From Dust PC Review

From Dust is a new game from Ubisoft. Lately they are mostly known from incredibly annoying DRM that requires a permanent link, making pirating their programs much more attractive for paying customers.

Not only do they make me activate my game and create an account (which should be trivially easy for them using Steam's API, but they wouldn't get my e-mail this way), they also patch the game I just downloaded. No progress bar, just a message and an animated icon. Nice.

When it finally runs, all I get is a Connection Lost message:

Had I realized it was an Ubisoft game, I probably wouldn't have bought it. And they also managed to post in their forum that it would not require you to be online - see this article for comments on this, on the supposedly bad port, and on how to get a refund from Steam.

It started working. Another "perk"  from Ubisoft DRM is the huge amount of time it takes to save a game after you exit (which of course is completely unnecessary and pure DRM related).

The game does look nice, and the start of the gameplay is interesting - you mostly move land to create land bridges and redirect water streams. But it gets old fast.

Really not recommended - 2/5 Stars

Comments

Dubya said…
Enjoyed this game for an hour or 2, then it got boring.
I expected A LOT MORE from this game, having been in development so long. Instead it feels like a "concept" not a finished game.
August 19, 2011 at 3:51:00 PM GMT-3
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Solved - You have an incorrect version of driver "vmx86.sys" - VMWare Workstation 8

I have just installed VMWare Workstation 8 over my old VMWare Workstation 6.5 on Windows 7. On my first run I already got the error message: Could not get vmx86 driver version: The handle is invalid. You have an incorrect version of driver "vmx86.sys". Try reinstalling VMware Workstation. Failed to initialize monitor device. Obviously, I was concerned, but there is a simple way to solve it - just right-click the VMWare Workstation icon and use Run as Administrator. This is a bit annoying, but at least it is easy to solve. Update: I forgot to mention it, but as Dave said on the comments, you can right-click on the program shortcut, choose Properties, Compatibility tab and check Run as Administrator so that it will always run properly. Thanks, Dave!
Read more

[Fixed] Just Cause 3 Mouse offset

I've sort of "fixed" my mouse offset problems and cursor exits from Just Cause 3. For whatever reason, both seem to happen sometime, specially if I need to change focus from the game. Sometimes just going to another app and returning solves it, otherwise if I go to Options, Graphics, and turn full screen back on (or turn it off and on again), it seems to get fixed. However, still annoying.
Read more

Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

I've read Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master last week. It was pretty good, although if you have a few years of experience and good practices, you should be familiar with most of what it says, even if you don't follow it in practice :-) . Some of their bullet points are: - Don't duplicate - Write flexible code - Use Contracts, assertions and exceptions - Test - Automate where possible - Use a version control system. Obviously, many of these points have a lot to do with refactoring and XP. They also have another neat book on Automation, Pragmatic Project Automation: How to Build, Deploy, and Monitor Java Apps . Obviously that is much less relevant to a Delphi programmer, but you can still learn quite a bit from it. After I started reading it, I automated large sections of my build and release process (in PHP - it's easy to use in the command-line, too, and some parts are re-usable on the site). It saves a lot of time and enables you to stop worrying if you ...
Read more