From Dust Review

[KillerOfCereal]

When I was younger, I always thought it would be cool if I could control the elements. I would dream about picking up earth without touching it, controlling the wind, bending water, and placing them wherever I choose. I’ve played many video games that let you do that sort of stuff, but the only one I’ve seemed to enjoy was From Dust.

From Dust has to be one of the best Real Time Strategies I’ve ever laid my eyes on. You get to play as God controlling the environment to help a group of Natives survive in the wacky landscape. There are 3 elements you can pick up; Sand, Lava, and Water. When it comes to controlling the elements, it’s easy. All you do is press Left Trigger to pick them up and Right Trigger to place them down. Placing them down is the difficult part. I learned something very important 3 missions into the game. You can press Right Trigger pretty hard and have it all drop a pretty fast rate, or slightly hold it down so you slowly release it and have more control of where you drop the sand/water/lava, whatever you happen to be holding. So getting the controls down is easy and fun.


You learn all of the controls in Story Mode in the first segment of playing. So there is no problem with controls when it comes to actually playing the challenging levels. Your main objectives are trying to keep the Natives alive using your power, which is called Breath, and get to a gate that only opens once you’ve established enough villages. You establish villages by sending a group of 5 Natives to a Totem pole. Once there, they begin mumbling some things and everything begins coming to life. Houses begin to rise, plants begin to grow at a rapid rate, and you begin to smile because you’re making life better for them. There’s a reason why it’s a Real Time Strategy though. In the 2^nd mission, after you build your first village from the Totem, one of the Shamans warn that a Tsunami is coming and that you must send one of the Natives to go to a small Spire to learn how to stop it from devouring everything it crosses paths with. You only have 3 minutes to send someone there, but that’s just half the problem. As the villager makes his way to the Spire, you must redirect the flow of a river or he won’t make it there or make it back in time. I had some problems when it came to this because I wasn’t paying attention to the giant “Help!” text when he got to the river and when I did figure it out, it was too late. After the entire village was gone and I had to restart, I made sure the guy made it to and from without any complications. As the Tsunami was coming, I wondered how they would stop it, and then something that looked like it came out of the bible happened! They began chanting and creating music so the water would just bend around the village and no one was hurt! I soon figured that you have to be on your toes all the time in the game. If you don’t pay attention to what’s happening than what you see on your screen at the time, you’re going to be in a pickle. There may be lava coming awfully close to one of your villages, or maybe water is shooting out of the ground and is engulfing your village. Another thing I found interesting was that when you take over a village, they may have special powers to help you out. Some of the powers are evaporating water, jellifying water, putting out any fires, destroying all matter, and holding more than your maximum amount of stuff you can carry when using the Breath ability.

Apart from getting from point A to point B, you can do little side quests that tell you more about the Natives you’re helping out. If you plant enough trees or find a Spire without leaves rotating around it, you gain memories explaining their life and what they believe in.


Though this game is strictly Single Player, there is an Online Leaderboard. To get on the Leaderboard you must complete missions in Challenge Mode. In Challenge Mode you have to complete objectives in the smallest amount of time possible. One of them is to stop a fire before it gets to the village. My personal favorite is the one where you have to send a Native to the small Spire and back in less than 30 seconds or a Tsunami will wipe your village off the face of the Earth. All the challenges are fun and keep you on edge which is something I really enjoy in a game and find as a rare treat in a Real Time Strategy.

Incredibly, there aren't many things wrong with this game. The only one that would happen from time to time is when I'd send some Natives somewhere and they would begin screaming for help when nothing is blocking their path. Other than that, the game is just perfect.

I would recommend From Dust to everyone and to anyone. It has everything an RTS needs and doesn’t lack in gameplay replay ability. So if you have a spare 1200 MSP to spend, do spend it on From Dust…you won’t regret it.

Overall Score:

9.5/10

[Kathanis]

THIS GAME! I WANT! I played the demo, and it made me want more, but the lack of cash kills me D:

[Nightrise]

Incorrect. 11/10. This game is amazing.

[SneakyCheese]

WHY U NOT ON PC YET! this game looks beautiful.

[Jawwi]

I want this now!

[RUL Jakeyy]

Nice review Killer! I'm downloading the trial now to see what I think of it but I'll probably end up buying since it looks like a totally awesome game.

[Start a Riot]

Great review, Killer! I have a feeling I'll be getting this game sometime soon.

[SneakyCheese]

If you pre order this from steam you get a promotional item to team fortress 2! just letting everyone know!

[JugularRain]

Game is awesome. Its a lot of fun. Good review man.

[BladeHenge]

I've played the trial game and I'm gonna probably get it for PC. Seeing as the trial is only in the Xbox version I tried that one. I love the art style, the way you can interact with the environment and almost everything about it. My only issue with the game is the control scheme. The button setup is just fine, but the movement seems off. It seems difficult to make a single bridge across a river because you make be making another mound behind the one you think you're positioned on. I think this won't be an issue with the PC version but I'll have to wait until I buy a laptop to play it as my graphics card is sub par. Who knows, I may buy it for both systems