Homeworld

The Good
This is what has to be the 1999 game of the year. Not often is it that a game like this comes along. After playing so many other stratgey games it is good to not see another Clone and Conquer game. Onto Homeworld. First of all the graphics in this game do what they are intended to do, show you in detail battles in space. And they do a good job of it. From the engine trails on scouts to ion cannons cutting ships in half, I found eye candy galore. Good sound dosen't hurt a game either, and Homeworld has some of the best. All of the battle sounds fit perfectly and the music seems to fit, although some people may disagree. Gameplay is great, the computer AI makes fairly smart moves and makes good use of formations. Formations are one of features I really liked in this game. They help provide well rounded attacks. Although the controls may take a little getting used to, once down, they work very well. I say bravo Relic and Sierra, keep up the good work.

The Bad
What some users may find hard about this game is the control system, but once through the tutorial anyone can be a Homeworld veteran.

The Bottom Line
People throw away Tiberian Sun, put Starcraft on the shelf, a new kid is in town, it goes by the name of Homeworld and it will rock your world.

The Good
Good graphics. That's mostly it. The graphics are impressive in their own time, and almost entirely run the game. Also, it didn't seem to crash very often or have many errors, and it was possible to move in 3D, a rarity in games. Finally, resources transfer over from levels.

The Bad
It's a slow game, with complicated controls, especially difficult missions, boring music, and a token, nonsensical storyline.

To elaborate, perhaps one of the biggest, though by no means only downsides of this game is the music. First, it's slow and boring, like a lullaby, that makes you want to fall asleep, but worse. For a non-turn-based game to be good, you at least have to convey that there's some excitement involved, even if in reality space is vast and lonely. Second, there's not much choice of music, and you end up listening to the same songs over and over again. Third, it doesn’t have much variety. They all sound pretty much the same, so you really don't have much choice if you don't like it, besides turning it off. Then, there's the game itself. Its graphics will probably entice you to buy it, but after you're gotten over your amazement in the first few levels, you realize there's really not much fun in the missions. They're complicated by the dizzying array of controls and uses of keys, made even worse by the very thing that was supposed to make it better, 3D, so that you get the feeling you have no business commanding a fleet, and would be better off controlling just one or two ships, but you can't if you want to succeed. And even if you do succeed with the missions, and get over the boredom, it'll eventually become to difficult to complete at all, even if you think you've done all you could in the prior missions, making you wonder if you should go back and try those boring missions again.

Then, to make a long review longer, there's the storyline, which is a whole topic in itself. You can read the entire manual (which I did), listen carefully to every word said in the beginning movie and in-game, and play more than halfway through, but it won't make a difference. You still won't get it. You can start as either of two factions, though I think there's only one or two differences between them, then fight the other side when you play. But you never figure out why you're fighting. Which is fine for the first few missions, but then it starts getting really, really frustrating as you go on and start struggling, not knowing who you're fighting. You don't even get to see people's faces, so you don't know what you look like, but soon you start thinking "Hey, I've dragged in almost a dozen ships with their pilots still alive, how come no one simply asked them why they're shooting at us?" It makes a player angry, like playing a text adventure where there's an obvious answer, but the program can't seem to recognize it. You're some race living on a desert planet, leave it for your homeworld...but someone wants to stop you? WHY? Maybe you find out in the end, maybe not, but I was fed up before that happened. I finally snapped when it came to an asteroid level, about halfway through the game. For some reason not explained in the game, your mothership must fly through an asteroid field at a constant speed. No reason why, no explanation for why you can't just go around, above, or below it, why you can't stop, clear a path, and continue when it's clear, or why you can't harvest their resources (by the way, it also doesn't make sense that you can find all the resources necessary to make ships in just a few asteroids. Last I checked, most asteroids were made of just a few elements and compounds, so unless your people, whoever they are, know alchemy, I don't see how you can turn iron into uranium, radon, or whatever materials you need to build spacecraft), for which the asteroid belt seems to contain a wealth of, and use them to make a huge fleet and fully upgraded Mothership. That just took the cake for me, and I stopped playing the game.

The Bottom Line
A waste of money. It beacons you to buy it with it's fancy graphics and the feeling it's a "new" game, then entices you further with it's token plot, but when you get down to it, the game hardly makes any sense, and its faults combine to make it a boring, stupid, difficult game, that stops being fun after the initial shock at its newness wears off around level 3 or 4. You'd have to have a mighty strong suspension of disbelief, and a very weak sense of adventure to enjoy this game, plus be either superhuman or have massive perseverance to finish this game. I can't comprehend why this game got a 3.9 out of 5, unless the people here rated it after just playing the first two levels, or just looking at the box.

The Good
The tutorial makes learning the interface a snap...When I heard of the game, the first thing I thought was that they couldn't pull it off becuase it would be difficult managing in 3-D...but they did it, and just spending the few short minutes in the tutorial can familiaize you with the interface fast...

The unit balance of the game is good...even in the late game process, you still have to build basic units and each ship class has its disadvantages and its strong points...

The single player campaigns are extremely well scripted...the ingame scripts makes the game very interesting, but doesn't interefere with the game play...

The idea is fresh...In a desert of no end of C&C clones, this is one hell of an oasis...

The graphics is detailed to the point that you can see the engine trails of a scout, or the tractor beams of a salvage corvett...zoom in to see every little detail on the ship, or zoom out to control your whole fleet...the camera control is extremely easy to master...

Brilliant control scheme...you can basically play the whole game with a mouse...Homeworld allows you to command an armada with a mouse wheel and two buttons...

Everything from formations, to rules of engagement, Homeworld provides a large amount of tactics for RTS fans

The Bad
I tried as hard as I could but could only find two bad things about this game...

The two sides are almost the same, with the exception of two units...As different as they may look, they are still all do the same thing...This doesn't take away anything from the game, but just lacks the depth in that area that Starcraft revolutionized

With wonderfully scripted missions in single player, it would have been nice if a editor was included in the game, so that more missions and maps can be created, as the single player campaigns were a little too short...

The Bottom Line
Tired of C&C clones? Homeworld is leading a revolution in RTS gaming, space combat has never been so entertaining...