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Homeworld 2 Review September 23, 2003 Jakub Wojnarowicz |
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Summary: "For there was a great cry from the heavens, as even the angels could not bear witness to the unimaginable suck of the Homeworld 2 singleplayer campaign, made all the more atrocious by comparison with how great the multiplayer and skirmish modes are. Ye heavens, smite down the Relic level designers with all thine wrath!" Say that prayer ten times every night, and maybe there will be justice at least once for gamers.
 Overview | Page:: ( 1 / 5 ) |
The worst…
Editor’s Note: We seem to be having a recurring problem with HyperSnap capturing the Windows mouse cursor instead of the in-game one. Please disregard this problem, and accept our apologies.
Four years of development, a contract dispute with the publisher, a superior stand-alone expansion to the original game to look back on and learn from, and this is what Relic throws our way? You would think that somewhere along the way, an employee of Relic or Sierra would have deigned to actually play the singleplayer campaign of the game they’re developing.
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There is no other explanation for the state of Homeworld 2. No one can argue that skirmish and multiplayer work great, that the campaign has an interesting storyline that’s delivered in measured, powerful doses that will keep you hooked. The technical aspects, such as graphics, cutscenes, sound and music, are beyond reproach. All these come together to form what must be the most beautiful frame for the worst mission design in history.
It’s not just that Homeworld 2 is absurdly difficult and offers no way to tone that difficulty down. It’s a game that is clearly aimed at the hardcore audience that bought the original, which wasn’t exactly the easiest game in the world. Sure, the developer might actually be able to sell HW2 to more than the fans of the original if they’d insisted on a difficulty slider, but that’d be common sense. Common sense is missing throughout Homeworld 2.
Mission design
If you ever stop to actually think about what happens in most missions, you’re going to laugh. Spoiler Warning! Take mission 9, for example. It starts off reasonably enough, but then the scripted repairs on the key ship on your fleet will require a shipyard. As per mission script, the shipyard will hyperspace in. Why wasn’t it with you all along? No clue. Why was it risking itself by (presumably) being alone in the middle of nowhere yet close enough to get to you in one jump? No idea.
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But those are mere plot details. What will really fry your noodle later is how come a very deadly squadron of enemy destroyers and missile frigates appears right behind your shipyard. They weren’t there before. They couldn’t have known your shipyard was coming or gathered an appropriate strike force in time (unless they could intercept and decrypt your communication so completely that your war should be lost by default.) So why are they there? Just to make things more difficult. That your own fleet is in a life-and-death struggle on the other side of the Mothership is of course, also no coincidence.
Unfortunately, if you lose the shipyard, the mission is over. Not because it’s scripted to be over, mind you, but because the ship you’re repairing attaches itself to the Mothership and won’t detach when you build a new shipyard. Fortunately, bugs are quite rare in Homeworld 2, and this is the only game-stopper we encountered.
SIDEBAR: Don’t play Homeworld 2 for relaxation or stress relief. If you’re feeling too calm, too at peace, too relaxed and desire a certain angry edge, then fire it up.
| Karma chameleon | Page:: ( 2 / 5 ) |
Make things difficult
Any and all enjoyment of the challenge of beating Homeworld 2’s campaign goes away the moment a player realizes that this is a game that’s difficult for the sake of being difficult. The mission design isn’t creative or interesting, actually challenging, and the events perpetrated by the level designers certainly don’t make sense. Not counting the final mission (which is predictably bland and illogical in its own way), there are only two kinds of ‘challenge’ in Homeworld 2.
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Most of the time the player will simply spend time fighting off endless waves of enemy craft, as the Mothership is stuck in some location or another for some superficial reason. Occasionally, Relic will mix it up with objective-based missions which happen to send your fleet at various targets, and the enemy will launch a “surprise” attack against the Mothership or whatever you happen to be protecting. Tedium, thy name is Homeworld.
There are other questionable design decisions that harm Homeworld 2. As with the original, the player’s fleet carries over from mission to mission. However, in an attempt to speed the game up, after the last objective is achieved the game will automatically collect all resources and hyperspace out. This would be fine, except that it’s absolutely vital to have as large a fleet as possible at the start of nearly every mission. So you may find yourself barely finishing the final objective in mission 9 and start mission 10 with three ships.
HW2 has a great auto-save system as objectives are passed, but it really helps to save before completing the final objective, so you can build the ‘proper’ fleet to counter what’s coming. For example, I left mission 8 with a large number of torpedo and ion frigates, but mission 9 is nigh-on impossible without a plethora of flak frigates. The solution? Certainly not try and make do with the original fleet, or even scrapping the original one and building flak frigates – that takes too long. Rather, go back to the last mission 8 save, build the correct fleet for mission 9, and then re-start mission 9. This is idiotic, tedious, ludicrously unfair to the gamer and utterly typical of the Relic mission designers.
