Homeworld

"The best game for the PC in 1999. Period."

If you have ever played a Real-Time Strategy game, you know how every other real-time strategy game works as well. Until now. With Relic's gaming masterpiece the realm of Strategy games is taken to the next level. Up until now all strategy games have been essentially 2D overhead games (with a few exceptions like Machines by Acclaim), Homeworld is not. It is a 3D space based strategy game that is actually 3D. Add to that an incredible story, multiplayer and some absolutely awesome music, and you have the best PC game of 1999.

Graphics: The graphics in this game are spectacular. You get a real sense of the emptiness of space as you manuever your ships around. This may seem like a bad thing, but after you play the game you realize exactly how effective this is. But what will really catch your eye is the fully rotatable camera. You aren't limited to one or two axes of motion, you have access to all three, and its not very difficult at all. A few quick swipes of your mouse and you will be flowing through the game. My only qualm with the graphics is the textures. For some reason some of them seem really out of place for space fighters or transports. But this is easily overlooked as you won't be paying an incredible amount of time focusing on that in the midist of heavy battling. Control: Surprisingly, for a fully 3D game the controls are very intuitive and easy to get a hand on. You use the mouse for just about everything you need. Of course there are hot keys on your keyboard for more common commands (and there are a lot of them), but everything is accessible via your mouseball. At first you might get a bit disoriented by all the empty space, but this will quickly pass as you gain your "space legs." It won't take long before you can do everything easily.

Sound: Homeworld relies a lot on sound to convey what is going on. Aside from your mothership's controller you have no contact with anybody at all. You will hear transmissions from other ships and your fighters as they go on attack runs, but there is no character interaction. Therefore the voice acting has to be very good, because if it sucks you might stop paying attention and miss something important. Fortunately, it is very good. I couldn't find a single voice actor I didn't like in the game. In addition there is a very good array of bullet, missile and explosion sounds to listen to in some of your raging assaults (even though there is no sound in space, oh well). The music is very good on the whole. The music is very good at setting the mood in the appropriate situations (when something sad happens the music becomes sober, when your under massive assault it is tense and fast). Perhaps you have heard that the band "Yes" performed some songs for the game. While they aren't bad, there is certainly nothing to write home about in them as well. All in all, some very nice sound effects and music in an awesome game.

Single Player: The most rivoting Single Player expierence I have ever had (this tops even Half-Life). While the game is "on-rails" (that is, it follows a set path that is unalterable) it still maintains a lot of customizability for the player. Ships transfer from mission to mission, so you can have a Scout that you built in mission 1 with you all the way through to the end of the game. I don't want to spoil any of the story for anyone, but once you get passed the third level it is impossible to get away from the game (the first few levels follow tried and true cliches). In addition to that is an incredible amount of different strategies to try (do you want to spend those resources you just collected on some Salvage Corvettes so you can possibly steal the enemies Ion Frigates or do you want to spend it one some fighters so you can slag them?). The only thing that would have made this better would be an expierence system so that the Scout you had in Level 1 was able to hold its own better in later levels against harder opponents than a standard Scout.

Multiplayer: Take away the storyline, add more human players, add inter map hyperspacing, and you have the homeworld multiplayer. Homeworld multiplayer may not be quite as satisfying as blowing up your buddy in Half-Life, but it is definitly a blast. There's nothing incredible about the multiplayer that isn't in the single player, so there isn't anything to say.

Overall: If you enjoy having fun and have a moderatly powered computer (P200, 64mb RAM, minimum for enjoyable play) then at the very least download the demo. Better yet, go out and buy it, you won't be disappointed.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 12/04/99, Updated 12/04/99