Game Review: From Dust

$14.95 on GamersGate (Here)

Holy shit balls on a cracker, this game was awesome. When I saw some gameplay preview video on Xbox Live, I wanted to try it immediately. I got the demo, and loved it....so I bought it on Xbox Live Arcade. Not only is the gameplay incredible, but the graphics are as well. The water is the most realistic looking water I have seen so far (note, I didn't play Hydrophobia, so that could be better for all I know). This game is all about terraforming to save your villagers by using The Breath of Life (or something like that; I can't remember). As you progress through each level, the difficulty rises, making you ask yourself "Ok, how the fuck am I gonna do this?" From active volcanoes to tsunamis, it seems like this game is trying to through whatever natural disaster it can at you. There are some levels where water is all over the place, ready to wash away your village, where other levels hardly have any, and you need it to spread vegetation. Lava is fun to use, but it will quickly burn everything around it, starting a wildfire. And unless you have either repel water or repel fire and lava, your village is basically screwed. There are some neat things about this game though, aside from just picking up dirt, water, or lava to cool it into rock: some villages have certain powers that you can use (activated by using the d-pad on Xbox) to change things up. Out of the plethora on there, Infinite Earth (which allows you to place as much dirt as possible in a short time), and Enhance Breath (which allows you to pick up and place more stuff) are easily my favorite 2, and when used together, allow you to basically change the entire look of a map in just seconds. In addition to those two, there's also Put Out Fire, Evaporate, Jellify Water (which turns water into Jello for a brief moment in time), and a couple others that totally slipped my mind. However, only a maximum of 4 abilities are on most maps in the story, as there are a maximum of 4 villages. And on top of all THAT, there are 3 types of trees, Fire Trees (which catch on fire and start wildfires at random intervals), Water Trees, (which will spew water when there's a heat source near by), and Explosion Trees (which explode when there's a heat source near by, and they can make big ass craters). All of those elements combined (which are introduced gradually) make this quite the strategy game, if it is somewhat simple compared to others. There are many awesome looking levels: deserts, open oceans, the side of an active volcano, and hell, why not, inside an active volcano. The last of those was the level Movements, which occurs very late in the game. It was the only level that I needed to look up a strategy to complete it. As of right now I'm only missing a couple achievements, and I'll get them eventually....the only ones I'm concerned with are the ones related to the challenge maps. There's one where you do a playthrough while losing only 5 villages...and that's just a pain in the ass. Overall, From Dust is a visually pleasing and fun strategy game. As one should have already guessed, it's out now on Xbox Live Arcade for 1200 Microsoft Points. It should be out in September on the Playstation Network, for "$ Who Knows," while OnLive also plans a release for it at some point (which will include touch controls for the iPad). And finally, for about $15 on Steam (and other places, I'm sure), PC gamers will get to enjoy it in just a few short hours. Or now. Not quite sure.

Edit: oh hey, forgot the score: 8 villages surrounded by fire out of 10.