BigK42

One of these days, someone will figure out how to make a decent shooter/MMO hybrid, and that person will be fantastically rich. But that day is not today, and that game is certainly not Crimecraft. What it gains in innovation (by taking elements from successful MMOs and trying to graft them into a shooter), it loses in gameplay and awkward user interfaces. In addition, the graphics and animations are just not up to snuff. The best part of the game is the comic style artwork that tells the story. Great visuals, but they don't save the game from itself.

A very disappointing showing in a genre that was ripe for some innovation. From Dust doesn't advance the god game idea so much as use it as background for what is otherwise a fairly enjoyable puzzle game. The idea of each level is to lead your followers to inhabit each expansion village, then to get a small group to an exit portal, presumably in a quest to "uncover the secrets of the ancients." This simplistic story highlights how From Dust goes wrong: the god game is about creation, a concept that is entirely absent in the game. Instead, the player focuses on manipulating the environment through the use of godly powers in order to escort the villagers to progressive levels. The game itself downplays the idea of the player as a god. Rather than being a supremely powerful entity with a group of loyal worshipers, the opening of the game shows the villagers creating the player. The player is cast not as a deity, but as a tool that the villagers use to escort them around the map and save them from the elements. Interaction with villagers is non-existent. The most you can do is zoom in on one as they walk around. It feels like something went wrong midway through development; as if there were a ton of ideas floating around that would have made a great game, but that most of those ideas were cut due to budget concerns and the need to keep to a release schedule. As an example, each time you complete a level, a small cut scene plays showing your villagers going through a cave and emerging on the other side. Each time, it's the same exact cut scene. Another example is the reward that the player earns for activating various "bonus shrines" and covering the play area with foliage (two optional challenges in each level): rather than rewarding players with something that will help in subsequent levels, or even something to spruce up the user interface, or any number of other rewards, completing these optional 'quests' unlocks... the tooltips for the various powers and game objects. Most of my complaints stem from disappointment - I expected something that built on the concepts laid down by the Black & White series. Instead, what was delivered was a respectable, if somewhat lazily executed, puzzle game. A couple of finishing touches would have gone a long way.

It's good. The graphics are stunning for a free game, and the gameplay delivers. That said, I have a few gripes. First, there's a disconnect between the advertising of this game and the actually play. The ads make it look like a mix between Diablo, WoW, and some game from the horror genre (think Penumbra, Resident Evil, or BioShock), which was exactly what I was looking for. The game itself is a lot more... cheery. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it was just unexpected. The game also uses quite a few character and aesthetic devices common to anime, so if that kind of thing annoys you, the game might not be for you. All in all, it's one of the better games that I've played in awhile, and one that has kept me entertained for many hours at zero cost. What more can you ask for?