Homeworld - Grace Under Pressure

[Jason]

<strong>[ Article ]</strong>

Relic's <strong>Homeworld</strong> is the topic of a <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-09-12-retrospective-homeworld-article?page=1" target="_blank">retrospective</a> at Eurogamer.
<blockquote>While the raw textures and activity within the game engine were impressive for their time, what keeps Homeworld timelessly immersive is its approach to style over fidelity. If 2001 set the stage for grand space opera in film, Homeworld might be said to have done the same for a sort of space ballet in gaming.

Fighter ships move gracefully into a series of formations without micro-management. Resource harvesters twist and writhe through space in order to dock in perfect geometric synchronisation with the Mothership. While you concern yourself with the bigger strategic picture, everything else falls together like over-amorous stickle-bricks. Future space games like EVE Online were smart to follow suit, sacrificing realism on the altar of grace where necessary.
</blockquote><p>Spotted @ <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/index.php">Eurogamer</a></p>

 

[Angthoron]

Relic should stop churning out Warhammer 40K and make another Homeworld game.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Another Homeworld would indeed by incredible.

 

[DraQ]

I don't see what does docking or fighter ballet have to do with sacrifice of realism.

Another Homeworld would indeed by incredible.

Too bad there was no sequel.

 

[engy]

I don't see what does docking or fighter ballet have to do with sacrifice of realism.

Another Homeworld would indeed by incredible.

Too bad there was no sequel.

Homeworld 2?

But yeah, we need a Homeworld 3.

 

[DraQ]

I don't see what does docking or fighter ballet have to do with sacrifice of realism.

Another Homeworld would indeed by incredible.

Too bad there was no sequel.

Homeworld 2?

*immediately shoots engy in the face with super-heavy massdrivers mounted on turrets of an Avatar-class heavy cruiser - all 6 of them*

Too bad there was no sequel.

 

[SuicideBunny]

I don't see what does docking or fighter ballet have to do with sacrifice of realism.

Another Homeworld would indeed by incredible.

Too bad there was no sequel.

Homeworld 2?

*immediately shoots engy in the face with super-heavy massdrivers mounted on turrets of an Avatar-class heavy cruiser - all 6 of them*

Too bad there was no sequel.

homeworld 2?

homeworld 3 would be nice, but i doubt relic could pull off another non-sucky homeworld.

 

[spekkio]

Damn, how awesome Homeworld was... Played Homeworld - Cataclysm too and liked it.
The only thing that I've skipped is...

Homeworld 2

 

[commie]

I don't see what does docking or fighter ballet have to do with sacrifice of realism.

Another Homeworld would indeed by incredible.

Too bad there was no sequel.

Homeworld 2?

*immediately shoots engy in the face with super-heavy massdrivers mounted on turrets of an Avatar-class heavy cruiser - all 6 of them*

Too bad there was no sequel.

Homeworld 2 was god awful quite apart from the uninspired story: the shitty way the AI knew what units you had at the end of a scenario and thus was ready with a big fleet to counter them at the start of the next was one of the crappiest design decisions known to man. It actually made more sense to scrap everything you had at the end of a mission just so the AI would have weak forces at the start of the next!

One of the best things in Homeworld was keeping your fleet alive, mission after mission and stealing enemy ship whenever you could to add to it with no unit cap! I stole a whole bunch of units, got the Taidan cruiser and carrier during the mission where you had to destroy them which was damn cool. I also stole about 20-30 frigates from that huge bunch protecting the last jump point before the final mission. Needless to say the final mission was piss easy, but hell I worked for it dammit! In H2 you were punished for such things.

Played it recently again and apart from the low res textures on the mothership which really stand out, it has aged well, making the backgrounds look like a watercolor painting rather than uber realistic actually gave the game a more timeless quality. Don't know if they could make another Homeworld as nothing could match that epic, mysterious, yet quite simple story from the first one.

 

[DraQ]

Homeworld 2 was god awful quite apart from the uninspired story: the shitty way the AI knew what units you had at the end of a scenario and thus was ready with a big fleet to counter them at the start of the next was one of the crappiest design decisions known to man. It actually made more sense to scrap everything you had at the end of a mission just so the AI would have weak forces at the start of the next!

One of the best things in Homeworld was keeping your fleet alive, mission after mission and stealing enemy ship whenever you could to add to it with no unit cap! I stole a whole bunch of units, got the Taidan cruiser and carrier during the mission where you had to destroy them which was damn cool. I also stole about 20-30 frigates from that huge bunch protecting the last jump point before the final mission. Needless to say the final mission was piss easy, but hell I worked for it dammit! In H2 you were punished for such things.

This. There was some difficulty scaling in HW1, but it was subtle, HW2, OTOH just raped your face for being good at it.

Also, the person who came up with all the fucking retcons and hole riddled plot (Relic community strived to amuse itself by inventing terms more adequate than mere plothole for HW2 use back then), should fucking hang.

Sure, the game had redeeming qualities, ships were mostly cool, subsystems were awesome, and there were some great stuff and scenes dispersed throughout the game, but butchered story and setting, retarded scaling, auto-ending missions and dumbed down formation management crippled it beyond repair.

Cataclysm was better, but the story was too much of a "lolborg", ships were mostly weird curiosities, homing energy cannons literally made me cry and, along with strict SU-cap precluded any sort of tactical or strategic flexibility, and animated backgrounds made me rage so hard I wanted to rip the hed of the author of such a horribly retarded idea off and shit down his neck.


Also, latter HW game lacked very simple, yet effective, gimmick from HW1 - galactic map providing strong sense of place.

