Homeworld Remastered Collection
Developer: Gearbox Software
Price: $35
Platform: PC
MonsterVine was supplied with a Steam code for review
Homeworld is a timeless classic that was easily ahead of its time in terms of storytelling and gameplay mechanics but it’s a game that, for some reason so few seem to have played. With this remastered collection Gearbox is not only allowing fans of the series a way to properly own the games again but also introduce it to an audience that never got to experience these two phenomenal games.
Now you know I’ve got to start things off by talking about how gorgeous this game is. Every square inch of these two games has been redone and as you can see from the screenshots these are two very pretty games. Zooming in on your ships to see the amount of detail put into them or staring off into the void of space is just visual feast. It’s kind of crazy starting up the classic games to compare and seeing how huge of a difference there is. Everything has been touched up and improved in some way, but I especially love the redesigned UI. Both Homeworld games now share the same UI and they did a great job streamlining the interface into something sleek and minimal.
Besides some spruced up graphics, the collection also includes the two original games in all their glory and the multiplayer mode which is currently in beta. A quick note about the multiplayer is that it allows you to play as all four factions from both Homeworld games which makes Kushan vs Hiigaran matches slightly humorous. I’m a bit conflicted with the two classic games because on one hand Gearbox got them to work on modern machines, but on the other hand they didn’t add support for 16:9 resolutions which seems kind of silly. I understand I can easily just fix this myself but if you’re going to go to the effort to optimize a game to run on newer machines why not add in some resolution support as well? Nonetheless, it’s just a super minor tick sized gripe in what’s an incredibly impressive collection.
If you’ve never played Homeworld you’re in for a treat because there hasn’t been a strategy game out there that’s been able to capture the uniqueness of this series. Unlike most strategy games Homeworld plays in a 3D space environment which means your enemy can attack you from practically any direction they wanted to. Wrapping your head around this system does take some time but once you get the hang of it you’re going to wonder why nobody has bothered to replicate the Homeworld formula. Another interesting mechanic in the series is the persistence of your army throughout the campaign. Instead of having to restart everything in the next mission whatever you beat the previous mission with is what you’ll bring to the next. This puts you in a spot where at the end of a mission you have to decide whether to use your remaining resources to build units or save them for the next mission. There are also some little improvements to the games like automatically collecting all resources at the end of a mission in the first game.
There really isn’t anything quite like seeing dozens of your ships duking it out with the enemy and zooming in on the action. Every fight in this game is a spectacle and I had forgotten how amazing it is. The best part is that despite its depth, the series is actually quite simple to get into due to its rock, paper, scissors style combat. The game will tell you which ships do well or badly against which and it’s up to you to smartly assemble your fleet so that you can make it to the next mission. If you’ve ever wanted a game that gave you the same spectacular feeling you get when you see space battles sci-fi films this is the game to deliver.
Now my main, and only concern with this remaster is what Gearbox did with Homeworld 1 and you’re either not going to mind or hate it: Tactics have been completely removed and formations have been basically useless. Originally you had three tactics (aggressive, evasive, and neutral) which would determine the behavior of your ships. Setting ships on an aggressive setting would make them focus on scoring more hits on enemy ships while an evasive setting made them more defensive by focusing on dodging enemy fire; neutral of course is a mix of the two. Now there’s only aggressive, guarded, and passive which make your ships behave in totally different ways. Aggressive turns your ships into bloodthirsty savages who will endlessly chase enemies, guarded will put your ships into a passive state until an enemy attacks them, and passive has them sitting around doing nothing. There’s absolutely no reason to ever have your ships in anything other than guarded which makes the other two settings pointless. The weirdest part of this change how the tutorial even asks you to set your fighters on aggressive/evasive when they’re not only named differently, but don’t behave how the tutorial implies they do.
Formations have also gotten a change in that they do jack shit. Setting your fighters in a certain formation works fine until they engage the enemy which is when they’re split apart and do their own thing regardless of the formation command. They’ll still sort of awkwardly try to cluster together no matter what type of formation you’ve selected but they more or less behave as if they had no formation command. Other minor changes include the removal of the fuel system and the original physics based projectiles replaced with Homeworld 2’s RNG based shooting. These changes are likely due to the fact that Homeworld 1 is running off of a modified Homeworld 2 engine but that doesn’t really excuse certain things. Like I said though, your opinion of these changes relies heavily on whether or not you played Homeworld 1 and if you care enough about the changes.
Another, although slight, annoyance is the lack of menu options to switch games. If you’re playing Homeworld and decide you want to switch over to Homeworld 2 or one of the classic versions then you have to quit the game, relaunch it, and then select the version of Homeworld you want to play. Like I said, it’s a minor issue but in this era of remastered collections I’m shocked at how many games still require you to quit them to switch games.
The Final Word
Despite some needless changes to Homeworld 1’s mechanics, this is still a fantastic remastered collection by Gearbox that shouldn’t be missed by newcomers to the series or fans who have been itching to replay the series.
– MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
