Homeworld Cataclysm

Rating:
Summary: Mother of God
Review: Okay, I've already written a review of Homeworld, which any of you considering playing this game should look at first. First off, Homeworld gives the background of this story, and allows you to get familiar with gameplay, which some people may find difficult if they try to hop right into this game. This game starts with you as Kiith Somtaaw, a relatively minor kiith (sort of like a clan) after your people made landfall. Without a large power base on your new home, your people return to the stars to make their living, and where you eventually encounter a new menace that threatens the world you fought so hard to gain. For me, hopping into the story midway is a little unfair. I think you should struggle a bit through Homeworld, both so you get used to the game, and so you feel some kinship with the people your kiith is now called upon to defend.

Having said that, and having spent the last couple days playing Cataclysm (i pre-ordered it back in May) I have to say that the leap forward from Homeworld to Cataclysm is about the same sort of leap as from WarCraft to Homeworld (that is to say, an enormous leap forward). Dear Lord! The gameplay is still just as good as the original, but commands have been clarified, and the interface has been enhanced. You can now issue commands from the Sensors Manager, allowing you to make move-and-attack decisions while viewing the entire playing sphere. The graphics are MUCH better, if that's possible, with gas clouds now flashing with lightning, and distant thunder rumbling through the nebulae. There are meteor storms through certain regions, maging the map of 3D space have a topography all of its own.

Another improvement is the added element of The Beast. In the original, the two races you could choose had a difference of exactly 2 ships; all others were more or less equivalent for each race. Now, Beast ships are radically different, and will require learning distinctly from the Hiigaran ships. There are new weapons to learn, and new strategies that must be employed. With cloaking abilities, and ramming frigates, and the fact that EVERY Hiigaran ship now has a special ability of some kind, the strategies required to REALLY play just became more complex.

To top it all off, you now have a limit on the size of your fleet. Each mothership can now only support a certain number of ships. If you built swarms of strike craft, you're going to have to retire them if you want to bring in the big guns. This also will add to the amount of actual THINKING required to play. The winner will now no longer be the one who builds the biggest fleet of Ion Beam Frigates.

So. Play Homeworld; it's a great game that should have gotten much more sales than it did. Play Cataclysm, because it's such an innovative game, and SO much better than anything else out there. Sure, StarCraft is good, but it's nothing compared to Homeworld. Much less compared to Cataclysm.

One final note: Cataclysm does not require Homeworld to play; it's a stand-alone sequel.

Rating:
Summary: Ever Found a Perfect Game? Here's your Chance!
Review: This is perhaps the most incredible game I've ever played. Taking off of the original Homeworld, Homeworld: Cataclysm (or HW:C) improves on the original in many ways.

The best new feature is completely different sides -- unlike Homeworld, HW:C has two utterly different races, with different strategies, units, and more. Others include leeches (my favorite) -- small ships that "leech" the enemy ship's hull, infection beams, and more.

If you liked Homeworld, or any other strategy game, you'll LOVE HW:C. Look forwards to seeing you online!

Rating:
Summary: Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Review: I loved the origanal so I had high exspectations. The graphics are phenominal, but the gameplay sucked. I finished it in a week. Unlike the original that took me the whole summer. If you want the a good game buy the original.

Rating:
Summary: Cataclysm--better than the original
Review: Forget Starcraft, Warcraft, Ground Control, Tiberian Sun, what have you. Once you play Homeworld, I assure you that you will never, EVER want to play those games. The reason is simple: after homeworld's immersiveness, flexibility, and strategy, everything else is too simple, too boring, just not fun. The 17 missions isn't a drawback, each will take you around an hour to beat. When you've beaten the game, play the multiplayer against the computer or fellow humans for much more excitement. The two playable races, Somtaaw and Beast, are opposites in playing style, so once you've mastered one, the other presents a challenge. The 3D enviroment lends a new breed of strategy, much more complex then other RTS's "Build a million units and do an all-out strike". In homeworld, a handful of properly used units can defeat a bluntly controlled deathfleet. Stop reading reviews and BUY THIS GAME!!!

