Customer Reviews

Homeworld

5 star:		(62)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm not usually one to play strategy games, but the graphics of homeworld looked so impressive that I couldn't resist the temptation of picking up a copy. After playing it for a few evenings, I've come to the conclusion that this game is simply stunning.

Homeworld immerses you in a full 3D battlefield and makes it easy to zoom, pan and rotate your view to different perspectives. You can choose to watch battles unfold from afar, or select any visible ship and instantly shift your focus to their view and follow them through combat.

Large scale battles are incredible to watch from either perspective. They're so detailed and so well rendered that they remind me of some of the space battle scenes from the Return of the Jedi (ok, the resolution isn't as good, and the game isn't as smooth as CGI, but it's pretty incredible nonetheless-- large battles are definately "wow" material).

The gameplay is well balanced, and to date, I've found the different missions/battles to be quite challenging. Unlike most strategic war games I've played, the storyline for homeworld is quite interesting. It unfolds gradually, and does a great job in building up the drama behind your mission.

The main difference behind homeworld and other strategic wargames is the 3D nature of the battlefield. Space is definately harder to fight in than land.

Definately five stars, definately a must have...

I've been a fan of RTS for a long time - starting way back with Warcraft I, II, Starcraft, Command and Conquer, etc... I was very excited to hear about Homeworld, and was well rewarded while playing it!

I have seen some of these reviews knock the user interface. I have to say, I thought the 3d interface was great! It was intuitive and easy to learn (A mouse w/a wheel is highly recommended - it allows for zooming a bit easier than with a two button mouse)

The graphics are amazing. They were so good, I didn't mind getting blown up a few times on the last level. The battle between two huge fleets was so pretty, it was hard not to stop and just watch! It was like watching your house burn down!

Another aspect of the game that was impressive to me - I had absolutely NO bugs to report. I know that can be system dependent, but it's the first game in a long time that worked out of the box, through ALL the levels, without failing at some point or another.

I highly recommend this game. I'm sure there will be many imitators - and some may make marginal improvements, but this game is a huge step for the RTS genre.

I hope Relic turns into another Blizzard - I look forward to their next quality release.

Now that we've conquered 3D RTS, where do we go next?

Many computer games have tried to use the limitless possibilities of space as a backdrop, but Homeworld is the first to get it right, stretching the aesthetic limits of the real-time strategy in new directions.

Imagine this moment: your fighters fly in tight formation toward an opponent's huge capital ship. You centre and zoom in on your lead fighter, and the sounds of the ship's engine fills the room. As they near their target, your ships break formation, and you tumble and roll with them as they attack. Particle beams pierce the darkness around you, missiles fly past, explosions surround you. There is nothing like this in gaming.

The single player version is excellent. Although the plot draws heavily on classic space operas, such as Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars, the challenges you will face are unique, interesting, and sometimes comical.

A word of caution: to get the most out of this game, I recommend a high-end video card, with resolution jammed to the max. Turn on all the effects; it's more than worth it.

As well, experienced RTS gamers will not be able to jump immediately into the game and succeed. Start with the excellent tutorial and master the 3D play environment. Learning game mechanics at this point is critical.

Homeworld's best features-graphics engine, scripting, control mechanics, narrative flow, and mission structure, are so fluid, so highly immersive, that it makes the experience far more than the sum of its parts. The combination of large scale fleet actions and cinematic perspectives creates the most impressive space combat ever made for a strategy game. Its like being in the middle of, and in cotrol of, a Star Wars battle. 16 single player missions can make for some short gaming time but most people go through the campaign at least twice-its that good. In single player, you'll encounter 2 races, aside from the main one that your trying to decimate.

There are 26 units to choose from on each side, with 3 main classes of ships-from the paltry fire of the scout, to the amazing might of the heavy cruiser. The excellent use of 3D makes for some interesting strategies, putting much imphasis on the element of surprise...

To sum it up, buy Homeworld for its engrossing real-time-strategy matched to a vital and visually intense story, making this a gaming experience like none other.

P.S. You may want to check the Relic and Sierra message boards to see what other people think of the game-plus it could help you along in learning the basic components of the game

My first reaction when I loaded up the campaign was that the cut-scene was very good, with a fine sound track, but not the best I'd seen. And then the cut-scene didn't go away; instead, it became the gameplay. I was impressed, the graphics were simply incredible. Throughout the game, the story telling (which used either the game engine or black & white drawn movies) was compelling, and the voice acting was enough to get me hooked. The plot was full of twists. Sure, the canned responses from the units were repetitive sometimes, but far more varied and informative than most. Only downside: the single player campaign isn't quite long enough, and I would like to see more multiplay maps. But these really don't detract from what is an incredible game.

