September 16, 2003 - There are a few games that I've played over the years that will always stick with me for one reason or another. One such title, that I'll always bring up when having a conversation with someone about real-time strategy games is Homeworld. It wasn't just a game, it was an experience. The story, sound, graphics, and gameplay were all top notch and innovative to boot. It will forever remain etched in my mind as one of the best PC games released. When Homeworld2 was announced, I was pretty excited that it was finally in development, but my mind immediately started wondering how Relic Entertainment could possibly outdo the first with the sequel. To make a long story short, they didn't really outdo it, they just made it bigger, prettier, and easier to control. There's a lot of new things in Homeworld2 to like and love, but the core of the gameplay is still the same, which is just how Relic, and probably many of the fans, wanted to keep it.
The guys at Relic made it pretty clear during the development phase that they weren't going to try to break any molds with the sequel. They liked the mold. Pretty much everybody that played Homeworld liked the mold. But what they did know is that they could make Homeworld easier to play, nicer to look at, and just as lovely to listen to. While I'm still actually partial to the experience I had with the first game, I think a lot of that had to do with the newness and my fondness for the story. But I can say with confidence that fans of Homeworld will be more than pleased by what they find inside this beautiful new package.
Story
In the original title, the Kushan, a race exiled to a nasty little desert planet, had rediscovered hyperspace travel after finding a hyperspace core along with coordinates of their one time home. What they didn't know is that they weren't supposed to rediscover hyperspace travel. Their exilers were none too happy about it and proceeded to try and destroy them altogether. After a long and arduous journey spanning lightyears and costing many, many lives, the Kushan reached their homeworld of Hiigara and took it back from those who had stolen it from them. It was a beautiful story told well through animatic cutscenes, a resounding score, beautiful voice work, a depth of space never before realized in gaming, and a well crafted plot that tossed players into one tricky situation after another.
Homeworld2 picks up after the Kushan have become the Hiigarans and the galaxy has had the time to settle down and get back to prosperity. But as you would expect with a sequel, new troubles arise again and the struggle to survive has to begin anew. This time, the remnants of the Taidan have been brought under the control of a new leader. After finding a third hyperspace core these newly dubbed Vaygr are beginning an all out war on Hiigara, aiming to take the homeworld back. While this is the ultimate aim of the Vaygr, the story brings a new and improved Mothership on another journey across space and away from Hiigara in the hopes of finding the answers to their problem.
The story is a good one and told well through the same types of animatic cutscenes and in-game dialogue and events. This may be a matter of personal taste, but while I liked the story, I didn't quite feel the connection that I did in the first one. Perhaps this is because the odds against survival weren't quite as big. Perhaps it was that the fleet I built didn't really spawn from the oh so humble beginnings as the first one. I'm not sure what it was, but it lacked the same personal touch as Homeworld. This isn't to say I was disappointed because I wasn't. I really didn't see how that same lost in space, just us against the galaxy, family outing, type of feel that I loved so much could be brought back anyway. Instead the feel is definitely of two gigantic civilizations throwing massive punches at each other in an attempt to obliterate the other, which certainly has it's own appeal.
But the good thing about this story and the way its crafted is that it won't leave anyone behind. Those that haven't played the original will probably wonder about a couple of things, but will still be able to sink themselves into this war torn galaxy as easy as veterans of the series and have fun with it.
Graphics
The art style in general of the series has remained intact. The color schemes, ship designs, and almost illustrated look that textures give are a welcome return. You aren't going to see shiny detailed ships like you have in games such as Hegemonia, but they follow the Homeworld style very well. Add in the beautiful new shading features (for those that have the right hardware) and you've got a beautiful fleet of ships.
Those that have played the original Homeworld will quickly realize what a huge upgrade the series has received graphically. The first glimpse of the mothership in its docking station will let players know what they're in for. Everything here is just so much more detailed. Ships have more polys, better textures, more moving parts, extra parts that weren't there before called subsystems, and can be colossal in size. Many of the ships are new or are old ships with new designs, and are designed just as well as they were in the original. And the size of some of the new objects are incredible in scale. You'll remember how large the Mothership was in the first Homeworld. But that Mothership is quite a bit smaller than some of the structures you'll be seeing during the course of the game. Probably my only complaint (if you can even call it that) is that the bigger ships don't come apart in the same spectacular way that they did in Hegemonia. Explosions and destruction in that game were both done a bit better.