Rating:
Summary: a great follow up
Review: Homeworld Cataclysm is simply just a great game. This game will please both veterans of the original homeworld as well as the newbies. Barking Dog Studios added a lot of new features like being able to give orders from the sensor manager and added many new units, yet dispite some major changes to the game, the simple controls are all very familiar to the original. With all the new units and features, the game has a whole new feel to it. There is also is an extensive manual to help out some of the new players (and old). This game definitely deserves five stars. I'm not going to get much sleep for a while 'cause of this game.

Rating:
Summary: Homeworld Cataclysm the dream come true...
Review: This game is a dream come true to me I've been waiting for the game price to go down for a while now. But it was worth the wait if you like Starcraft then you will love this game It's like Starcraft in that you need minerals but like starwars in how you fly in space and how every craft has it's own controls functions and weapons. The controls are simple yet hardish but that only adds to the fun. The storyline to this game is a lot different from the first. Although you can only have 17 missions they are very long and hard but extremely fun. You have an entire new armada of ships at your finger tips.

The interceptors will literally blow you away with upgraded mounted cannons on one side and at their bottom. even though you can only have the most basic of ships that are a mix of the first and new ones like your mining class mothership that later transforms into a huge towering destructive ship. Until you disable ships and bring them to your research vessel on board your Samtaw mothership your stuck with the most basic of ships. But this changes dramatically just within the first levels gameplay.

The multiplayer level to this game rules is astounding,amazing,stupendous,astonishing,and cool. Theirs a virus later on in the middle of the game that I swear does something new everytime I go up against it called The Beast. And if your thinking that the graphics are poor then well your wrong.The graphics in this one are even better. This game features a civil war same old same old the usual. The storyline is unique and interesting as well. I think this game is more than worth 9 bucks. In fact the only thing I disliked was that the other enemy in the storyline other than the beast has no new weapons while the beast is the only one with new amazing weapons.

Rating:
Summary: Addictive!
Review: This is an absolutely amazing game. I've lost jobs because I couldn't go to sleep until I beat a level. I'm an old guy, I'm supposed to be responsible. I first found Homeworld, the predecessor to Cataclysm, in the $10.00 bin. It said "Game of the Year" on the box, so I decided to buy it.

Cataclysm is a 3 dimensional real time space stragegy game. However, it is not of the Descent or Tie Fighter genre, where the question is how fast you can shoot. The thing that make it so addictive is that it also includes elements of a simulation (such as sim city) and the battles involve stragety rather than how fast you can point and shoot.

The basic story is that 15 years after returning to their homeworld in the epic game Homeworld, a Hiigaran mining space vessel, the Kuun-Lan, inadvertently releases an intelligent interstellar virus of sorts which can subvert living and inorganic matter, almost instantly turning your own ships against you. Eventually, it allies with your enemies, the remnants of the old Taidan Empire, which you (hopefully) wiped out in the first game. You have to conduct scientific/engineering research, build ships, mine resources, and upgrade the mining vessel until you become one of the most powerful armadas around. You get to be the General, rather than the pilot!