Pros:

1. Graphics are breathtaking, some of the finestI've seen, especially while viewing a battle up close.

2.Excellent sense of 3D space... because it is! Go anywhere! Attack from above and below.

3. Great interactive tutorial teaches you the common actions in the game.

4. Highly integrated network multiplayer and skirmish (vs. CPU) modes really keep you playing.

5. Sound tracks and voices are also top notch; not overpowering or distracting to game play.

6. I love the fact that your fleet in single player missions carries over from mission to mission and whatever you have ending a mission is what you have starting the next mission; it really gives you a sense of survival.

Cons:

1. There are no "health gauges" shown for your enemy. Your only feedback are varying degrees of "smoke and flames" emitting from your opponent's ship.

2. Although I experienced no video problems, you've got to have the "latest and greatest" video drivers to get this game to work.

3. There are limits to the number of ships you can have in space at any given time. At least the limit is per-ship type and once you go under that limit you can build another one of those ships again. This is more of an issue with network play that the single missions.

4. The 2, single player races are visually different, but are otherwise almost identical in terms of ship capabilities. I would have expected great differences in ships beyond appearance.

5. Game play bogs down if you are viewing on average about 25 - 35 ships in heavy battle (of course this varies with system configuration).

6. I can't stop playing this game!

When I saw the screenshots I thought they were from an intro movie, but they were not. The game actually plays like you are sitting in space with a camera and can move around at will. The ability to zoom in on any of your spaceships at any level or direction is simply jaw-dropping. It looks so good it is hard to remember you are playing a game and not watching a movie. Graphics don't make a game and there are definite instances where the game looks good and plays bad. This isn't the case. The storyline is compelling and easy to follow. Very well scripted. The scenarios are challenging and the only drawback is you have to carry over the ships you use from previous scenarios to the next, and if you don't build enough or the right kind it could catch up to you two or three scenarios down the road. However the concept is realistic and makes the game extremely fluid. Most people are going to have to take some steps back though as they play the game. Also, make sure you have enough computer to run this game. I am running on a PIII 500 with a Voodoo3 and 128 MB of RAM. It wants a 233 processor. I initially ran it on a 200 just to see how it would perform and it did not perform well at all. If you don't have a solid video card and I would say at least a 350 with 64 MB of RAM your performance is likely to suffer.

"Homeworld" - Relic Entertainment - Sierra Studios - PC - Grade:A+

Every year for the past few years, someone has released a game that has taken an established genre of computer gaming and turned it from something stale and bland into something fresh and exciting again.

These are the games other companies imitate, because the developers of these particular games innovated.

In 1997, Blizzard's "Diablo" took the term RPG and game it a strong dose of action and spawned dozens of imitators. Last year, Valve Software's "Half-Life" took the nearly lifeless first-person shooter market and made it viable again by adding something simple - story.

"Homeworld" is this year's innovator and the lesser companies are already scrambling to copy the lessons taught by it.

I offer this word of warning, though - take care, as this could become crack for any one of us. I already suspect that "Homeworld" will be one of those titles that always just seems to take "just ten more minutes" of time. You've been warned. It's incredible, and addictive. Damn timesinks.

Much, much more than just another "Starcraft" knockoff, Relic Entertainment's first project "Homeworld" is a drastic reinterpretation of the real-time strategy game. In a field once ruled by two-dimensional games, "Homeworld" has made the drastic jump - into 3-D.

For perhaps the first time ever, players can rotate around in the vast reaches of space, commanding large armadas of fights, corvettes and capital class starships in epic battles that would make George Lucas proud.

The best way to describe what it feels like to be playing "Homeworld" is to envision yourself as the commander of the Rebel Fleet in the end sequence of "Return of the Jedi," confronting a large armada of imperial ships bent on your destruction. First and most importantly, the interface is incredibly intuitive and easy use. This said, go through the tutorial. You still have to learn how the camera system works before you'll have the intricacies down pat. They have to teach you how to look before you walk, then fly.

The camera system is half of the joy of "Homeworld." You can watch battles from the far distant lofty perch above, or you can zoom in close and follow the path of one of your ships as it zips and zooms in its combat with your opponent.

All the time, every ship is clean and well-designed. The graphics are crisp and showy without being distracting, although there have been moments where I've felt like Nero watching Rome burn - the battle was just too beautiful for me to do anything.

