Homeworld 2

"Looks better and plays worse than the originals"

Let me say it out front: the graphics in Homeworld are jaw-dropping. Glowing nebulae, distant ships leaving ion trails across your view, the individual guns on the destroyers booming back and forth as they dish out punishment, the ion burst of the Ion Cannon Frigate streaking across the screen and erupting in a shower of sparks on the shields of the target ship; it's all perfect. The levels look amazing; one level takes place in an ancient shipyard, the broken circular hull of which wraps around about 70 degrees of the "sky" in the enormous level, and the rest of its tube goes off into the interminable distance and it makes one sick just looking at how huge it is. Problem is, you'll almost never see it. At least 80% of your play time will be spent in "sensor view", a three-color birds-eye-view representation of the entire map. Since the levels are so huge and even the largest enemy ships are invisible across the vast expanse of space, you're forced to use the sensor view to move your troops about and set up resource collectors around the map. If you've assembled an attack group and they're in the very close proximity of the enemy, it's best to micromanage them (tasking the bombers to frigates, the fighters to bombers, the frigates to frigates and capital ships, etc) in the 3D view, and it can be fascinating to watch once the battle has started, but there's little you can do to help them, except pick the exact ships your capital ships (battlecruiser, destroyer) will target; they're simply better on their own. And the graphics really shine in battle. Interceptors will trace long ion afterburner trails all through the battle as they barrel-roll out of the way of friendly fire from the destroyer they just passed. Bombers will hover above enemy frigates, raining down damage as they slowly bear down. Pulsar gunships can fire bright blue lances that cut through enemy corvettes swish-swish. And exploding capital ships explode in a deafening roar of tortured metal and the screen flashes white with a nice HDR bloom effect.

Speaking of which, the sound is very good for a space-based game where there can be no sound. The ships all report to the mothership (presumably where you're commanding from) on how battles are going. The mothership computer-mind will inform you in a sad "frigate lost" when a frigate is destroyed. When the engines or the turrets of a capital ship are destroyed, the captain will inform you (in varying degrees of urgency, depending on how much hp his ship has left) "we've lost engine power!" You hear a thoughtful "we're losing hull integrity, unshielded craft move out of the area" when a capital ship is about to be destroyed. Also helpful messages come from the fighters, which are usually out in front of your strike group (at least before the "lines" of ships clash, during which you can actually specify which ships you want in front absorbing the damage from the enemy's onslaught), like "enemy contact" and "enemy spotted, 4 o clock" and "strike group breaking up, regrouping behind lines". Also the ships make convincing noises, like the dull constant woosh of fighter engines, the electric buzz of a hyperspace window, and the fierce roar of an ion cannon. A nice touch is if you're close to a dying capital ship, you can see that incoming enemy fire pierces its hull and little plumes of gas hiss out. The ship loses altitude control (identified by "we're losing altitude control!!) and tilts crazily forward. Finally, you hear a loud, sustained screech of the bracing losing coherence and then the big explosion.

The gameplay, though, the gameplay -which which we all say is most important- is very bad. Often little more is involved than sending out some resource collectors, sending a probe to see what the enemy is building (probes are very cool by the way, since they travel at such a breakneck speed and you can attach the camera to the ship, like any other ship or group of ships) and building the appropriate countering ships. There's very little depth of strategy and often the only challenge is scrambling for enough resources to keep your fleet sustained. Also the campaign is rather bad, though it does feature some nice voice work. I'd have to say it's like a movie, an unusually long, nearly plotless, very very cool movie (like mission impossible 2?).

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/30/06