Homeworld 2 - Not A Fan's Dream, Not a Nightmare Either
Written: May 05 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Improved visuals and gameplay mecanics.
Cons: Story is boring, missions are poorly designed, sounds are nothing more than imports from Homeworld.
The Bottom Line: Not much for fans who will be disappointed, but newbies may enjoy the new experience.
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| LaughingTarget's Full Review: HomeWorld 2 for Windows |
It boils down to this: I was born in the wrong century. Too late to hit the period of great world exploration, and even too late for just basic world trotting (the internet screwed that one up), but too early for running about the final great frontier, outer space, as we’re just too primitive for that. That exploration spirit has been ruined badly by circumstances. I guess that is why I am attracted to games, particularly those that take place in the speckled heavens. I’ve done them all, from adventure to action to simulation. RPG and RTS, it is all good. That is where Homeworld 2 comes in. Not only is it set in space, a RTS, but it is also the follow-up to a serious kick-hiney game. So, how does it fare to such an individual with mammoth expectations? Read and find out.
The first Homeworld was a title with “revolutionary” written all over it. Well, not really; I don’t recall the packaging saying that, but it is revolutionary. It took the RTS genre, stuck it in space, and let it rip. On the surface, to those who never played this before, that sounds like Starcraft. Wrong, this sucker used a fully 3D world. You could get in on a unit, rotate around it, and set up strategies in regards to flanking not only front and back, but top and bottom. Combine that with some of the largest unit quantities of nearly any RTS out on the market, each in a nice 3D model, and you got yourself a winner.
Homeworld 2 has quite the legacy to live up to. The gameplay consists of the player clicking, dragging, and moving his ships around the field to blow the bejesus out of the bad guys. Unfortunately, it is not as good as it sounds. The initial control scheme is a bit convoluted, especially for new players. Getting your ship to the right “altitude” and the right location at the same time is a general pain in the hindquarters. It involves a lot of shift holding, map rotating, and other such fun things all at the same time. Unit control in general is not a piece of cake. They attack just fine with a right click, but then they become haphazard in attack patterns afterward, so you have to sit there and baby-sit your units. It is nice that they automatically engage enemies now, but getting them back in formation is no picnic. A strike group function was included, but unfortunately it vanishes after each of the many mid-mission cut-scenes, and also seems to just dissolve on you if you accidentally click on a strike group unit more than once. Getting them back in line is a complete mess, especially if you are trying to exclude units that happen to be in the area box.
The biggest downfall of the game is the sheer size of the levels. That was a boon for the first game, but now it has turned into a bane. HW2 has a number of missions that require you to destroy all enemy units on the map, down to the last scout ship. This is irritating for two very distinct reasons: First, the units like to hide in out of the way locations, like high up on the map in the middle of nowhere. Second, you get a total of 8 probes to use, and they are nowhere near enough to cover the entire map, so you are forced to run about looking for the last scout ship to hunt down and destroy. In one case I spent an hour looking for that blasted thing.
Gameplay balance issues are also prevalent. The worst mission of them all is the fourth mission, where the enemy easily outnumbers you five to one, sending in more capital ships in waves than you could even produce. They have a combination of heavy missile frigates, fighters, corvettes and flak ships that make their defenses nearly impregnable. The first part of the mission is a blitz and pray, the second is just getting lucky and using stupid tactics. You are supposed to blow up this station before it repairs itself, but guarding it are 20 frigate class ships that rip through you like nothing. On top of that, there are 3, yes, 3 docks to blow up as well, each guarded by its own company of three carriers and frigates. After 5 hours, I had to resort to a ridiculous plan that involved running some bombers as a decoy to the shipyards while I built up 20 ion cannons to pound at the back of the station when the defenses left. This is also the mission where I spent that hour tracking down that scout ship.
The end mission is not nearly as irritating as before. I always want to collect every last bit of resource on the map before moving on, but this time, the game automatically sucks it in and goes to the next mission. Unfortunately, this happens automatically when all objectives have been finished off, and leaves out the other end of mission activity: replenishing units. Due to the inexplicably gigantic odds, I find myself devoid of units at the end. Instead of letting me build up more, they shove me off to the next mission without so much as a decent force to use. Many missions just dump off enemies on me as I frantically hide my resource collectors and build more ships (enemies love hitting resource units).
Then there is the storyline bolting it all together. The first was a rather noble story. Find a way off your ravaged planet, fight off hostile enemies, and get back to your home world. The second? Well, here is the bad guy, beat him up, save the universe, blah blah blah. And that bad guy is even a fanatic fundamentalist that believes he is God reborn. Well, that isn’t all that interesting. You get pulled along and fight things with no real goal other than your basic, stock, and ultimately boring “save everyone” concept.
Visually, HW2 is a bit of a step up from the original. Models are a bit more complex, thanks to a nice lighting and shadow system (though shadows run like crap on NVIDIA cards as it is in Pixel Shader 2.0). Models look rather nice up close, but when you back out into your standard viewing distance, they look no different from those in the original title. Beam attacks have a minor light effect to them but are otherwise not much different than the previous title. An improvement is in battle damage. If you get up close to a ship, and it is damaged, you will notice a decent set of battle damage on it. It even has a good way to damage areas actually hit by real attacks. There isn’t the cool breakthrough effect promised way back when while HW2 was in development, but eh, what can you do? Overall, the visuals are wasted due to the scope of the game. You never really get to see much of the good stuff unless you are not doing anything and can get a close up look. Then it is no real fun at all.
Sound isn’t all that either. It feels as if they just took the outdated sounds from the original title and slapped them back into the game. The voices were re-done, though, and that helped bump the sound score up a bit as the production value is decent. The only problem with the voice-overs, though, is the volume variation. Some clips are loud and some clips are far too quiet, which forces a volume increase, just to get blasted by the next voice clip or some other sound effect.
Overall, Homeworld 2 was a bit of a disappointment. Don’t get me wrong, it was still a blast to play and see all the new improvements to the system. Still, the overall size of the maps, the idiocy of finding all the remaining units down to the last probe before moving on, and the sheer imbalance and poor tactics brought it down. A perfect game would take the gameplay of Homeworld 2 and put the story and balance of Homeworld into it. There is still fun to be had, but not as much as fans of the series would expect.
Recommended:
No
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LaughingTarget
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Member: Justin Murray
Location: Orlando, FL
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