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Homeworld: Cataclysm
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Changes and Additions
The mining equipment in Cataclysm is much more versatile than what was available to the warrior-colonists in the first game; the new mining drones perform all the tasks that the harvesters and salvage and repair corvettes handled separately in the first Homeworld. Some of the ships can even be linked together to gain new abilities.

Blow it up!

Blow it up!

Blow it up!

"We have two ships," explains Stewart, "that are similar to the corvette class in Homeworld: the Acolyte Composite Vehicle (ACV) and the Mimic Composite Vehicle (MCV). When these two fighter-class ships link, they can be armed with new abilities. The ACVs have the EMP weapon (electromagnetic pulse, which disables most ships) and MCVs can mimic larger objects."

A few other alterations change the way the game is played. There is now a "Fog of War" (an inky blackness that obscures uncharted territory), so you'll have to search for the resources on the map, instead of just heading for them at the start. Less emphasis is being placed on the "mopping up resources at the end of the mission" gameplay that dominated Homeworld; although you can still search for every scrap of resources, you can toggle the game's speed, which makes the entire process a lot faster.

Eventually, the miners-turned-warriors encounter the true meat of the tale, in the form of a hideous alien intelligence that is organic, but mimics spacecraft. This hive-mind intelligence creature, which is being called The Beast, promises to add an element of fear and terror to the game.

"The Beast is something from someplace else (we don't want to give away too much just yet), something so alien that it has no natural predators in the Homeworld universe and no compunction about doing as it pleases," says Stewart. "When it encounters life, it tears it apart and rebuilds it to serve its purposes. This means terrible, nasty things for your pilots in the game, should they be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Playing a press demo of the game makes it obvious that Barking Dog knows what it's doing. The Fog of War is an elegant addition, making the gorgeous maps all the more mysterious and even frightening. New resources, such as the Crystals, which must be hauled back to the mothership rather than processed where found, and new ships, such as the ACV and MCV, add new wrinkles to the gameplay. And the two sides in multiplayer offer very different gaming experiences, which was not the case in Homeworld.

From what we've seen, Cataclysm promises to further cement the Homeworld franchise's place as one of gaming's premier series. Watch for it later this year.

Did you like the original Homeworld? What do you think of the idea of Cataclysm being a pseudo-sequel-expansion pack thing? Sound off on the CNET Message Boards.

Andrew S. Bub always pays his homeowner's insurance premiums on time. You know, in case of a cataclysm. Got a comment? Send us an email!

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