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Friday, January 23, 2004
Computer Gaming Review: Homeworld 2
By JR Rodriguez IV
HOMEWORLD is the best real-time space strategy game I have ever played.
Never has any other game equaled the 6D graphic environment that Homeworld offers. I say 6D because in 3D games the vehicles usually move forward and backward, left and right, but in Homeworld’s 6D environment you can also move up and down, diagonally, and upside down or side-ways.
In Homeworld there is no sense of gravity. Your spaceships can actually seem upside down or on its side. Your ships will seem to hover in place if you command them to stop moving. And Homeworld’s outer space is really out-in-space, which is sooo vast that if you go far enough, the other ships may look like real itty bitty dots, or disappear altogether. If you see some asteroids in the distance and send over some mining ships to collect the ores, you might not realize the distance until you notice that you can’t see the ships anymore but just the asteroids, and sometimes you can see the energy generated by distant ships, but not the ships themselves. No other battle field in any game today can match the vastness of space in Homeworld.
In Homeworld, you’re desperately leading the last of your race, the Kharakid, to go home or find a safe place in space where you can once again thrive. Problem is that another race is bent on eradicating your kind for good. The overall feeling while playing this game is desperation. You feel that there’s just no room to fail or your race is lost. The music completes the mood with its mellow and somber tones throughout the game and the black and white film clips in between each mission. When Homeworld Cataclysm came out it became an instant hit just like its predecessor.
Another cool thing I love is the way your one-man spacecrafts attack. They don’t just hover around the enemy unlike many other RTs out there, they fly-by and fly around. They’ll fly around and position themselves facing the target, then fire their lasers, and when they’re dangerously close enough, you’ll see them veer away just like in a real combat situation. The dog fights are very impressive, too. You’ll hear the pilots barking orders among each other and see them implement them. And mind you, each fighter craft is independently controlled by its AI pilots, but you can assign strike groups if you want.
Homeworld 2 is set a couple of centuries after the first part. You are a Hiigaran who descended from the Kharakid. You’re in charge of the Pride of Hiigara, which is their last mothership. Your race is at war with the Vaygr, who wants to capture the Pride of Hiigara because of its Hyperspace Core. Apparently, there is an ancient prophecy that the group who unites the three Hyperspace Cores, one of which is located in your mothership, will control the power of the Sajuuk. The Sajuuk is an ancient and powerful force.
Although the concept is new and unique, Homeworld 2 is not as compelling as the first Homeworld, because there is no emotional content. The Kharakid of Homeworld is like an oppressed people who just wanted to be left alone and are forced to fight for survival, but you won’t find that feeling of desperation and hope in Homeworld 2.
The mission designs in Homeworld 2 are excellent. You get 15 missions that are quite linear and if you fail in any one of them, you have to repeat it. There is improvement with regard to collecting the leftover resources, not like in Homeworld were you would rather collect all the resources in the map after the battle so you can use them for the next mission, but after completing your objectives in Homeworld 2, the level ends and you get credited for all the resources that are left behind so you can use them for the succeeding missions. Another improvement is when enemy fleets in Homeworld are not approached they’ll never attack first, but in Homeworld 2 they will start attacking after a set amount of time that you don’t. The enemy AI is incredible, they don’t waste their firepower, and they’ll send the right ships when attacking your fleet. Beware the Vaygr Infiltrator Frigate, which will be efficiently used by the enemy AI to commandeer your fleet for its own cause.
The interface it superbly designed where you can control all your micromanagement without having to leave the scene of the battle. You can target specific sub-systems of your enemy ships like the engines, etc, which actually reminds me of battle scenes while watching Star Trek when the captain will order his or her ensign to target the engines or shields or tractor beams, etc, of enemy ships to disable them.
One drawback is that you can easily predict what the enemy will do because they don’t change their scripts during the game. So, if you saved your game before an imminent attack, you can just restore the game and send all your ships to the area they’re coming from. Another setback is the lack of a difficulty setting, which is a bummer for me because I usually want to play almost any game with the difficulty set to hardest, while some people I know prefer setting it to easy.
Graphics, too, aren’t that much detailed, which it too bad because I was looking forward to maxing out my G-Force FX video card. Lastly, there is only one multiplayer mode, which is a major bummer for lovers of the first Homeworld which had five multiplayer modes with multiple settings for each. You’ll also find a couple of bugs here and there, but I’m sure they will be ironed out by patches in no time.
Minimum system requirements: P3-833, 256mb RAM, 1.6gb HDD, 32mb 3D Video Card Hardware questions, e-mail me at: labworkscomputers@hotmail.com
(January 23, 2004 issue)
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