Ships are divided into four classes: fighters, which are small ships designed for ship-to-ship combat (think X-Wing); corvettes, which are made for heavier combat but not as much (think Corellian Blockade runners - i.e. Leia's ship at the very beginning of "Star Wars") and capital class, which are designed to have heavy firepower but low, low speed (think Star Destroyers).

In addition to these four classes, you also have your Mothership. The Mothership is your central base of command. If it blows up, you lose. Guard it with your life.

Misplacing the Mothership will be tough, too, considering the thing is friggin' huge compared to your tiny little scout ships. This sense of scale was exactly what the game needed to make players feel like they were there.

Moving ships is incredibly easy, as simple as point-and-click. You can also set your units into various combat formations, as well as tell them to assume a defensive or offensive stance.

It sounds like a lot to learn, but you pick it up quick once you get going. Learning the keyboard shortcuts and hotkeys is another thing that will help you keep your ships flying.

From the opening of the game, however, it's clear that "Homeworld" is gearing for a slightly older audience. Those of us think of "Alien" and "Blade Runner" with fond memories, we fit right at home. The basic storyline is that the race of people you belong to finds the remains of a crashed spaceship on your planet. Within a few dozen years, you've figured out your people did not originate on this planet. With the discovery of a map, the construction of the Mothership begins as you and your people prepare to journey to your Homeworld. "Homeworld" is also filled with one of those big, epic, sweeping scores that put the feeling of the vastness of space into you from the getgo and never loosens up.

While the single player mode is a bit short (only 15 missions), the multiplayer mode more than makes up for it, letting up to eight players duke it out in the vastness of space. If you've ever wanted to see a truly epic battle on your computer, right now, it doesn't get any better than this.

Homeworld isn't perfect, with a few features that would have been nice to have not making it into the final version, but the merits of the game so far supersede these petty little complaints so as to rub them out.

Remember that Homeworld is a first-generation title that's the first release from a team, and you better this bodes well for Relic.

"Homeworld" doesn't just chip away at the old RTS mold, it shatters it with a massive sledgehammer and keeps on pounding until all that remains is dust.

A new watermark has been set.

If you've ever been vaguely interested in real-time strategy, space combat or even science-fiction computer games at all, do yourself a favor and buy "Homeworld."

Awesome Graphics: Just look at the images.

Adequate Controls: considering it is completly 3D, but it could've been better.

Decent Storyline: It has a pretty well thought out plot to this game... not great, but better than most RTS games.

Game Play: It was fun at first, but I got bored with it after one week after playing 2 hours a day with it.

MultiPlayer: It's pretty cool, if there aren't too many players (anything more than 4). And I can't comment much more on this, since everytime I tried to play a MultiPlayer game, I get disconnected, or one of the other players get disconnected. All I can say is that this game was not designed for a telephone modem bandwidth.

AI: Well... ummm... boy does this AI suck! I had ships colliding into other ships and in effect destroying themselves! And no I didn't tell them to use Kamikazee on any ships. I had to restart many missions because of this... ( I don't like to lose all my capital ships, because they don't know how to stay clear of the enemy's mother ship and then end up colliding with it and getting destroyed in the process! ) The only way I could avoid this, was to focus all of my attention on these attacking ships and then manually move all the ships out of the way of the mothership; which is really tedious, considering the controls and the fully emerged 3D environment.

Overall: This is a decent game, except for the poor computer AI, and that I don't have a better connection other than a 56K modem =(. It might actually be fun finishing a multiplayer game.

When I first started playing this game, I was awestruck by the amazing graphics. I installed it, everything ran smoothly, and even though the tutorial level was extremely long, I didn't tire of it simply because everything was so impressive looking, even at the meager 640x480 res I started at.

I played the campaign next, and although it was pretty cool that you had the same resources and ships from level to level, the levels themselves were extremely easy (I know that because I suck at RTS games and I didn't have to reload once on this one). It also was boring having to collect every last scrap of resources at the end of the levels in order to support your fleet through the next threat.

Even through all of this, I thought it was a very fun, addictive, game, but when I started playing multiplayer it dawned on me where this game really lacks -- there's not enough variety. The ships aren't varied enough, and even though it's 3D, there's only one terrain type -- space. There's just not enough variety for it not to get boring after too long.

So even with the stunning graphics, compelling music, and simple but effective cutscenes, the un-intuitive gameplay and the sameness of it all brought this still very good game down to only 4 stars.