 

[spekkio]

retarded scaling, auto-ending missions

I've read about those two things and decided to skip this game. Are there any mods fixing it?

Oh, and check out this great user review from MobyGames:
8/10, would read again
Troll or Retard? You decide...

:arguecat:

 

[DraQ]

retarded scaling, auto-ending missions

I've read about those two things and decided to skip this game.

I wouldn't recommend buying, but it might be worth pirating.

OTOH it takes a huge and unredeemable faggot to not buy HW1.

 

[spekkio]

By "skip" I meant "not play". And about buying H2: what's the point of buying a game you haven't finished at least once?

 

[Tails]

Relic should stop churning out Warhammer 40K and make another Homeworld game.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but people responsible for Homeworld are no longer working at Relic.

Also: Homeworld 2 is good for what it is

 

[commie]

retarded scaling, auto-ending missions

I've read about those two things and decided to skip this game.

I wouldn't recommend buying, but it might be worth pirating.

OTOH it takes a huge and unredeemable faggot to not buy HW1.

I have my copy from 1999 with that beautiful Silver covered manual...SIGH. Even Cataclysm had a nice manual.

 

[DraQ]

retarded scaling, auto-ending missions

I've read about those two things and decided to skip this game.

I wouldn't recommend buying, but it might be worth pirating.

OTOH it takes a huge and unredeemable faggot to not buy HW1.

I have my copy from 1999 with that beautiful Silver covered manual...SIGH. Even Cataclysm had a nice manual.

Homeworld was one of those games that I had to run and buy immediately after playing the demo, but I can't find my manual any more. That sucks, I remember it having awesome technical and historical sections. Still I can always use the electronic version.

 

[commie]

]Homeworld was one of those games that I had to run and buy immediately after playing the demo, but I can't find my manual any more. That sucks, I remember it having awesome technical and historical sections. Still I can always use the electronic version.

How could you lose the manual?
I keep all those ancient titles in near mint condition, even the CD's and manuals have almost no visible wear. Those were the days! Their Finest Hour and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe had such great manuals they were worthy history book in themselves. Now it's PDF crap all the way. I think I'll shed a tear when I go back to Australia and look upon my game shelf filled almost exclusively with titles from 1990-2000! They just don't make that kind of effort or show that much genuine affection for their games anymore. Funny, they have budgets 100 times as big, yet their games are soulless and have a pamphlet masquerading as an in-depth manual full of lore and backstory.

 

[SuicideBunny]

Isn't "Sins of a Solar Empire" is a Homeworld spiritual successor?

no. sins is more like dune 2 in space.
the closest to a spiritual sequel to homeworld would be nexus, i think.

 

[commie]

Isn't "Sins of a Solar Empire" is a Homeworld spiritual successor?

no. sins is more like dune 2 in space.
the closest to a spiritual sequel to homeworld would be nexus, i think.

Nexus is fucking great. One of the most underrated games evah.

 

[DraQ]

Isn't "Sins of a Solar Empire" is a Homeworld spiritual successor?

no. sins is more like dune 2 in space.
the closest to a spiritual sequel to homeworld would be nexus, i think.

Nexus is fucking great. One of the most underrated games evah.

It might be less underrated if it's devs at least pretended to test it for gameplay balance.

A great game, but physically unplayable on higher difficulties - in the convoy mission right after leaving solar system, no matter what loadout you choose, you won't knock the shields or disable even the weakest of enemy vessels without help, and the only allied vessel gets razed seconds into the scenario, no matter what you do.

 

[SuicideBunny]

Is it a good thing? I am not really into RTS genre, but I liked Homeworld. (would be great to see it mixed with SW:Empire at War without ground battles)

you can't mix homeworld with something like empire at war. the main appeal of homeworld is the strategy involved in managing the continuity of your force (especially the captured units) from mission to mission, which is totally moot if you put it into the framework of galactic conquest.

as for sins, it isn't a bad game, it just sucks as singleplayer and gets boring fast, like all the other dune 2 clones, but that's just my personal taste in rts.

 

[Angthoron]

I heard that Star Wolves (first one) is fairly decent as well, have it lying around but never got to playing yet, has anyone tried it? Is it anything like Homeworld?

Oh, and Homeworld has an awesome ending song, too bad the faggots at WMG have pulled/spoiled the audio streams at the Credits + sound version.


Edit: Nevermind, just gotta look through something else than Youtube: http://www.viddler.com/explore/kinger/videos/38/

 

[DraQ]

Oh, and Homeworld has an awesome ending song, too bad the faggots at WMG have pulled/spoiled the audio streams at the Credits + sound version.

WMG?

I even bought "The Ladder" CD after playing HW. It had cool bonus disk, which, apart from usual stuff like concert videos included less usual stuff like HW model viewer. I am very about having this CD.

Also, HW credits were made even more awesome by all the concept art displayed.

 

[MetalCraze]

I actually bought HW2 back when it came out :<

HW2 isn't that bad tbh. I kinda enjoyed the hugeass battles with hundreds of ships raping the shit out of each other. And the better balance - now bombers indeed posed threat to capital ships and there were no Ultimate Ships Of Doom that killed everything like in previous games (especially Dreadnought in Cataclysm). But the story and visual design were of course lackluster. Space started to look like some fucking sky.

HW1 & HW: Cataclysm were much better though.

 

[Angthoron]

Warner Media Group. You know, the "IP owners" that force people to mute their videoes on Youtube even if it's a short clip.

Also, HW credits were made even more awesome by all the concept art displayed.

One of the only times ever that I've not skipped the Credits. The artwork is awesome.