steal what I can just lift up off the floor?
But the worst thing is throwing weapons. The mouse controls movement of the hero’s arm, so you have to quickly swing the arm while pressing the E button to drop the weapon. This, in theory, will make your character throw his weapon, but in practice only makes me want to throw my computer out the window.
Unfortunately you’ll have to learn bullshit skills like this if you want to unlock any of the weapons, which are all available once you complete certain achievements. Or, you know, you could just take them from dead bad guys.
This, to the best of my knowledge, is the entire game. Hero stands in the middle of a room, bad guys come in from either side, lots of blood (or in this case, dust) gets spilled. If this is familiar, it’s probably because it’s the exact same scenario for every fucking Madness game since the dawn of time!
Did the Madness guys make this game? I don’t know, because none of the links on the main page work. If they didn’t they should probably call their lawyers right about now. This is such a shameless rip-off.
They didn’t even bother putting together a good animation for when you die – all you get is a dust cloud, and your character still clearly alive and swinging his sword around. Death is inevitable, but what surprised me is how quickly it happens. You’ll kill maybe half a dozen guys when suddenly it’s game over. You can jump around and try to avoid the enemies’ weapons to last a little longer, but the numbers quickly pile up and your head is stuck on a pike faster than you can say, “Jesus, this game sucks balls.”
And on top of all that, it’s bugged to hell. Why oh why are my hero’s arms floating in mid air while he hides behind the menu? Options don’t work properly, only for you to load the game again an hour later to find they now do. And did I mention that actual playing time is thirty seconds?
This game is a waste of time, and that it’s a sequel boggles the mind. How crap must the first Dust game be, if this is the bigger and better version? Why do I care? If you want to play Madness or Thing Thing, then go play those games. Don’t settle for glitch-filled rip-off that’s only going to piss you off.
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