Dust: An Elysian Tail — Vwooshzheeooshzoozoosh

I used to include, in my Adventures of a Canadian Gamer column, a small blurb dedicated to an upcoming game that I was looking forward to trying.  Many of those games sucked, and of the rest, I haven’t even started playing some of them.

Considering the hit-and-miss nature of those blurbs, and the fact that I’ve not always got a list of games I’m happily watching for, I stopped including them.  I also did not want to give lip service to games that might not deserve it.  We do enough of that here on Damage Control when we write articles about how long Final Fantasy Versus XIII is taking.

There has only been one exception, one awesome game that I’d heard about and was looking forward to playing so very much that I was almost certain that there was no way to mess it up.  Well, okay, there’s been more than one of those in my lifetime but there was only one that I wrote about in an Adventures column.  So yes, I have been looking forward to this game for the past two and a half years and I am definitely not disappointed.

I suppose, considering it was developed by one person, it could either have turned out very, very good or very, very bad.  Fortunately, Dead Dodrill, the person who pretty much did everything except the music and the voice work, actually cares about presenting the story he’s trying to tell exactly how he wanted to tell it.  The impression I took away from it was that no corners were cut and no shortcuts taken during the development of Dust.

Dust is the first released story in the world of Falana, and I assume was originally going to be a smaller game, intended for release as an Indie title a couple years ago.  After winning a development contest, the game expanded to be what it is today and naturally took longer to finish.  The build of the game that you can see in early trailers mostly resembles the finished product, but it’s easy to see that things have been added and modified.  Although Mr. Dodrill missed a few of his earlier release dates, I am not disappointed with this outcome at all.

By this time, it’s hard to avoid cliche when telling your story and Mr. Dodrill knows this.  So instead of apologizing for them, Dust embraces them.  The game begins in the usual way these games begin, with an amnesiac main character waking up and wondering who he is.  Naturally, although people initially don’t trust an amnesiac warrior, all it takes for Dust to win everyone over is to save a few lives.  At that point, he could’ve been Charles Manson for all everyone cared, because he was also the person who saved a farmer’s life, so he’s obviously on their side.

I used to think I was rubbish at action games, but then I played Okami and enjoyed it.  Since then, I’ve played a few more and now I’ve played Dust.  It was rather difficult to earn my first few levels, though.  The game pretty much tosses you into the battle system head first and after some subtle tutorial-type instructions, you’re given your first real “boss” fight (I use air quotes because they become regular mooks later on in the game), and I found myself being destroyed easily until I got the hang of the techniques I had at my disposal.  It was sort of like how I had to learn the battle system of Bayonetta, through trial and lots of error.  But the more I mastered fighting, the easier Dust became.  This wasn’t a case of the game itself being blindingly easy.  It was a case of my own personal skill level improving, and I like games like that, where you’re encouraged to improve yourself.  At no point in Dust did I feel like I was just button mashing.

Speaking of the battle system, I’m always afraid that an action game is going to drop the ball in the magic department.  Kingdom Hearts tried to make it easy to cast magic with a minimum of menus to navigate, considering it’s not a turn-based game, and Okami incorporated a system of brush strokes into the battle system and let you pause the action while you drew.  Dust also does it right and assigns all magic to Dust’s flying sidekick, Fidget.  With the simple press of a button, Fidget sends out one of three small spurts of magic, and you can use a certain skill with the press of a separate button to multiply that spurt by quite a bit, often causing the magic to fill the screen much to the enemy’s obvious displeasure.  It’s all so simple it makes me wonder why anyone else tried to do it differently.

And yet there is a beautiful complexity in Dust‘s simplicity.  I’ve played games where all you have to do is hit the Attack button until you run out of enemies and then walk forward.  Dust is one of those games that encourages you to experiment with the battle system and try out all the tools at your disposal until your enemies are nothing more than minced onions.  One of the achievements (and one of the in-game missions, too) involves making a 1000-hit combo, and it’s not an easy achievement to get.  Still, I experimented for a while and managed to do it with a bit of practice.  By the end of the game, I was more than prepared to face the final boss and wipe the floor with him using everything I learned about fighting over the various chapters of the game.  It was still a challenge, of course, but I felt like an absolute hero at the end.

Aesthetically, Dust is amazing.  The graphics are of the calibre you’d expect from an animator who’s trying his hand at game design.  Even if the game itself had sucked, there’s no way it would’ve been less than beautiful.  The music of Dust is also beautifully done and very epic.  A major point in my last two reviews is that not everyone can use music effectively in their games, but Dust is one of those games that does.  The soundtrack was made available yesterday for purchase, and it’s well worth your money.