Homeworld 2 Review

Supplied by Sierra Entertainment

Beautiful, alluring, easy to talk to, but very demanding and a little lacking
when you look past all the beauty: that’s Homeworld 2 in one sentence.
Its graphics and sound quality are the best around, and it’s got a nice
interface, and easy-to-navigate menus. The game itself requires deep strategy
to dominate an enemy, but as a longtime Homeworld fan, the game in its entirety
still left me feeling a little empty inside.

A Brief History

Homeworld 2 is the sequel to Sierra’s Homeworld, first released in 1998.
It was voted Game of the Year, and soon afterwards a Game of the Year edition
was released with a strategy guide and soundtrack included. Homeworld broke
the mold of what RTS games were; it combined 3D space combat with RTS style
game play and did a damn fine job of it, too. Distinctive features included
engine trails on small faster ships to make battles look really cool and a funky
tribal music soundtrack that let you feel the battles, something no one else
had tried before.

The Bentusi

The story was intriguing too: A civilization banished to a dying desert world
and oppressed by an evil empire find a map and a hyperspace core that would
allow them to return to the stuff of their legends- Higara, their Homeworld.
They build a huge ship called the Mothership, and take it on a test run with
their new toy (the hyperspace core). The only problem is that by doing so they
inadvertently break a 1000-year-old law saying that they were banned from ever
using hyperspace technology. The Taidanni Empire (the bad guys) comes down on
them hard and wipe out the entire race – or so they thought. They missed the
Mothership (which had now become a Noah’s Ark), and when the refugees
on the Mothership come back, they realize what happened and make a narrow escape.
Thus starts the journey to Higara. Along the way they find help from the Bentusi,
an all-powerful godlike race of people who know everything and luckily are pacifists.
The story here is very moving, from the 3rd mission when you see the planet
engulfed in flames, to the final mission when you defeat the emperor of the
Taidanni and finally reach Higara. This game was amazing.

A few years later, Sierra decided to release a stand-alone expansion to Homeworld
called Homeworld: Cataclysm. The game was like a spin-off of Homeworld where
Higara has been settled and they are under constant attack by the remains of
the Taidanni. You command a group of lowly group of miners under Kiith Somtaaw
(a Kiith is like what a political party is in the US) hoping to strike it big.

One day, a ship from one of the bigger Kiiths calls for help, so you go to
lend a hand. Even as you help them you can hear the contempt for you “bunch
of miners” in their voices. Suddenly, another distress beacon activates,
and you find a derelict full of ancient never-before-seen data and info. Thinking
this is the big haul you guys have been waiting for, you pull it in and start
decoding it. You then discover it’s actually an ancient techno-virus designed
to infest ships and take control of them, absorbing all the crew inside and
turning against you, but it’s too late. It takes over the lower decks
of your command ship and the crew (or what’s left of it) jettisons it
just before it takes complete control. To make matters worse, it takes a research
vessel of yours with it, making it very intelligent as well. Now you’ve
set loose a monster (codenamed “The Beast”) that’s infecting
ships all over the galaxy and growing more powerful by the minute. Now the Bentusi
are running scared, and the Taidanni are feeding them. It’s your job to
clean up the mess you’ve made, and it won’t be easy.

This game was improved over Homeworld with all-new ship designs, a less massive
fleet control (making it simpler), and special abilities. This campaign was
much harder than Homeworld’s, and had better voice acting. Each ship had
a different voice, and the voice acting in the campaign was excellent, from
the beast’s toxic voice changing from low and mutant-like one second to
high-pitched and irritating the next was commendable. This was a must-buy for
all RTS gamers.

So far, the Homeworld Saga has broken new ground with each new release, so
does Homeworld 2 carry on this legacy of greatness? Well… almost.

It’ll make your video card sweat

Screenshots can’t do the game’s graphics justice. Seeing little
interceptor planes fly rings around giant Destroyers trying to take your Battlecruiser
down is a sight to be seen in real time. The graphics are simply amazing. And
I must add, this game wins the award for best looking explosions in a game.
When stuff blows up, it REALLY blows up. I’m talking Death Star explosions.
When the battles really get intense and hundreds upon hundreds of fighters duke
it out, the result is a nice piece of eye candy; that is if your video card
is up to it. I tested the game with an ATI Radeon 9600xt 128MB graphics card,
and it ran very smoothly even with all the special effects on at 1024 x 768
resolution. According to the box, a 64MB card should do fine as well, but I
still recommend you have a 128MB card to get the full experience.

These interceptors will have a tough time taking this Battlecruiser down.

The ship designs are beautiful. Backgrounds are spectacular, dust clouds and
anomalies in 3D look cool, and all the different kinds of space junk look great.
The cutscenes between missions in the campaign flesh out the story in a comic-book
anime sort of way, and it’s simply amazing the amount of detail the artists
put into these scenes. Not only that, but the sound quality is above par as
well. Voices are clean and crisp, and the crazy tribal music is back in full
force and better than ever! They recorded more soundtracks into this one than
the last 2 Homeworld games, and sometimes I found myself just pausing the game
and letting the music flow. My only gripe is that the voices for the ships (when
they respond to your commands) are all the same voice. Relic should have recorded
a different voice for each ship type like they did in Cataclysm, but luckily
that doesn’t take away from the game too much. Ascetically, this game
passes with flying colors.

