It’s Dangerous to Go Alone

I’m 51 years old and grew up in the era where video games were tough as hell because they didn’t know how to be anything but and as a result I consider where I am right now to be the gaming future I deserve. If a game has a “story mode”, I’m on it. If I have to fight a boss battle more than two times, I’m uninstalling. Taunts from the cheap seats about my skill roll off my back like the tears of those who levy such insults, because I feel I’ve earned my relaxation.

Dune: Awakening has gotten a lot harder, though, and it’s kind of awesome, but it’s a fine-line-awesome, because it could be so very, very terrible.

My friend @CakedCrusader and I teamed up for some mission completion recently. The first one we tackled was one I had been dreading: Hostile Takeover, which lead us to Imperial Testing Station #10. I expected this place to be similar in pain to my original run against Lab 2, but much worse…and I was right.

Lab 10 is significantly larger than Lab 2 and the difficulty of the enemies is commensurate with the increased complexity, in tactics and number. Heavy gunners, multiple knife-wielding psychos, grenade lobbers, and statis field deployers were all out in force, and I mean that — in force. The final battle against our target, Inna Hiller, was no joke, and I left a lot of loot behind because I couldn’t stop for a few seconds to check bodies for ammo or bandages.

We took on two other missions after that (Finding Sehmo: Missing Sister and Monster Slaying: Put Out the Eyes) and these took us out of WVG and up to the fringe of Jabal Eifrit Al-Janub which is just North North East of WVG. We had two jobs out there and I was concerned because we haven’t even finished everything there is to do in WVG; some of those areas can get pretty overwhelming so I expected JEAJ to be well beyond us.

I wasn’t entirely wrong, but the fact that there were two of us pushed things just a wee bit off-center from disaster. Crusader could never maintain enough water nor enough bandages, it seemed, though I’ll put it on him by telling you he wasn’t wearing a stillsuit. Beyond that, the camps we infiltrated — Runaway Station and Khidr’s Shadow — were quite large compared to what we were used to in WVG.

I have to give credit where credit is due: Funcom has done a bang-up job with these areas. They’re “maze-y” enough to be frustrating, as I tend to run around like a sandworm with my head cut off when I’m stressed and surrounded by enemies, but I also think they’re designed in a way that rewards careful thinking. Crusader, who is usually more of a “run and gun” type, admitted that this game was serving him hard, and he agreed that a more careful and methodical approach worked better. I also think the NPCs are done well, especially the knife-wielding psychos who seem painfully adept at dancing out of the way of my attacks, only to pummel me into a corner while I smash every button available in defense. I’m more of a back-row player so being all in-the-face with combatants is not something I really enjoy, so when I do manage to successfully out-dance an enemy in a knife-fight, I do feel pretty accomplished.

I am kind of annoyed that this is what the game has become, though. I know I couldn’t have done Lab 10 or the JEAJ camps solo, so if I didn’t have a friend to play with I probably would have gotten very angry with the game and set it on fire (metaphorically). We both spent a good amount of time and resources creating better armor and weapons, and trying out different abilities (I now prefer the shigawire of the Trooper spec over the suspensor column of the Planetologist), but I wonder if we were over-geared for what Funcom intended, under-geared for what we were attempting, or — most frightening of all — completely on the money when it comes to preparedness, because if it’s the last one, then I’m scared of what the future might demand of me in terms of unlocks and resource allocation.

Other fun things of note:

Crusader had a difficult time with his abilities because he kept hitting “C” to crouch, which is how one of the abilities is triggered; in this case, his poison grenade. Had I not taken the trait which allows me to metabolize poison, he would have killed me several times over when he accidentally threw the grenade at me.

When I arrived in WVG I was panicking over my inability to stay hydrated; now, I could start an aquarium on Arrakis with all of the water I’m producing/carrying with me at any given time.

We stole a buggy from one of the camps, but it was in such rough shape we couldn’t repair or nor could we store it’s BP because neither of us had a vehicle scanner on us that could work with the buggy.

I was half-way towards a crashed ship when I saw the driving cloud of wormsign heading towards the wreck as well. Naturally, it beat me to the punch, so I got to see a worm swallow a crashed ship.