But the ships are really only one facet of this new gigantic galaxy. You'll remember all of the backgrounds from the first and how impressive they seemed at the time, but the new ones manage to make things bigger and smaller at the same time if you can believe that. Backgrounds aren't just made up of suns, stars, and nebulas anymore (though there are more than a few of each of those). They're also made up of gigantic structures in some cases that are so large that they have to be part of the background. The story will take you to several places that were old hangouts of the progenitor race that brought technology to the galaxy. These things are massive. Comparing the large Battleships to these structures would be like comparing an ant to a car. It certainly makes your fleet look tiny from far away. But it also manages to close space in a bit and make things feel more encased and confined. It's a nifty trick.
Finally, the effects have been improved on all fronts. Weapons fire looks better, explosions look better, damage looks better... hell, it all looks amazing. I particularly like the particle effects for the emissions and smoke that leave damaged ships. These same types of effects are used for the new nebulas and dust clouds strewn around certain levels.
All of these things combine to make a good visual experience, especially when you zoom into the middle of a battle and follow some of your smaller corvette or fighter ships around. It can get pretty chaotic in there at times with so many engine trails, but it certainly is fun.
Of course, the one downside is the toll the game takes on your machine. Playing on my home computer (1.4GHz, 512MB RAM, GeForce3) with high detail minus some of the perks gives an acceptable framerate, but nothing you're going to jump up and down about. At work (3GHz, 1Gig RAM, GeForceFX 5900 Ultra) the game ran about as smooth as you would hope and expect it to.
Sound
One of the reasons Homeworld came together so well was because of the sound. This was one of the first RTSs that music was a character in the game. Often times you'll hear banal rock music or techno trying to add edge to fights that often have none. The music in Homeworld and now Homeworld2 is a symphonic dream that plants you into concussive and exciting space battles, adds tension, creates relief after a battle has been won, and sets a beautiful backdrop to these wonderful environments. I've really become attached to this type of gaming experience. It adds flavor, class, and a certain cinematic atmosphere and emotion that's impossible to deny.
Voice acting is similarly well done for the most part. Karen Sjet (the grafted pilot of the Mothership) brings the same haunted and almost empty tones that made her so wonderful in the first game. There's a tinge more humanity in her voice this time around, which I'm not sure I like for some odd reason, but the soft command is still there. Other voices are also done well. It's different this time around as there are other Hiigaran heroes speaking. It's almost strange to hear another voice. Homeworld almost gave the feel that Sjet was a hive brain for the entire fleet and no one else really thought for themselves. Now we see that yes, Hiigarans do in fact have brains of their own.
Other sounds will be very familiar, including the blooooop accompanying the switch between the map screen. Ion Cannons sound similar as do many of the other weapons. Aside from quality, these are much the same as before, which is good.
Gameplay
As I mentioned before, the core gameplay in Homeworld2 remains true to the series. Maps are all full 3D and set in space so your ships can move along each axis with unrestricted freedom. Of course, this is what also gave many gamers problems in the first title. While I liked the way things were before and didn't see much difficulty myself, the new control system really does make things even better than they were. Moving your units around in the world is no real problem. Instead of having to hit M to bring up the move interface, moving is now easily completed with a click of the mouse as you would see in most planet bound RTS games. Click on an area and your ships will move along to that spot. This actually works well most of the time because most of the game is played on a relatively flat field. There aren't as many spots that require movement along the Z axis as there were in the past making it even easier to control. This also means that much of the fighting will take place across the X and Y axis. I can't remember a time when the enemy came down on me from above as they did in the first game. Of course, you'll have to remember that this will probably not be the case in multiplayer games where strategies aren't limited.
