Hey all I’m back with a game that plays a lot like one of the old time classics. It’s Dustwind!
Editor’s Note: Dustwind was designed as a multiplayer game with real time combat. We were asked to review the new single player campaign for the game, which can be played alone and offline. This is our review of just the single player, story mode.
Plot: The plot for the single player is okay, but it’s fairly basic and not all that interesting. It’s post-apocalyptic and you play as a nameless Mother who gets attacked along with her daughter by some raiders out in the wasteland. She is left for dead while her daughter is taken by the raiders for nefarious purposes. The fact that the very first character you interact is a cannibal of all things, sets the tone of Dustwind straight away.
Just so we are all on the same page, Dustwind is fairly dark and is not at all for children or younger players.
Gameplay: Here’s where the good part of the game is, which is it’s gameplay. The game plays a lot like the first two Fallout games, and considering that it’s advertised as such by the developers is not surprising at all. That said, there are some differences. First, you don’t need to click on every enemy you see to attack them like you might other games like this. In fact if you do so, you’ll probably die fairly often.
Instead, the game does a fairly good job at auto attacking for you, though you can customize how the character decides to pick targets. If you don’t want them attacking from range with anything less than a 50% chance of hitting them you can for example, just don’t be expecting to shoot a lot if you modify things too much.
There is also a multiplayer aspect which I was didn’t review, but it looked pretty cool in the videos the developer has on YouTube that I watched after the extended tutorial video. Friendly fire is most definitely a thing, so do be careful with rocket launchers. You will most likely get a lot of flak from other players if you continuously blow them up with the splash damage.
Art: The art is okay, it’s not spectacular by any means, and it will age pretty poorly, but it’s not the worst I’ve ever seen.
Music: The music is bland, and the sound effects can be a bit off putting after hearing the same gunshot a few thousand times. So not much going for the game here.
Overall: A fun game, though I didn’t play the multiplayer parts so I can’t really speak for them, but the story is mediocre at best and the art and music don’t help carry the gameplay into making this an instant classic. That being said, the sheer customizability of the online character maker is sure to keep players interested for a while, but I again I can’t attest to that. Not that I didn’t try to do so mind you, but I couldn’t find any games to play or even host one of my own.
For those who like: Isotropic Perspective Games, The Original Fallout, Post-apocalyptic settings, Decent Gameplay.
Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above.