The game graphics are excellent and very detailed. In fact, they are so good that the scenes between missions use the game's graphics rather than specially done animation. In fact, on the DVD "Yes -- live at the House of Blues," there is a music video of the Yes song "Homeworld" which uses only video from the first Homeworld game.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Upgrade to Game of the Year
Review: Excellent enhancements have been added since the original Homeworld. The soundtrack has much more life to it this time around, not to put down the old score at all. Time compression has been added to speed up final resource gathering at the end of single player missions, or to shorten journeys across the map. There's a slew of new craft and new weapons, and control has improved drastically. Notible enhancements include waypoints, the ability to select a group from within a group list, naturally occuring slipgates which produce a beautiful effect on the screen, armor and sensor enhancements, mothership upgrades, and plenty more. The game feels the same, with the same sensor map and the same controls with some minor changes, like now you can dock your craft to your carrier or mothership with a right-click rather than a double-left-click which had a hard time registering due to latency in a heated battle. It's still a system hog with cranked detail, but I found just lowering the texture detail gave you decent frame rates and allowed you to view all of the nice effects like weapon glow and explosions, even with multiple players on a LAN. You can get better frame rates and more detail in a single player game of course. If you liked Homeworld, you'll appreciate the enhancements because it makes the game interesting again, as well as easier to to what you want to do without being restricted by the interface. I seriously can't find anything wrong and I'm not held back one bit. I was under the impression, however, that the multiplayer section of the old game was going to be included for free which would have been great since I damaged my original CD and will no longer install. That's ok though, because you won't even want to go back to the original game after taking advantage of the new features. The internet support has had some minor crashes but I have been able to get through a whole game. It seems it'll only crash within the first minute or not at all which could suggest a variable of the host's machine. Upgrading to cable or DSL will fix this of course and latency is hardly an issue. I'm sure a patch will follow soon, however the single player campaign is flawless under Direct3D with NVidia drivers, however OpenGL crashes. During the brief moment OpenGL worked, I saw no difference compared to Direct3D. Finally, something worth spending the hard earned bucks on.

Rating:
Summary: Better than to original and highly addictive
Review: I don't understand the complaints about this game. I played it first, before Homeworld and went back to play Homeworld later. Maybe it's the order in which I played the two games, but I found that the interface alone was enough to convince me that this game is better than the original.

The interface is more evolved as I would expect and a lot of the little annoying bits to Homeworld's interface are gone in this game. You can set waypoints as one of the other reviewers stated, but on top of that, you can do everything from the sensor manager that you could from the regular mode in Homeworld. Also, when in sensor mode, selecting ships doesn't automatically zoom in the way Homeworld did. You can also select a group of ships and attack a group of enemies all from the sensor manager - this is highly desireable, since you don't have to zoom in and lose track of ships in another part of space. I would say that the Homeworld interface is 4 star and this interface is 5 star, far superior.

Someone also mentioned that the graphics weren't as good as Homeworld. I find this unusual, since they use the same gaming engine and they look pretty much identical to me, and I've played them almost side by side and both are installed on my computer.

Also, I find the story line excellent, it might not be the Battlestar Galactica story of homeworld, but it is just as engrossing with the release of "The Beast", a bio organism that is intelligent and that threatens to take over the universe. It's your job to escape and try to destroy the beast. It's very cool.

What I love about both of these games is how most of the action is at the macro level, controlling fleets of ships and squadrons of fighters, but at any point, you can zoom in and watch the action in an "over the shoulder" view from any ship and see an individual fighter engage against a squadron of other fighters or even a large capital ship. I love watching destroyers firing their ion beams... it's so movie like that I feel like bringing the popcorn. Other feel that same and I can sometimes have an audience of 2 or 3 people over my shoulder sometimes.

In fact, the overall movie like quality is what made the game great for me. The way that you can direct the camera while letting everything proceed automatically (these 30 ships attack those 22 ships and let them go) is immersive. It really has a Star Wars feel when you see a space battle. This is especially fun when you have large numbers of capital ships on both sides with multiple fighter squadrons. In a situation that large though, you almost always have to direct some of the action, since some small battles finish and you have to re-deploy to other parts of the battle.

The challenge is in finding the balance of which ships to use against which enemies, as fighters are fast and hard to hit, but do less damage, whereas the larger frigates and super-capital ships do tons of damage but are vunerable to large groups of fighters.

All in all a completely superb game. It is 100% of what I wanted in a computer game and have never found elswhere, although there were a lot of these features in games like "Master of Orion", but that was really more concerned with administration aspects of running multiple colonies and space battles were 2D and cartoony. A great game, but not as neat as this.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent game!
Review: Homeworld 2

General/Summary:

When Relic released the first Homeworld in 1999, I was amazed at the graphics, gameplay, and story that took the gaming world by storm. I said "WOW." It was a sensational game worthy of awards for innovation and game depth not seen before in a RTS game. It was such an ambitious title at the time, and they pulled it off with an incredible 3D engine taking RTS gamers into the depths of space. Homeworld 2 has some large shoes to fill as it tries to recapture the genre once again. It has been refined and improved in many ways over the predecessor, and most of the changes are welcome. Many gamers will criticize Homeworld 2 because it is not their beloved Homeworld 1, but game studios have to create new content to sell games. While the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" motto could apply, Relic made very positive changes in the interface and gameplay design.

