Homeworld

DEVELOPER : Relic
PUBLISHER : Sierra

EST. RELEASE DATE: Oct. 99

“My God, it’s full of stars.”

                            -Dave Bowman, 2010: The Year We Make Contact  

To begin this preview it should be duly noted that I have a PIII450, 128MB sdram and a Diamond Viper V770D 32MB TNT2 card.  I was able to max the resolution out to 1280x1024 in 32-bit color.  This game is simply drop-dead gorgeous.  I still can’t believe how well everything looks and moves.  But on to the preview.

Homeworld is being brought to you from the folks at Relic by way of Sierra studios.  After a breakout title like Half-Life, it seems Sierra is finally making a comeback in the hearts of gamers everywhere.  And from what I have seen of Homeworld, they will continue to do so.  What we have here is your typical RTS brought to you in a most untypical gameplay setting.

The typical RTS portion comes by way of the things required to build up your fleet.  Your main home base is the Mothership.  The Mothership is where your resources are stored and the place to build your fleet.  In the demo you are able to build scouts (fighter ships), Assault Ships, Repair Corvettes, Resource Collectors, Probes, Carriers and more (I was actually surprised by the number of units available in the demo).  You need to send out your collectors to harvest resources and bring them back to the Mothership.  The Mothership than can build Research vessels.  The Research Vessels actually link up to speed up research for such things as Capital Ship Drives, Chassis, Scanners, etc.  

Did you see that part about Research Ships?  Yeah, that’s what makes Homeworld untypical.  Everything you build is a starship.  Each may have a counterpart building in any other RTS game, but Homeworld just adds a sense of style in their unique form.  I mean, you don’t have a base. It’s a fleet. That means everything, including the mama ship, moves! Do you realize the strategy potential with a mobile base?

Homeworld gives us movement on every plane, meaning up, down, diagonal, forward, backward, sideways, you name it.  The extra strategy afforded by this is very subtle, but noticeable.  Noticeable in the fact that your ships move a lot better due to quicker response, not to mention it gets rid of that always tricky path-finding that can kill your typical RTS game.

Did I mention how beautiful everything looks?

Getting around is a little complicated, but you will get accustomed to it.  By clicking on a ship as a focus point, you can move the 3D camera anywhere around it.  For those with a wheel mouse, zooming in and out couldn’t be easier (soon-to-be devoted Homeworld fanatics should seriously consider purchasing a wheel mouse if you haven’t already got one).  By tapping the space bar, you are brought to a 3D system perspective screen of the map (which is a space system of some sort) called the Sensor Manager, that uses your mother ship at the center.  Green dots are friendly’s, red the enemy.  You can order ships from here to move to different locations. 

Combat is simple, but with large fleets I can see it becoming a bit confusing.  Homeworld makes several attempts to make it as easy as possible.  One of the ways is the Sensor Manager noted earlier.  Another is the exhaust trails given off by the ships as they move about.  At first I thought this was a nod to Anime, but than I noticed that my trails were white, while the enemies were an orange/tan.  When ten enemy fighters engage ten of yours, I was surprised by how easy it was to figure out who was who, even from a distance.

By right clicking on a ship, an order menu pops up.  For Research ships, this gives access to what you can research.  For fighters and assault ships, you can order a temperament (evasive, neutral and aggressive), a formation (like claw, X and sphere to name a few) and other commands including the Dock command for damaged fighters to be repaired.

Did I mention how gorgeous everything looks?

You may have noticed my use of the word surprised throughout this preview.  Well that’s because I am.  One of the marketing strategies for Homeworld is a lack of one.  Instead of constantly shoving it in our faces, Sierra is confident that a small ad campaign combined with word of mouth will sell a lot of copies of Homeworld.  And it will.  Homeworld does nothing short than redefine the RTS genre by taking it where no game company has gone before. 

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Reviewed by A. Sage