Homeworld is one of those rare games that even had other famous game programmers going "How did they do it!". I remember reading in PC Gamer a meeting between a dozen or so internationally famous game programmers, designers and producers where they were all to talk about current and future trends in video games. All they wanted to do at first was credit Relic's programmers for making one of the coolest games any of them had ever seen.

Homeworld was expected to truly change the way real-time strategy games were to be played, and it almost did. I haven't really seen any Homeworld clones yet, but its influence has definitely been felt. Most of the new RTS games have a distinct 3-dimensional feel to them, even if they are primarily ground based.

If you haven't played a real time strategy game before, here is the basic run down. Warcraft 2 and Command and Conquer were the earliest huge successes in the genre. Starcraft is probably the undisputed king, and Red Alert 2 is probably the most successful of the recently released real-time strategy releases. If you enjoy any of these titles, then I highly recommend playing Homeworld. The term real-time strategy came about to separate those games from what was the then more common turn-based strategy game. In a real-time game, the action was always going, and players would have to keep track of the game pieces at all times. There is no pausing and analyzing what to do next. In most real-time strategy games, you have to build your units into an army, and build buildings that have various functions. You also commonly have to find and collect 'resources'. Resources could be one of many things, but usually these are converted into a sort of currency that allows you to build more units and buildings, or maybe repair those that have been damaged. All real-time strategy games are played on a two dimensional playing field that is scrollable, with finite edges.

At least they were all limited to two dimensional finite planes before Homeworld came out. Homeworld truly allows you to feel like you are in the vastness of space. There is no real up or down, if it weren't for the map that lets you assign ships over long distances. There is no real edge to any of the maps, not that I've had a quiet moment to send a scout ship into the darkness of the void and see just how far it can go.

Homeworld plays very much like your standard real-time strategy game. You start out with almost no ships besides your mother ship, and from there you build all your other ships. Some ships operate more like a building than a ship, like a research or shield ship. But most come in varying sizes and stats. Like harvesters in other RTS games, you have ships that go out and destroy asteroids, collecting their substances to bring back to your ship to turn into usable products to make more ships.

However, the third dimension given to you here really matters. Many ships are more vulnerable from the top and bottom. There is a sphere formation where you literally surround an enemy ship in a big ball of death firing into the middle. On the two dimensional representation of space, it may look like two ships are very close, but in reality they are quite far apart because of the vertical third dimension.

Of your ships, there are three distinct size classes. You have your interceptors, which are little maneuverable ships. Imagine a one man fighter like an X-wing or Tie Fighter. They have different strengths and costs, but are relatively the same. Then there is the corvette class. These are larger and slower than the interceptors, but usually have either a massive laser weapon, or else many smaller weapons on it. Then there are the capitol ships. These monstrous ships will have many different types of weapons facing outward in all directions. There is a certain level of Rock - Paper - Scissors when dealing with the ships. Lots and lots of fighters can take on capitol ships which have a hard time destroying them. Corvettes can take out the fighters with relative ease. And the capitol ships can easily destroy the corvettes.

Not all ships fall into these simple categories, however. There is a salvage corvette, which attaches itself to an enemy ship and tows it towards the mother ship or a nearby carrier to convert the enemy ship into one of your own. The larger the ship the more salvage corvettes it takes to capture it, and some people play very aggressive games with their main goal being to capture all the enemy ships rather than destroy them. There are also some lightly shielded multi-fusion corvettes and ion cannons that are simply large laser guns that cannot defend themselves at all well, but can do massive damage to an enemy's capitol ships with prolonged fire. And there are also repair ships, and some floating platforms that can actually refuel your ships when they are very far from your mother ship. One side even gets the use of Stealth technology, which allows some ships to be hidden from radar and physical view until they attack.

