User Reviews

Homeworld - for those of you who don't know - was Strategy game of the year(1999). Unlike most strategy games, however, you didn't buy Homeworld for the Multiplayer aspects, the random mêlée games or custom scenarios.

You buy Homeworld for a plot-line in the Singleplayer campaigns that puts some MOVIES to shame. Using artfully rendered cutscenes the game tells of wars that led to the discovering of a huge relic of a spaceship under the desert. Contained within was an artifact that would change the course of civilization, a stone that depicts the course to your Homeworld.

All of Mankind bands together in a trekkish effort to explore the cosmos, and finally they build a colonization ship - simply named "Mothership." After their first test of the reverse-engineered Hyperspace drives their world is attacked by the Kushan Empire - a brutal race who currently controls most of the empire.

The game is layed out as such that the units from the previous level are carried over to the next level, unlike a lot of strategy games that inexplicitly make you rebuild your army time and again. As you progress you get newer and better ships in the way of all strategy games past and present, and the levels get increasingly difficult.

Like I said, you don't buy Homeworld for the game, you buy it for the plot and storyline. Everything - from the fanciful depiction of unfathomably large nebulae to the soaring musical score - paints the game in such a way as to make the player feel insignificant. I remember playing, I'd just fought off a large wave of enemy ships and listening to the cries of crewmen as they battled the visible fires burning on their ships. We were in bad shape, and it was then that the tactical adviser gave me some news: "We have detected a large, mothership-class vessel entering the region... it is bound for our location." I felt an almost genuine fear claw at me at those words, then a grim determination to go down fighting as I lined my ships up and prepared to go down in a blaze of glory. The game has a way of sucking you in I'd never experienced before or since. The Storyline is both Dark and Brilliant.

If you happen to pass this game on the discount bargain shelf, or just see it sitting in a store, I suggest you buy it.

For sheer quality, tone, and professionalism -- this is THE game to look at as shining example. Homeworld features some of the finest art direction, audio mixing, and voice acting out there. This game is also totally consistent. Every aspect of it fits neatly together. The audio suits the visuals and both suit the story and concept. It's a rare occasion when all of these factors blend together perfectly. Usually, it's only in cases in which one person has complete creative control over a project. In the case of Homeworld, it appears that everyone was on the same page.

The soundtrack is brilliant and the mixing is fantastic. Comm chatter is treated with the correct tone and effects, sound effects and score are applied adeptly, and the voice acting is some of the best I've heard.

Concepts and designs are powerful and massive. Chris Foss' influence is felt throughout. The interface is elegant and easy to use. All the features required for an effective 3D interface are here, including a finely-crafted series of tutorials.

This is a game that appears to have influenced other mediums -- including the Battlestar Galactica series. Similarities exist in treatment of ship deployment, retrieval, jump technology and its use / context, comm chatter effects, camera movements, etc.... Since the same 3D software was used for both Homeworld and all of Battlestar's ship-to-ship sequences (and both were produced in the same city), I wouldn't be surprised if some of the same people worked on both.

My gratitude goes out to all of those who worked on this project. Congratulations on a job well done, and thankyou for returning a great degree of excellence and integrity to the genre of science fiction. You truly understand what it's all about.

-- W. J. Brookes, BA, M.Arch

This was "Game of the Year" in 1999, and rightfully so. Apart from being a damn good real time strategy game, the single player mode also managed to tell an epic story that I have found to be superior to almost every game I have ever played and also most movies I have ever seen... by rights this should be made a movie as well.

The plot begins as follows: your race, inhabiting the old desert planet Kharak, finds mounting numbers of hints that they are not indigenous to this world - the local biology is different, and fragments of metal are found in orbit. By accident a 4000 year old spaceship is found under the sands of the Great Desert which indicates that the ancestors of your race once stranded on Kharak and fell back to barbarism, rising to space travel once more over the centuries. The ship possesses a functioning faster-than-light-drive, and a stone with an galactic map etched on it, indicating the position of your lost homeworld: HIIGARA.

The whole economy of Kharak is set to construct a huge colony ship, taking 600.000 volunteers deep corewards, where the Homeworld is said to be. After 60 years of construction the Mothership, as it is called, is finally complete and undergoing tests. Following a test jump to the outer rim of the Kharak system, the support ship which it should meet is found to be destroyed, and alien ships attack the Mothership. After they are defeated, the Mothership returns to Kharak, only to find that the planet has been attacked and the population was wiped out - only the colonists remain in their cryo sleep chambers in orbit, which must be rescued from being destroyed by the attackers, servants of a huge interstellar empire which once banished your ancestors to Kharak.

With nowhere to go but onward, the Mothership sets out on a long quest for the lost Homeworld, carrying all that is left of your people. Numerous missions take it from the Galactic Rim near the Core. You have to fight every inch of the way, with ever more powerful ships ranging from simple utility vessels as resource collectors over fighters, bombers, corvettes, frigates and destroyers up to gigantic carriers and heavy cruisers, each with its own strengths and weaknesses which can be avoided by clever combination of forces. All this is presented in breathtaking graphics which look good even today, seven years afterwards, and mindboggling music - the best computer game soundtrack I ever heard, and completely fitting. In the end, the Exiles arrive at Hiigara to face the Emperor and his fleet in the final battle high over the Homeworld.

Rating: 10/10. This game still has it all: gameplay, skill, graphics, music, story... you name it.

If a game doesn't hook me within the first half-hour then I'm just not going to see it through to the end. Homeworld just seemed like Age of Empires: In Space to me and the slow, confusing gameplay really got on my nerves. I know that this game has an Army of fans who will denounce my comments, but I simply could not get into it.

Usually, I like space games and I was hoping that this would have a Star Trek-ish feel to it. I also quite the Wing Commander games and since it only cost me 99p then I thought I might as well give it a go. Call me shallow, but it didn't give me instant satisfaction and uninstalled it after only 45 minutes.