| Homeworld Cataclysm - (2/2) | Gestalt [04-Jun-2000] |
These range from variations on the traditional fighters and destroyers of the first game, to units such as the mimic, which uses holgraphic projections to fool your enemy into believing it is something completely different. Ships can even be upgraded during a mission, allowing you to fit them with more advanced weapons, armour and engines, or to add special functions such as the ability to link multiple ships together, all without having to scrap the whole lot and build a new fleet.
The role and abilities of your base ship have changed somwhat as well, with new modules being constructed and then attached to the ship during the game. These allow you to research different types of technologies, and if you are short on resources you will need to choose which of these research modules to build first.
If Cataclysm is anything like the original, this will be especially important in multiplayer, where the entire tech tree is open to you within the space of a single mission, and the speed at which you can research new technologies can mean the difference between victory and obliteration.
In the single player game it is less of an issue, as the game is far slower paced than when you are facing real human enemies in a more free-form mission structure. In single player you are usually limited to constructing at best a couple of new modules, and researching just a handful of technologies in any one mission.
The game's interface has been given an overhaul as well, with the addition of that staple of real time strategy games - waypoints. This is something that was sorely missed in the original game, and its addition means that you can now set up patrol patterns more easily, and send your ships around minefields and other obstructions without having to guide them every step of the way.
You can also issue more commands to your ships from the sensor manager screen than in the original game, and a time acceleration feature has been added to allow you to fast forward through the dull parts, or to slow the game right down to half speed when things get really hectic. It all helps to make the control system that little bit easier to use in the heat of combat.
Cataclysm looks set to bring us a new dose of Homeworld, but with even better graphics, more versatile controls, and a whole new storyline. What more could you want from a sequel?
The game's jump fifteen years into the future means that Cataclysm has an almost entirely new selection of technologies to research and ships to build.
The already impressive graphics engine has had some tinkering under the bonnet to add dynamic lighting effects and lens flare, and many of the old effects have been replaced with bigger, more spectacular ones.
Creating a worthy successor to Homeworld was always going to be a tricky task, but from what we have seen of Cataclysm so far it looks like Barking Dog might just be on to something.