I think graphically many programmers thought they could do a game like this, but didn't. There were space exploration and combat games for years before Homeworld. Descent Freespace, Tie Fighter, and the Wing Commander games had three dimensional battles and ships in a similar environment. But these games were usually from the 1st person view of the cockpit, and control of a fleet was usually through a few 'group' commands to your squad mates. What Homeworld did that finally broke the two dimensional limitation of previous real-time strategy games is come up with an intuitive interface. I think this is the real secret to why this game succeeded. The interface is complicated, don't get me wrong, but it is logical, and the tutorial makes it fairly easy to learn how to use it.

The interface also makes it very easy to zoom in or out and rotate the view. You will never quite feel like you've found the perfect view to watch a battle because so much is always going on. You can select to follow a single ship through a large battle. Even an enemy one! This can be very handy when you can't tell what type of ship the enemy is from a distance.

Also, to play a modern real-time strategy game, formations are very important. In original games all you could really do was lasso a large group of your units with the cursor and tell them to attack a large group of the enemy's units. Due to large variations in unit abilities, the more recent games have given way to stronger tactics. In order to successfully manage the rock - paper - scissors balance I mentioned above, the interface easily lets you manage and control groups and sub groups of ships, as well as their formations.

There is a strong need for grouping in this game, since the scope of the battles is so large, that you cannot ever hope to single handedly control all the opponents in a battle at once. Formations are one of the true wonders of this game. You can have your ships laid out in a straight line, in a figure-X, in a three dimensional claw formation, a wall, and even a sphere. All these formations have their strengths and weaknesses, and can be accessed with a single key click. Regardless of the combinations of ships in a group, or the size of the group, the ships will always fall into the best possible use of the formation.

As good as all this, if the gameplay didn't work, this game would be nothing more than a technology demo. Fortunately, it works out great. The game allows many different ways to play and win. Some people play all out aggressive and rush to the attack. Others can try to build a defensive fleet and wait by large groups of resources. Others try to be stealthy with invisible ships and salvage corvettes. In the single player game, the computer will rely on intelligent strategies, but not necessarily the same ones over and over again. The single player game is wonderful to play, because aside from slowly introducing you to the different types of ships, there is a really good story behind the game.

After discovering an ancient starship buried deep underground on your home planet, scientists realize that your race actually came from a distant planet thousands of years earlier. Your race builds a mothership using hyperspace technology discovered in the ship. However, after your first test flight, you come back to find your planet destroyed by aliens who apparently made an agreement with your ancestors to destroy your race if you ever developed hyperspace technology. Now, your race only consists of those living on the mothership, and it is time to find a new homeworld, so you head off to where your race apparently originated from. After various encounters with the enemy races, you end up in a giant nebula where a race of aliens has been hiding from the same enemy that destroyed your home planet. Later, you come upon the enemy that has destroyed your old home planet so that you may exact vengeance. There are very well done cut-scenes that were written with the game's engine giving you pieces of the story along the way.

I also want to mention the sound in the game. It really works in giving you the feeling of a large battleground. You can't hear ships that are far off in the distance, but zoom in close to a battle, and you will hear the blasts from lasers, and the sounds of the engines whining. There is even an exceptional use of the classic piece Adagio, that some may remember from the movie "Platoon", during the opening scenes that works so very well.

If I can only have one complaint about the game, it is definitely going to be a big one. The game is just too hard for me! I thought I was good at most games, and have really tried and tried to beat this game using my usual strategies, but some of the most difficult levels I just couldn't beat without a constant pausing of the game, scouting out the situation and then making plans. I have to reluctantly admit that there is probably something in the way that I play the game that has kept me from defeating it normally, since other friends have.

This is the kind of game that you will love to show off the graphics to non-gamers. They will 'oooh' and 'aaah' while you zoom into a capitol ship to show the detail, or as you follow a single ship through a large battle. The story works, and is very interesting. The multiplayer will successfully keep you occupied after you have finished the single player. Until the sequel came out offering a few more ships and additions, I didn't think there was anything this game didn't do right. What more could you ask of a game than that?




Recommended: Yes