No small credit is due to the AI in making the game an enjoyable and challenging experience. The enemy plays to its side's strengths, and usually doesn't do idiotic things. If you've got infantry sitting around by itself, expect to see some mutating creatures assimilate them; your harvesters and carryalls will suffer from constant enemy attack; your fortifications will be pummeled from long-rage weaponry; enemy aircraft will target your vehicles that are incapable of anti-aircraft fire. Some things, however, did not make sense. On one level, I witnessed the Harkonnen enemy building absolutely massive quantities of the top of the line Devastator mech, which was conceivable given my strategy of sitting around until I have enough forces. This time however the enemy responded by making bigger forces of its own in order to constantly obliterate my potential attacking units, which were being sacrificed for defense. The AI looked great right up to the point I accidentally loaded an earlier game file instead of saving the current one (well, forget that AND the math grades)! But this also exposed something I didn't notice earlier: now that I restarted to an earlier portion of this particular mission, I noticed that the enemy did not build any huge amounts of forces like last time. The only difference I made was to send out my cannon fodder infantry to meet the death blows of bigger enemy units in order to soften them up. Surely enough the enemy possessed lots of spice harvesters--but there were more of those than actual combat units! This was certainly weird, but for the most part the forces I encountered, Ordos or Harkonnen, would make more intelligent decisions.

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By far the largest noticeable difference in this RTS game in comparison to Westwood's earlier offerings is the graphics engine. And the difference is nothing less than stunning. The 3D graphics give an extra degree of immersion and overall a more realistic depiction of battle units in relation to their surroundings. You can zoom out to view the carnage or zoom in to monitor a specific situation and panning around to view battle damage from all sides is also a feast for the eyes. At this point, it's important to distinguish between the quality of the graphics engine and the quality of the units themselves. The latter is really not all too impressive; it can be hard to distinguish between infantry and the units do not have a very high polygon count--sometimes they reminded me of the units out of Total Annihilation. But make no mistake--the graphics engine itself is very impressive. First of all, there is an immense amount of detail in unit animations and environmental effects. You can see cast shadows looming over the land, the dustrails of speedbikes, headlights of mechs, and most impressive of all the gaping mouths of voracious sandworms. It's also unreasonable to expect too much individual detail to unit modeling as that would definitely slow down what has to be a fast-paced game with lots of things going on at once. All things considered, Westwood's inclusion of the new graphics engine for this title is definitely a huge plus that creates a more exciting adventure for the player. Note: see screenshots and captions