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Missions are more puzzles than anything with HW2. Few can be done in one try; the most difficult ones can take five or six or more attempts. As the designers pull their oh-so-clever surprises, the player learns to station his forces to counter the surprise. Not only does this destroy immersion in the game by forcing gamers to learn the exact type and location of enemy ships to counter, it breeds an unfortunate cynicism about Homeworld 2 itself.
That’s unfortunate, because underneath the arrogant design, hides a good game.
SIDEBAR: I loved Homeworld: Cataclysm for its singleplayer. Homeworld 2 is such a disappointment in comparison, I want to cry.
| Good stuff | Page:: ( 3 / 5 ) |
Updates
Homeworld 2 has the exact same style as the original, so you’d be forgiven if, upon looking at the screenshots, you thought it was the same engine. Once seen in motion however, there’s absolutely no denying what a fantastically beautiful game this is. Combined with the good sound effects and positively stellar (pardon the pun) musical score, it’s easy to understand Homeworld 2’s immersive ability.
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The interface has received an overhaul as well. The changes are subtle but useful, and while the camera controls can still be clunky – notably the artificial limits on zooming out – it’s not enough to be a problem for dedicated or experienced gamers. The best improvements lie in managing the fleet, as strike groups now allow groups of mixed vessels to move at the same speed and attack as one.
Ship AI is good but requires too much micromanagement at times. Notably, ships are prone to disobey orders and target the wrong vessels. Flak frigates have a disturbing fetish for attacking corvette-class ships when there are perfectly good bombers and interceptors to attack. It’s not that flak frigates are ineffective against corvettes, they’re just less effective than torpedo frigates. Ships also seem likely to forget a movement command, in order to defend themselves or even engage an enemy. This doesn’t seem to happen all the time, so perhaps it’s a bug or simply a ‘fuzzy logic’ design that doesn’t really work out for the best. In the end, however, a Homeworld 2 fleet is far more capable without human supervision than it would be in the original.
Skirmish and multi
Skirmish and multiplayer mode are utter gems. Rather than feeling like a collection of manipulative puzzles, here the game actually gives the feeling of real space fleet action. Skirmish mode even features a difficulty level.
Homeworld 2 may be an RTS, but it plays quite unlike its competitors and not just because it has a truly 3D battlefield. It’s a rather slow-paced game; matches can take a long time but there is more than enough action to keep a player occupied. Between building, researching, managing resource collectors and their platforms, harassing the enemy, scouting, and defending against harassment, it almost feels like the game is too fast.
Combat tends to be furious on the verge of being chaotic, but it is possible and even necessary to micromanage. If there is a downside to Homeworld 2’s multiplayer it’s that momentum is very difficult to change. Winning the first battle often sets the pace for the rest of the match even if only a small portion of the winner’s fleet makes it through. Now he’s free to attack resource gatherers or to repair the damaged ships and use them to form the core of his next attack fleet.
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There are no expansions and the construction craft – carriers, shipyards and the Mothership – all move very slowly. Expansions are more like mobile resource harvesting operations than permanent bases, and can’t be used to re-construct your fleet. Destroying your opponent’s economy with a sneak attack is viable, but does little good if his fleet overwhelms yours and destroys your Mothership. It takes some getting used to, but eventually a measure of caution is learned and the player will scout, feint, test the enemy and avoid direct fleet combat until he feels confident of victory. Until then, there are rushes, harassment strikes and expansions to worry about. All in all, it’s a very thoughtful RTS. Assuming you don’t run into one of those crazy hardcore Homeworld fans who will hand you your ass on a silver platter (with a cherry on top) in five minutes, it’s even enjoyable!
SIDEBAR: The Headstones, a rather popular Canadian band, called it quits recently.
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 4 / 5 ) |
Pros
Audio-Visual
The graphics, sound and music ooze style and substance.
Multiplayer
The only drawback to multiplayer we can think of is that there aren’t enough games online.
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Interface
Not so much a pro as an acknowledgement of improvement. Or perhaps we’re just better with past experience.
Plot
It’s good, real good. As good as or better than the original, and that’s saying a lot. Combined with the graphics and music, it can really hook you. It’s about the only reason why anyone would play the singleplayer campaign past mission four.
More Homeworld
From the very beginning, the first mission, it’s obvious that Homeworld 2 has stayed loyal to hardcore HW fans and not changed a thing.
Cons
Campaign
Around the beautiful framework of the game engine, painted on the spectacular canvas of a quality plot, lies the worst RTS campaign in history. The levels are difficult for the sake of being difficult and don’t give a thought to believability or immersion, simply throwing massive forces from ‘unexpected’ directions, without a thought to reason.
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More Homeworld
Those looking for changes to the Homeworld formula are going to be sorely disappointed. If you didn’t like the first, don’t expect anything different from the second.
SIDEBAR: I would really like to sucker punch the level designers and give THEM a little bit of ‘Oh I bet you didn’t see THAT coming!’ surprise attack.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 5 / 5 ) |
Final Verdict