God Game From Dust Lives Again as Chrome Web Store Centerpiece - frederickshabligne

At a Glint

Expert's Rating

Pros

Impressive tech
Effortless install
Pat gameplay

Cons

Zero proper sandbox modal value
Sniff of pointlessness

Our Verdict

Last year's notorious PC port of this long- awaited God game returns slick, shiny, and Chrome-plated.

PC fans of God games had peck to be drunk about when publisher Ubisoft announced From Dust for PC last year. The game's designer, Eric Chani, is well known for his abstract early 90's masterpiece Other Globe, so the project seemed in capable hands. Moreover, helium cited Peter Molyneux's classics Inhabited and Black &ere; Bloodless As his primary influences, thus the place of origin couldn't be better. Afterwards a successful console release, it seemed little could go wrong. Unfortunately, that's non what happened. The PC port was badly bungled with low framerates, no opposed-aliasing support, video card compatibility issues and an overzealous DRM system full with bugs that plague users to this day. There's an alternative to the console version if you want to play frustration-unconstrained, all the same. Just fire upbound Chrome and play right in your browser, courtesy of From Debris in Chromium-plate's Web Store ($10).

From Dust village screenshot — With these totems purloined care of, things are looking green and ivy-covered around this From Dust village.

From Dust is the second high-visibility game title ported to Chrome using Google's Native Client engineering science; the first was Bastion. Native Client allows legacy software to operate within the highly secure browser framework at near-inborn speeds with virtually none porting required. With support for computer hardware-accelerated 3D artwork, mouse capture, fullscreen modes and more, it's a biological fit for resource-intensive games which see little performance debasement compared to their native, traditionally installed counterparts. What's more, the nature of this cloud-based play model eliminates issues arising from Ubisoft's fatal UPlay DRM connive. On that point is no motive to install specialized software or make players jump through verification hoops. You scarce fire it in the lead and make for. IT even works on both Linux and Mac OSX.

The game itself is a slickly executed take on the genre's classics. You play a immortal-like presence guiding a race of masses to success and happiness via environmental manipulation, using a orbicular manifestation of force called "the hint." Victimisation that Lucille Ball as a cursor, you raise and turn down land, redirect the flow of rivers and lakes, create paths for your masses to follow to safety and more. The action is smooth, satisfying and comfortable to pick up. A your power grows, thusly dress the personal effects you can create, which include the ability to manipulate lava, smother fires and redirect deadly floods to assist your villagers thrive. Be careful, however, as performing miracles is slick work. An imprecise joggle of the mouse rear end wind up incinerating or drowning your villagers as an alternative of saving them. When you'Ra a god, there's a fine line between saving and smiting.

From Dust light trails screenshot — Ubisoft's From Dust for Chrome has beautiful spiffy visuals for a browser-based game.

Since From Dust's computer code has been transported largely intact, more or less of the original's problems remain. Foremost of these is the absence of an actual sandbox mode, a hard omission tending the dear-requirement of so much an alternative for this character of game. Concerned this is a crawling feeling of pointlessness as each stage's goal becomes the reason for play, rather than the simple, open-ended enjoyment of developing your people to their full potential difference. The various level challenges play impossible like RTS puzzles, and patc this is play at first, it's easy to become detached enough from the proceedings that they start feeling same make-work. Populous had the trinke of a new thought and Black & White had its giant avatars to allow for personality and a sense of occasion. From Dust is destitute of such flourishes, and piece this doesn't ruin gameplay, it does prevent an otherwise good game from becoming a neat one. Happening a to a greater extent mundane note, anti-aliasing is also absent in this version and remains implementable lone via FXAA injection tricks with Nvidia graphics card game .

RTS and God-gritty fans will nevertheless find out mess to like here, as titles of this flavor and quality don't come up along identical oftentimes. The best part is the price. At $10, Chrome's version of From Dust is the cheapest you'll retrieve short-dated of a holiday fire sales agreement, and the browser-based speech method acting is akin to getting a bugfix update for free. There are updated keyboard controls, red-hot tutorials and a lot necessary screen out controls all absent in the PC version. There's even a amply playable three-level exhibit. Check information technology out, even just to see what Google's Homegrown Client and Chromium-plate are capable of pulling off.

Note: The Download clit takes you to the Chrome Web store, where you can install the latest interpretation directly into your Chrome web browser.

—Jim Norris

Note: When you purchase something after clicking golf links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.