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August 24, 2010 by LordKaT » 14 Comments

Note: the video camera is busted, so you won't be seeing me on screen anytime soon :(

inamidato
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Joined: 08/22/2010

Great video, Jason!

Thank you, thank you so much for talking about a PC game instead of one for consoles, for once. I spent so many hours playing this game and it's true it's the first RTS on PC. Yes, the AI sucks, but I still love it.

I really hope you can review more PC games in the future.

dyl604
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Joined: 06/17/2010

Ordos is probably the hardest house to play early game because they lack the ability to build rocket launchers. But the last mission is a breeze with them when you take advantage of the games poor AI.

The last mission is your house against the other two houses and the emperor. Once you figure out which direction each house is attacking from, you use your deviators to turn them, but instead of making the mind controlled vehicles stand and attack other enemies, (they turn back after taking a shot) I just turn them around and send them in the direction of a different house by blindly telling them to attack the general location of an enemy house, even though it may still be covered by a fog of war. I think the AI is too stupid to realize that the other houses are on the same side.

Once I figured this out, I had one play through of the Ordos' final mission and I remember distinctly that I had only lost 12 units according to the mission stats.

Sylveria
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Joined: 08/23/2010

WOOOO BOMAR!!

Moleman
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Joined: 08/23/2010

I always cringe a little bit when I see a video producer change their format a bit but both the RPG and RTS ones were great and two of your best videos to date. I like seeing UWW branch out instead of mostly doing NES games with the occasional 16-bit all the time.

Rareware
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Joined: 08/23/2010

Wow I've heard of this game being the first PC RTS but I had no idea how ahead of its time it was. How many standard RTS elements it pioneered for its time. I hope to play it one day.

Lorias
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Joined: 08/24/2010

That was, by far, my favourite ending to any of your videos. I was sitting back all slouched with a whole "Man these dune endings are boring as hell" right up until the Harkonnen shot the shit ouf of the emperor, and I'll tell you, your emoticon face was precisely how I was looking at the screen.

ApatheticOne
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Joined: 03/29/2010

You know what my single favorite thing about UWW is and has been since I first started watching? It's not the fact that it helps me get through some of the hardest games out there, it's not the kick ass title screen and it's not the funny one liners spoken by a dude with a thick NY accent which inevitably leads to humorous pronunciation of everyday words. I've always enjoyed how UWW takes me back...back to a time where all I cared about was my favorite football team wining and video games (EWJ, Nemo, Bionic Commando, Blaster Master, LoZ 2, Chaken, Battletoads and Bayou Billy being the best examples of this) UWW also sheds light on games I may have never played or even heard of. The few games that have been done that I have NOT played (Drakken, Alien Solider, Werewolf the Last Warrior) are spoken of in a way that does nothing but make me WANT to go out and play them...somehow. I grew up without a PC for damn near all of my childhood, so subsequently I missed out on a lot of good/old PC/DOS games. Dune 2 looks to be one of those very games that I was unable to get a hold of at a young age...but after watching this episode, I want to play it. In short, great episode and by the looks of it, great choice of game. I can't wait to see what's next..

But did you HAVE to bash my Raiders?! I can't help but feel that was a personal blow..and a low one at that. Lol..Maybe if we had Rhett OneChromosomeAwayFromBeingaNeanderthal Bomar or TheOther Manning you'd give us some respect. ^^

Mercuri
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Joined: 01/10/2010

you should do more pc games, after all, many people may have more interest in PC games rather than consoles

lrdphynix
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Joined: 08/24/2010

That was a great video LK. I remember cracking out Dune 2 on my uncle's computer back in the day and always having problems with the last boards.

I don't know if you're aware of it but they did an update of the Dune 2 game with Dune 2000, if you want to do a comparative video it'd be great to see, they also did something of a psuedo-sequel to the Dune 2/Dune 2000 game called Emperor: Battle for Dune.

Great games all around!

Oskuro
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Joined: 08/25/2010

Awesome, you got me to register and all. Nice review of the game, can you believe I actually never managed to beat the last level? I would've got the Harkonned ending, though.

There are a few things I think you either missed or deliberately ignored, namely:

-Infantry: Although they are mostly useless, they have a few perks that make them somewhat interesting. Firstly, they are less likely to annoy the sandworms. And, secondly, when an infantry unit walks into a building, it causes heavy damage to it (and dies), but if an infantry unit manages to kill a building, it will CAPTURE the building. Think C&C/RA engineer.

-Fremen: They are invisible while walking on sand, and that means they can sneak up and try to capture buildings more easily.

-Devastator: Not only does it explode when killed, the explosion can be triggered. Placing the thing in between tightly packed buildings or units and detonating it can be useful, although it takes a few seconds to blow up.

Oskuro
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-Sonic Tank: The sonic blast moves through units and buildings alike, damaging everything on its path. When used aganist tightly packed units it can be devastating.

-Ornithopters: Can't be controlled, and will randomly attack enemies. Their most dangerous aspect is that rockets fired at them that miss will damage structures they fall upon. Yes, your own rocket turrets or tanks will damage your base trying to shoot them down.

-Carryall: Build them so Harvesters are flown back and forth, saving time and reducing the risk of someone destroying them. They will also sometimes pick up damaged units to repair, or fly them back to the battle.
You can also force a "free" Carryall to show up by locking in unit-producing structures, either with buildings or walls, this will have a carryall come by to pick up the newly produced unit and drop it somewhere nearby. Don't do this with the refinery, though, as the Carryall will deliver the harvester, but won't pick it back up.

-Tanks are STUPID: This applies to any unit, but tanks are the worst offenders. When ordered to attack something on the other side of an structure, they will try to shoot their way through the structure rather than move around it. This can be exploited to destroy the enemy base, but it will hurt when you see your own tanks doing it to your base.

Oskuro
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-Worms: They can be either scared away, or killed. Shooting them until they are on the red will make them dissapear, although it takes a while, I usually did it by lining the rock areas with rocket soldiers. Also, using the Devastator you can actually kill the thing, triggering the detonation just before it gets eaten. I haven't managed to do this, but several people have confirmed it, and say that a bunch of spice pops up afterwards.
Oh, and one of the cheats I've seen the AI do in this game is that the worms will favour your troops over the AI's, so don't rely on worm-luring strategies.

-Spice Bumps: Those weird bumps in the sand that yield spice when shot, and instantly KILL anything that drives over them. Careful with the Harvesters.

-Concrete Slabs: One use of concrete slabs is that they make units move faster, so it might be worth it while defending a base to make concrete corridors for your units to move around. They are too easily destroyed though, and can be very frustrating to rebuild.

And that's that. I second the idea that a review of Dune 2000 or Emperor might be interesting, if only to see how the gameplay evolved. Let's also not forget that the gameplay of Dune II was the larval form of Command & Conquer, and some concepts are a bit weird when you think about it (particularly Tiberium or Ore on Red Alert, an adaptation of Spice harvesting for a non-Dune setting).

Hope you get your camera fixed soon, though.

bleep
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Joined: 11/07/2009

Please also review: blaster master 2, mad max, 7th saga and eye of the beholder. All really hard.

beavinator
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Joined: 12/04/2010

Hey man, I just recently found Until We Win thanks to a link from Video Game Music Daily, and I've been watching through the archive. I finally decided to create an account on your site so I could comment on the awesome Clue: The Movie ending that nobody said anything about. That shit ROCKS!
Keep up the great work.