|
|
|
|
|
After you read this article, please share your thoughts!
Reviewed by: Kevin Jenkins Real time strategy is the hardest genres to design a good game in. You need a flawless interface, intelligent AI, smooth pathfinding, clever unit balance, and a great storyline to top it off. If my latest reviews of this genre are anything to go by, the vast majority of RTS games fail to deliver a good game. Every so often though, you get a team of developers with vision and experience; a team that tries to both do something new as well as give the player a solid game under it. Barking Dog Studios is comprised of such a team and I was and still am impressed by their ability. Published by Sierra Studios, Homeworld: Cataclysm provides the player with a solid game managed through a brilliant interface with a great storyline throughout. While the multiplayer game may not appeal to most, the single player game should please any fan of the RTS genre.
Cataclysm continues the original homeworld with a new threat labeled "The Beast." Like the Borg from Star Trek, the beast assimilates ships and grows through the galaxy like cancer. I don't want to ruin the story for would-be players so I'll just say that it's up to you to save the galaxy from this dire threat. Unlike most games, the story isn't added on as an afterthought to justify the combat. Instead, the story is an integral part of the game. Missions are NOT a matter of destroying all enemies but advance within the missions, almost like an adventure game. The story is both interesting and exciting with great voice-acting and enough gameplay to please most anyone. Cataclysm isn't your standard RTSG in terms of gameplay. It's more of a cross between high level command and low level combat. Most of your time is spent zoomed out giving high-level orders such as what to research, where in general to move, and what to build. You don't need to watch combat and spending a few seconds to manage other things during combat won't make any difference. However, some of your units have special attacks that you have to order to use. It's a good blend that keeps combat interesting while not requiring over-micromanagement. Cataclysm's interface is the best I've ever seen for a RTSG. It's full 3D yet I can easily zoom in and out, rotate the view, and center on different ships at will. Pretty much all the conventions are supported such as group selection and waypoints. These are not simple either, for example I can order circular, linear, or end-to-end waypoints. The best feature by far is the ability to give orders from a high level. Simply hitting the spacebar zooms out so that I can see the entire map and most of my units are represented by dots. Even though I can't see them, I can still give orders just as easily as I would at a low level, perhaps easier. Units I select are listed in the upper right, and from here I can select individual types by clicking on the respective unit name. I can give orders here such as attack or move the same as I would anywhere else. What's more important than the interface itself is the intelligent way your units take and respond to orders. If I tell miners to mine, they will continue to mine and move between asteroids without further orders. Special commands are context specific, for example I can hold down 'z' (special command) along with a miner to repair all units in the group. The same is true of some special units, such as EMP attacks that disable all ships in a group you can select. If I select a group of units and hit 'z' I get a list of special commands to choose from. This might seem pretty obvious, but I've seen it done wrong so many times I have to commend the good sense of the designers here. Units gain experience in both single and multiplayer. They carry this experience between missions in single player. There's a limit on experience that's fairly low and easy to reach but it's fun to keep certain special units alive, especially high level units you capture. Cataclysm includes research which is broken into five fields. Each field, such as engineering or weapons, allow upgrades, special abilities, or let you build new kinds of units. You're gradually given the option to research more technologies in single player while you choose among them in multiplayer. What's interesting is research is free as long as you spend the one time cost to build the corresponding research module for your ship. This reduces strategy to "Which modules should I spend money on first, and what in what order should I research technologies." For example, I may elect to get a particular weapon sooner rather than the ability to process crystals for resources. If you play as the beast you can only research one item at a time but can do so faster and in any order. If you play as the Somtaaw (human) you can research one item in each of the fields at the same time. It does take strategy, but not as much as if research costed resources.
Multiplayer is full featured with an excellent skirmish mode as well as matchmaking support on WON. The Beast and Somtaaw sides are well balanced where the beast is better in the early game and Somtaaw better later. Regardless, I don't think multiplayer will appeal to most people. Multiplayer games are extremely long with lots of management and building followed by short periods of action. Most people don't like that judging by the tiny player base on WON. It was fun the first few days until I started beating almost everyone, then I too thought the games took too long and had too much inactivity to be very fun. The problem with multiplayer mainly stems from the concept of support units. The same as a unit limit, every ship requires a certain number of support units to build. The first problem is that the support unit cost isn't representative of ship capability, where it's much more efficient and effective to build larger ships than many smaller ones. The second problem is that by the time you have the research and money to increase your support limit you soon will or already have the ability to build large ships. The third problem is that low-level ships are virtually incapable of destroying the enemy command ship or even the resource processor that accompanies miners unless you had so many you'd be able to make capital ships yourself. The effect of all this is as follows:
With the exception of a few strategies to attack miners, the whole multiplayer game is a race to research the largest capital ships. It's a very slow race though, because it takes over half an hour to get to that point of research. Everyone (including myself) I've seen who has tried to attack early with fighters or frigates has lost badly. There's only three early strategies I know of. The Somtaaw can rush with sentinels (an advanced version of the fighter), the beast can assimilate miners, and both can use kamikaze ships to destroy miners. The first can be negated by building a small force of frigates early. The second and third can be negated by being alert and having a small force of fighters, So you can't be totally undefended, but neither can you attack or do much for the first half hour of the game.
The last part of the multiplayer game isn't all that great either. For the most part the first person to get super-capital ships wins, unless one player or the other gets a lucky shot in with a big gun on the command ship. It's not boring, but it's doesn't have much strategy and can take a very long time. Two hour games with half the time spend building or waiting isn't that satisfying in the end. I think multiplayer in Cataclysm would be twice as good if they removed the unit limit. You can consider Cataclysm a five star game if you only play single player, and four star if you play both. Multiplayer isn't bad, it's just gets boring and takes too long. In every other way Cataclysm was designed extremely well. It has excellent graphics, a fantastic story, an easy to use interface, and fun gameplay. I'd recommend Cataclysm to single player RTS fans of all sorts. System Requirements:
|
 |
 |
 |