Gameplay:

Homeworld 1 did not play much like a typical rock-paper-scissors RTS game. Players massed units like frigates and placed support ships on guard to heal them as they fight. Players made fighters, bombers, and other ships, but there was less of a need for variety. Homeworld 2 on the other hand requires gamers to have many types of ships due to a more strict rock-paper-scissors gameplay design. Also, larger ships now have subsystems, so bombers can target weapons or engines to take those ships out of action. There are more ways to attack in Homeworld 2 and it now resembles other games in the genre. I miss the formations from Homeworld since they played an important part in battle success. Also, watching fighters fly through space in X formation sure was cool. However, the gameplay changes make for a fantastic chess match as players move their different classes of ships around to win battles. I got used to the changes after several games online, and now I am starting to see the benefits. The multiplayer is vastly improved with the new system, and there are more options for offensive tactics.

Homeworld 1 had an incredible story for the single player component, where gamers were stuck in space trying to get home. Homeworld 2 has more of a save the world story, and I found it to be enjoyable. I am not a big fan of stories in RTS games, but Relic does a great job to heighten the experience. I felt like a general commanding my mothership through space on the quests presented to me throughout the game. The story is not Homeworld 1, but Relic presented a very stylish successor that gamers should be proud to own in their collection. Some gamers complain about the lack of a hyperjump button since the missions move quickly and it does not give the player time to absorb much. It does not bother me since the game gives you all the resources on the level automatically, and it saves each time you advance. My only complaint with the missions is that some were very hard, but tips from the Relic forums really helped me move through them quickly. It did not take me long to get through the 15 missions, and I expect that they will release more in an expansion.

There are many refinements in the interface that enhance gameplay. The one major change is the addition of the side scroll. It does not sound like much, but players can move the camera around by moving the pointer to the sides of the screen. All RTS games feature this behavior except Homeworld. This enables players to rely less on the sensor manager to look around, so they can keep their eyes on the main battle screen. Also, they now provide more information on the screen in a collapsible tool bar. Furthermore, the build and research screens now take up less than a third of the main window, so gamers can stay in the game and make purchases at the same time. Another change is the ability to send ships on the vertical axis by holding down the left mouse button. The shift key is still usable for that action, but not necessary since one hand can be faster. The interface has changed for the better, and it helps to control units in 3D space.

The refinements make Homeworld 2 a great game. It is similar enough to learn quickly, but tough to master. One new addition is a defense platform that allows players in online play to send these to things to resource patches ("platform rush"). Resource collectors have no chance against them, but they are easy to counter with Torpedo Frigates that shoot long range torpedoes. You need to defend your Torpedo Frigates with interceptors. I keep finding more and more strategies as I play it online, and the game balance seems impressive. Frigates are no longer big ships like in Homeworld 1, and they can die fast. The big boys now are the Battlecruisers.

Graphics:

The best way to describe the graphics is by saying "WOW." It has a beautiful 3D environment that places gamers in deep space fighting through stars, nebula, and debris. The battles are vivid as ships streak through space creating brilliant screen lighting explosions. Ships have excellent animations and space looks more detailed than the predecessor. The same wow factor is there with improved graphics, but it is not a huge leap from the original. You could really makes a statement about the original Homeworld's graphics being way ahead of it's time. There is no doubt that the graphics are the pinnacle of the Homeworld series, and this version does not hold back.

Sound:

The music is fantastic, just like the other two Homeworld titles. This year they have more of a haunting classical tune to rhythmic beats, and it really adds to the excitement of the game. I have never been disappointed by the music in any of the Homeworld titles. The rest of the sounds add to the overall experience. The explosions are big and make great use of a sub woofer, so crank it up. The music dancing, the ship engines humming, and the explosions create a wonderful space battle environment.