I'm having a hard time writing this opening and I don't know why. On the one hand, I want to get across to you the idea that I like the concept of this real-time space strategy title but am put off by the fiddly micromanagement of units that'll inevitably come with it. On the other hand, I need to tell you that this is a three-dimensional real-time strategy set in bloody space, where, while there is an 'up' and 'down', lest we all get lost in space, every unit on every scale is capable of breaking free of the reference plane to attack units from above, or below; to evade by skirting around, over, under; to weave through pockets of units duking it out across all the axis.
This is Homeworld, and I sadly never knew it existed.
Fun Times
Desert clans find an ancient spaceship, and inside a galactic map carved in stone, annotated with a single word - home. Already knowing that they somehow didn't belong on this planet, the discovery leads to the birth of the Mothership, a ship a century in the making, capable of transporting hundreds of thousands of people across the galaxy on a voyage to their species' homeworld.
And we're in charge of it.
I'm playing the Remastered Collection of Homeworld, which not only has updated releases of Homeworld and Homeworld 2 but (apparently with thanks to the fans modding it to run on modern systems) the original releases of the games as well.
The Mothership can certainly be made to look ugly as all hell in places, with blurry textures slapped across the bare minimum amounts of wireframe, but the sense of scale the game gives it makes up for that, especially when we won't be seeing it from a few inches away for the vast majority of the game.
It will serve as our home base, for obvious reasons, while the rest of the fleet - mostly created and launched from the Mothership itself - does the busy work. First up, test how everything works.
This is an RTS title, so something has to be harvested and turned into some kind of currency in order to build something else, and in this case, asteroids are the perfect target for our aptly named Resource Collector.
A right-click brings up the unit specific menu, and the pilot is smart enough to know exactly what I mean when I click 'Harvest', and off it goes.
Space is awfully black, though (actually beige, but that's beside the point right now), and getting your bearings in it will mean having a plane of reference and working with maps, and the Sensors Manager mode will reveal the entire playable map, allowing you to see points of interest.
Our first point of interest is a bunch of drones waiting to be taken out by our Scout fighters. If you have multiple units selected, you can select a formation fit for purpose, from traditional lines to higher dimensional patterns and shapes, like claws and even defensive spheres.
You can imagine how easy it was to win a fight against that which doesn't fight back - click to attack and watch the fireworks. Your units will do all the manoeuvring they need to get the job done while we work out how scavenging works.
Building a unit requires resource units, and are mostly built inside the Mothership, but other ships can spew out this and that too. As you'd imagine, researching upgrades allow you to build better stuff, but for an unknown reason, that means building a dedicated research ship, rather than just having some boffins sit around a table inside the Mothership...
Anyway, sending our Salvage Corvette to pick out a drone allows us to kill two birds with one stone - camera focus and three-dimensional movement.
This screenshot doesn't look like much. In fact, it looks likes nothing at all, but it's important to get Homeworld across to people.
The camera is focused on a ship of your choice, and all movements - zooming in and out, rotating around and so on - are centred on that ship, or group of ships (as best it can). While focused on a ship, you can still select and control other ships, and here I sent a bunch of ships up - literally - to give the Salvage Corvette a bit of protection.
The movement wheel, in green, is locked to whatever plane the ships are currently on, and you can pick a spot anywhere within it to send those units there. Hold shift, however, and you break that spot out of the plane, either above it or below it, sending your units on a path you could only dream of in RTS games until now.
It was at this point where the beauty of space, or rather the awe at the immense scale of it came into view. Just watching a little ship pick up another ship and fly it back to the Mothership was great. While there isn't much detail to look at in the form of star fields or nebulae, like there is in FreeSpace, for example, there is enough to make you admire it, in a way.
With so little to draw, the ships and their trails of whatever propulsion systems they're using are all that the game needs to number crunch, so they look fantastic. Some better than others, sure, but if you've got some downtime in a mission, just play around with the camera and move some ships around in different formations. It's wonderful. It's freeing, almost.
Eventually, the fun came to a halt and all ships were called back to the Mothership for its big hyperspace test. I think I heard that if ships don't get back before jumping that they could be left behind, and that what you do bring with you stays with you mission after mission, which is nice, if that's the case. It's how it should be - this is our entire reason for being in space. A little consistency wouldn't kill anyone.
We emerge from our jump, expecting to meet up with another ship - one that had to take the long route decades ago - but instead, a probe only reveals its destroyed shell... and a few other problems...