Bombers make things go boom.

Looks aren’t everything

“It’s the inside that counts.” Whether you believe it or
not, it holds true with this game. The campaign attempts to tell the story of
the Higaran’s struggle against the Vaygr. Karan S’Jet sets off with
a 2nd Mothership on a mission to bring Sajuk, “The Great Maker”
(and a super-powerful ship) back to Higara to finally defeat the Vaygr, who
have laid waste to Higara and are blockading it. Along the way, you have to
battle ancient protectors that seem all but invincible, and overwhelming numbers
of Vaygr ships. Luckily, you’ll be able to use some of these ancient monstrosities
to gain an upper hand against the Vaygr. Unfortunately, the campaign spans mere
15 missions, and they aren’t the 30-minute long epic missions, but quick
and clean cut do-it-and-go-to-hyperspace. No real plot twists, and fans of the
series will be left with a ton of questions.

Don’t ion beams look cool?

I was disappointed how some story elements from Homeworld: Cataclysm were left
out completely from Homeworld 2. Like how did the all-powerful Bentusi, who
could had the most powerful weapons in the galaxy and were all spiritual and
Yoda-like in Cataclysm and the original Homeworld, become so weak in this edition?
Where did the Somtaaw go in all this? At the end of Cataclysm, they were hailed
as the saviors of the galaxy, so where are they now? A cameo appearance by some
of their ships in just a few missions would have been good enough, or maybe
they could come save you at the last minute, that would have been enough to
satisfy Cataclysm fans. There should have been a representation of a lot of
different Kiiths coming together to defend Higara, but instead you see a lot
of computer controlled ships that are exactly the same as yours- which doesn’t
go with the whole each-Kiith-does-their-own-thing idea presented by Cataclysm.
It just leaves a lot of voids in the storyline. Plus, 15 missions would have
been fine if they weren’t so short. It took me about 2 hours of playtime
to get through all the missions, less than I was expecting. I must point out
that in the last mission I did feel that “woah” emotion I was talking
about from the last 2 games, you’ll see when you get there. However, it
still doesn’t make up for a game full of near-emotionless storytelling.

“Oh yeah? You and what army?”

Controlling your units is of course always important in RTS games, and here
Homeworld 2 gives you exactly what you need to get the job done. The interface
runs smoothly when you get accustomed to it, and that only takes about ten minutes.
The 3 tutorial levels help a lot in introducing you to the HW2 commands. The
interface for HW2 is more organized than Cataclysm’s or Homeworld’s.
The bar at the bottom of the screen has everything you need, from special commands
to squad selections. The 5 different ship classes- fighter, corvette, frigate,
platform, utility, capital, and super capital are all separated into categories
and can be built only by a ship equipped to do so. That means that you can’t
start construction on a Destroyer at game’s start. You have to build a
capital-class facility, then research Destroyer Chassis, and finally you can
start building. And then comes the hard decision- do you spend your resources
on more units or better research?

Before…

Research is imperative to this game as it unlocks new ship classes as you play,
and upgrades the armor and speed of your ships. What good is a dozen Destroyers
if they can’t get to where you need them? How can your corvettes defend
your mining operation if they can’t defend themselves? You also have to
consider what ships to build to support each other. Sending tons of frigates
into action may seem like a good idea, but if they don’t have adequate
support a well-balanced fleet a fourth their size can come out victorious. Is
your attack fleet prepared for hostile fighters? Do they have enough firepower
to get past the defenses? Did you scout out the area out well enough? Are there
enough defenses at your own mothership in case of sneak attack? These are the
questions you have to ask yourself in multiplayer action. Non-strategists need
not apply.

…and after.

Take it Online!

Looking past the pretty-good campaign is a well-done multiplayer mode. Playing
against the computer is actually challenging and the AI doesn’t struggle
to keep up like in some other games. It’s really good practice to see
if you can compete against an expert level computer and it will get you ready
for the fearsome opponents you’ll meet online. The deep multiplayer options
add replayability to the somewhat disposable campaign mode. I found myself challenging
the CPU time after time trying to take it down, and it was very satisfying when
I finally got that enemy mothership to go up in flames and plasma.

A mid-game fighter slug-out. Notice you can kick laggers if they’re
crampin’ your style.

Logging onto the Gamespy network lets you play against other RTS fans. This
is where the game really shines. You can customize the colors of your ships
and take your fleet into battle with up to 5 other players making for interesting
team matches. Strategizing with your allies and coordinating attacks through
tactics and timing your hyperspace jumps just right makes for some real tinkering
with your fleet. It’s evident that Sierra intends to expand the game with
more game play modes and features through patches. Currently Deathmatch is the
only mode available, but the fact that there is even a drop-down menu for Game
Mode suggests that there should be more coming eventually.

Verdict

Ratings breakdown.

There are several ratings categories that are used and all may not be applicable
to every product. Our scoring system may not also be “in-tune” with
what you see on other sites. We made it harder to win awards as every product
cannot win the race even if it places well. Just because a product on our site
hasn’t an award does not mean that it is a poor product. Products should fulfill
your needs, have acceptable longevity, and as a pleasant side effect…exceed
your expectations. What you need it for and how it fits those needs changes
with each individual.

Any serious PC gamer should consider Homeworld2 for purchase.