Gameplay

First of all, let me say this outright…if you played Homeworld and thought it was a great game, then stop reading this review right now and go buy Cataclysm. You will love it. Cataclysm is easily as good a Homeworld, with some nice new features and ships thrown in for good measure. If you haven't played Homeworld, or you thought Homeworld could have used some tweaking, then read on and see if Cataclysm is what you are looking for.

Cataclysm, while marked as an add-on, is actually a stand-alone game. This means you won't have to shell out the money for both games in order to play Cataclysm. In some ways I do recommend play the original Homeworld first, if only to get a rather complete picture of the story which sets the stage to Cataclysm. This is, however, unnecessary, especially since Cataclysm does a great job of setting the scene by itself, both through the printed manual (which is great by the way) and the early movies/cut-scenes. Between mission movies are rendered in partially animated black-and-white hand drawings just as they were in Homeworld. While this may sound cheesy, it is actually works very well. These movies are augmented by rendered in game cut-scenes which are fused directly into the missions themselves.

The actual game-play will be familiar to any person that has played any recent RTS title such as Ground Control. However, there are some elements of the Cataclysm interface that will require some getting used to. First of all, since the game takes place in space, each mission can be played out fully in all three dimensions. Not only does this mean you can rotate and zoom your perspective to any orientation you wish around your fleet, you are also able position your fleet anywhere in the 3D playing field you wish. This means you can engage an enemy cruiser head on with your destroyer while attacking from above and below with you fighters, corvettes, or whatever. This movement in 3D is executed by first designating the destination of your ships in the horizontal plane, and then (by holding down the Shift key) assigning a position in the vertical plane. I found this to be primarily useful for positioning my ships prior to battle to set the direction from which they would engage the enemy. Once locked in the heat of battle, however, I found this to be a little too cumbersome to be of much use. Still, the use of the third dimension is a very nice feature.

Another thing that was a little tricky to get accustomed to is the lack of camera panning. At any given time, your perspective must always be centered on a ship or group of ships. You are able to zoom in and out, and rotate the view around whatever ship you have selected. However, most other RTS games allow one to pan or "slide" the camera view by moving the mouse to the edge of the screen. I found this feature to be sorely missed. For instance, if a group of ships was lying just outside of the view of whatever ship I currently had selected, the only way to select those ships was to zoom out to the sector map, find and select the ships I wanted, then zoom back in. This can be avoiding by assigning hot key numbers to all ship groups, but still I found myself often wishing I could move the camera around, even if just for a better view of the battle. Ah well…you can't have everything.

I should just briefly mention that the actually interface itself has been changed between Homeworld and Cataclysm. Gone is the bottom-of-the-screen pop-up menu bar. Commands are now given entirely through context sensitive menus that can be accessed via the right mouse button or through hot-keys. I personally suggest learning hot-keys, because in the heat of battle, especially in multiplayer when it cannot be paused, time and efficiency mean everything. Fumbling around with tool bars and menus just won't cut it, and I am sure the best players out there could issue all the commands from their keyboard while blindfolded. Trust me…learn the hot-keys. The option to have the classic Homeworld interface is included, but to be honest I preferred the new streamlined interface provided in Cataclysm.

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