Our first encounter with something or someone else is a rather aggressive one, and rather aggressive is one of the three states, along with neutral and evasive, that our units can be in. What better way to fully test our Scouts than by whacking them into an aggressive attitude and letting them defend the Mothership like the lives of 600,000 people depended on it.
Frustrations
Combat often takes place at scales or at speeds or in positions that aren't quite the easiest to interact with. Trying to right click on a spaceship whizzing by can be a pain, though one made easier if you first manage to left click somewhere near or around it, and focus your camera on it. From there, you can set whatever you need to set and find it a target, though that again could mean picking a fast moving object no bigger than your cursor until you manage to pin it down with a decent camera angle.
It's not as impossible as it sounds, but it turned combat into a case of sitting back and watching, hoping that you've done enough to sway the outcome - that you've got more ships, or that they're more aggressive, or better equipped...
While that was going on, I was tasked with salvaging what I could from the ship we were supposed to meet.
What a great time for another ambush, the enemy must have been thinking, as suddenly my salvage ship was alone in no man's sky-oh, I see what they did there...
A bunch of Scouts were sent on an intercept course and they just kept finding more and more enemy ships. Who were they? Where were they coming from?
They're being built and launched under my nose? Right. Best see to that, then. Except I can't, because I need to protect the Mothership. I'm going to need more Scouts.
Whoever my opponent was, he, she or it was throwing everything at me, and it kinda dragged a little bit. My game descended into building twenty scouts and, one by one as they emerged from the Mothership, sending them to shoot down the first enemy I could see.
It was utter chaos until the enemy just decided that enough was enough, and off they fled. Ok. I guess I'll retreat too? All aboard, we're going home. This space thing ain't for us.
Wait, why do I hear Agnus Dei? Why is the launch-scaffold charred and in pieces?
Oooohhh boy, why's the planet crispy?! Planets shouldn't look like that! What the bloody hell happened there? We were only gone for twenty minutes, tops!
Final Word
Space just got a lot more lonely, and I love it.
Homeworld isn't much to look at and I'm not exactly doing anywhere near the amount of work I'd be doing in a game of Command & Conquer, for example, but I assume that that's only because these are the first few introductory missions in what will become a grand, galactic journey through space.
I like everything that Homeworld seems to be selling to me. I hope it's not as frustrating as some other space games on this list in terms of difficulty, because I am thinking of going through the Remastered version, which combines elements (notably the interface) of Homeworld 2, with more than a touch of graphical polish to every other aspect of the game. I mean, just look at this:
Homeworld and its sequel stood the test of time to warrant time and money being spent to lovingly restore and greatly improve upon it. It boldly went to places no RTS had gone befo-I'm sorry, that was too obvious and this isn't even a Star Trek title.
We're not plopped into a galactic empire with millennia of history. We're not dogfighting an invading alien menace intent on stripping the universe of life. We're exploring. We're trying to find our place in the cosmos. We're new to all of this. This wonder, this awe, this terror. This cold emptiness of space is, now, all we have. We're survivors, wanting to go home.
I want to find out how we get there, and I think you should too.
FILLING YOU IN
I've had Homeworld installed for years now, but have I got around to playing it? Nope. Every time I've had the opportunity to uhm and ahh over what game to play next, I look at the library, I see Homeworld, I think "Mmmmnot today, no" and I move on.
Well, recently I've uninstalled it, finally admitting to myself that I'd never get around to playing it myself, but after doing so I did hop on over to YouTube to make sure I saw what I was missing, which I think is something along these lines: a short campaign that follows a story you don't really care about, as told through grand space battles, providing you can micromanage your vast fleet through the differing trials that face you.
It's one of those games that was really about the multiplayer modes, and even the mods that players created, rather than the single player story, so I was never going to have the greatest of times with it, but again, while I'm in the mood to be honest with myself, I can't see myself ever sticking with it to the end.
I like the idea of Homeworld, and the execution of it does still look nice (bearing in mind I'm looking at the Homeworld Remastered Collection), but I don't think I'd have the patience to get the most out of it, which is a shame.
Maybe the sequel would go on to improve upon those issues? Can't really check unless I reinstall it...
Fun Facts
The working title for this game was Spaghetti Ball, named after the flight paths of a bunch of spaceships fighting each other on spherical maps.
Homeworld, developed by Relic Entertainment, first released in 1999.
Version played: Homeworld Remastered Collection, PC, 2015.
Version watched: Homeworld Remastered Collection, PC, 2015 (TheXPGamers)