I was annoyed when I first started playing From Dust. Not from the game itself – but because on launching I was forced to register with some ubisoft thing. When I buy your game I’m doing you a kindness – don’t force me to create accounts on something unless you have a damn good reason. As far as I can tell they don’t have a good reason – so I’m annoyed before I even start playing.

Tech

From Dust is a cool game. The technology reminds me of Minecraft in as much that if you showed it me on paper I’d tell you it’d never happen and to get the fuck out of my office. But they did it – and it works, and it works really really well. 

Gameplay

The gameplay is fun. It’s challenging. It’s nice to be able to see what the game wants you to do, but to say to yourself “No, I think I’ll re-route this waterfall instead” – and be able to do it. I like stuff like that.

I’m told that it gets ‘too hard’ as it goes on – but I haven’t got that far yet. I don’t see that as a negative though – I miss when games used to be hard. So far I’ve found the learning curve pretty good.

My only tiny annoyance with the gameplay is with the unskippable ‘hint’ cinematics.

Design

One area that I think it’s lacking is in the design department. It’s kind of like programmer art. I feel like they could have done with looking at a game like TF2 and coming up with a stylized look. It’s the only thing that lets it down for me.. but it doesn’t stop it being a great game.

4/5

Additional:

I just beat it. The ending isn’t great – but what do you want for $10.  I enjoyed it.