The big push for easier controls wasn't in movement however, it was in removing much of the micromanagement. They succeeded very well in some ways. The first was moving fighter and corvette sized ships into squadrons so that they would be easier to grab. Nabbing individual fighters was a huge pain in the ass and this made things much, much better. The big thing, that made things much easier for organization purposes, were the strike groups and intelligent targeting. Strike groups work very well for moving units across space and help to keep them out of serious trouble. Basically, you can select any number and types of units, put them into a group using the normal Ctrl+number key, and then assign all of these units a strike formation, which will have them act differently. You can use these for various situations when you know you'll be coming up against different types of enemies. Stick your fighters in the front for when you know bombers will be swooping in and you want to engage them before they hit your frigate and capital ships. Other formations to put your frigates or capital ships in different positions to provide frontal fire are also available. Not only does this help keep your ships organized and moving at the same speed across the map, but it also tells each type of ship what to do when encountering the enemy. If you have a line of capital ships across your front, your fighters will only engage once enemy fighters have been sighted leaving the battles up to the big boys so your tiny ships don't get shredded.
Even if you don't put your units into a strike formation, each of the unit types will still act with intelligence when it comes to picking enemy targets. Capital ships such as Battleships and Destroyers will take on the biggest ships first while the different corvettes will take on fighters or other corvettes, frigates will pick enemies based on their strengths (Ion Cannons hit frigates and capital ships while Flak Cannons will go for fighters and corvettes), and bombers will aim to take out frigates and capital ships as well since they're horrible at taking on fast moving spacecraft. Sometimes this starts to feel like too much handholding, but when you get into a gigantic battle with hundreds of units (especially in multiplayer), you're going to be thankful that your units aren't running around like idiots attacking the wrong targets. You'll still have to direct the wrath of your forces in certain directions for specific tactical moves, and use unit special abilities, but this certainly helps with some of the frustration. I have to say that I do miss some of the more specialized formations however. Sphere, wall, and so on provided some opportunities that I liked, which are now gone.
Also making the game easier to use is the nice new interface. Everything is relegated to the bottom of the screen. But if you know the shortcuts for commands, you never have to see any of this stuff and can remove almost all traces (aside from the resource unit count) of GUI. Homeworld even took you out of the gameplay view when building and researching items, but Homeworld2 pops all of this information up at your command to the right hand side of the screen and then promptly disappears when you're done with it meaning you never have to leave the action.
To make strategy more a part of the action, capital ships have been given subsystems, which include weapons arrays, sensors, different construction bays, and research modules. Each of these can also be targeted and destroyed individually. But while playing through the single player game, I think I only once had a subsystem knocked out, and only knocked out an enemy subsystem a couple of times. It just seemed like they were almost as tough as the ships themselves so in the time you spent trying to take out a cannon array, you could have taken down almost the entire ship. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It certainly doesn't make me give a crap about targeting each of these areas. By the time I completely disable an enemy capital ship, I could have destroyed it, and not lost as many units... So most of the time, my strategy has been to ignore them altogether. But then, strategies have always been of the different sort in Homeworld because of the full 3D movement and aiming capabilities of many of the ships.
What's really nice, especially for multiplayer are the new ship types and differences between the races. While they aren't huge in many cases, the weapons provide different opportunities and need different strategies. The Hiigarans rely heavily on Ion Beam and conventional weapons where the Vaygr love heavy missiles barrages, which are slower to hit, but insanely powerful. It'll be interesting to see how some of the better players start to take advantage of the two races' differences.
Finally, players of the original Homeworld will probably remember it as quite a challenge in some of the levels. Homeworld2 is much the same. I never found it too hard, but I did have to restart a couple of levels where I wasn't patient enough. Levels are mixed up enough that some of them will require quite a bit of speed while others test your patience. Finding which is which is the key. The problem is, once you've gotten far enough into some of these levels and realized you screwed the pooch, when you restart, you'll know exactly what the enemy will be doing, what has to be done fast, what has to be done gradually, and whether you'll need to protect your resource operations or not, making things infinitely, and almost annoyingly easy.
Closing Comments
Homeworld2 is a damn fine game. Those that are looking for some huge new thing will probably be disappointed, but Relic was never going for the next evolution, they were just looking to make the formula a bit better, and certainly succeeded with that in some key areas even if the experience as a whole wasn't quite as definitive as it was the first time around.
It's a good looking and good sounding game that provides an interesting enough story to pull you through the experience, even if it isn't quite as alien as it was before. I had a great time playing it and would whole heartedly recommend it to fans of the first and tell those that haven't to at least try the demo if not get out to buy the complete game.
