Homeworld: Cataclysm

Coming Home!

Man, think about the pressure -- not only are you doing the sequel to one of 1999’s top games, but you are doing it as a standalone and making some fundamental changes to the gameplay. Think about what would happen if you screwed it up? Think about what would happen if you wrecked a genre? Well, think again, because Barking Dog Studios pulled it off.

In a time where sequels are nothing more than new paint jobs on old gameplay, Barking Dog Studios took a perfectly good game and made it better.

Home and Hearth.

First a little history: Homeworld from Relic Software was one of those games that looked at a genre (the RTS) and turned it on its ear, in 3D. Combining a plot worthy of being made into a movie and graphics that rivalled some recent flicks, it set a new standard in gaming. Its unique interface allowed for full, true 3D movement. The game's AI was above most, and even though it had its weaknesses, it still provided one hell of a fight.
Homeworld only had one real weakness…its length. Occasionally, size does matter, and an average gamer could complete Homeworld fairly quickly. The Multiplayer mode in the game gave it some extra life, but there was still a bit of disappointment. We loved the game and wanted to spend more time with the Kushan. After all, we did get them back to their home planet, didn’t we?

Fortunately, Barking Dogs Studios heard our cry and announced a sequel, but not just a sequel -- a stand-alone product with new ships, a new story and new gameplay. The cries of “hooray" were mixed with the occasional call of “heresy”. Improve upon perfection? We’ll see.

Home Fires.

HW:C takes place some 15 years after the events in HW. Hiigara is being colonized and the Taidani Empire is in shambles, all thanks to your efforts. However, the new world is as harsh as the old. Politics begin to carve rifts in the unified resolve that got you home. Pirates stalk your ships and pockets of Taidan loyalists seek revenge upon you for bringing down their world.

In the middle of this mix are ‘the sleepers’, those colonists that hibernated throughout the six-month voyage to Hiigara. For them, the destruction of Kharak and the death of the rest of the Kushan people is a fresh wound. They have no place in the new or old world and some have chosen space.

One family or Kiith, the Somtaaw, pushed to return to the stars, and was granted access to the old Mothership. From there, they built two huge Mining ships, the Kuun-Lan and the Fal-Corum, and a deep space research frigate the Clee-san. With these three ships, the SomTaaw went back into space to carve a name for itself; what it found threatened the very world they left behind.

How they encounter the Beast, I will leave for you to find out. That they do is common knowledge (see the ads). This new race adds some very interesting twists to the story, and the missions you play thru act not only as extended tutorials, but are extremely gripping. I found myself impatient to finish each mission because I wanted to know what happened next.

Home Renovations

Homeworld: Cataclysm (HW:C) is a stand-alone sequel to Relic Software’s hit Homeworld, featuring 17 full missions, Skirmish vs. CPU and Multiplayer mode via WON and LAN. Though I will be comparing the two games throughout the review (hard not to), they are very different games. In HW, you commanded a huge Mothership…in HW:C, a Mining vessel. In HW, you were fighting for the survival of your race…in HW:C, you are struggling to stay alive long enough to get home to those people.
That’s the simple part of the review. When Barking Dog started to develop HW:C, they wanted to add something new to the game and not just produce a set of missions. They changed the very way the game looks, sounds, and is played.

New Paint

The “Looks” part was easy -- new ships with new weapons. Homeworld was a stylized grandiose game, rife with self-righteousness. HW:C is the harsh light of reality after the dream is over. The ships in HW:C are utilitarian; they have a single function and are only pressed into other roles through ingenuity and necessity.
I have to admit that when I found out my main ship was a mining ship, I was disappointed, but I soon overcame that little problem. Once I got into the game and started playing with the different vessels, I started to see what the developers were trying to do. This is not Homeworld, and they would be foolish to try to recreate that game. This was Homeworld: Cataclysm, and it required different tools to tell the story.
As usual, the models have great detail on them, and scale beautifully. Even the old Mining ship acquires a style of its own as time progresses.
The new maps are well thought out and the backgrounds are exquisite. In HW, there were nebulas shining in the back; in HW:C, they flicker and pulse, giving them new life. The asteroids you mined in HW are still there, but in HW:C there are asteroid swarms that move and sweep by you, and a new resource: crystals.
The interface will be familiar to HW veterans but has some very nice upgrades. The “Caps Lock” key brings up a ship overlay of any vessel to have your cursor over. It will give you its class, health, repairing ability, armor level, type and power of weapons, and any special ability. This means no more memorizing the manual and its a fast way to check status of any vessel.
Part and parcel of the new looks is the graphic engine. The same degree of tweak-ability is there, so you can choose that delicate balance between detail and framerate.
Screen shots can be taken by hitting the Scroll Lock key and are stored in the HW:C directory.

Let's talk about the sound of this title

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