The prospect of a game, fully exploiting all six axes of direction where "up" or "down" has next to no meaning, has always been a great pull for this reviewer. In other words, this reviewer is plenty attracted to space-bound games. Homeworld: Cataclysm instantly caught this reviewer's attention after having read its teaser passage (and review).
Without the shackles of gravity and other concerns like pollution of atmospheres, space-borne vessels can be built to be very huge. This game certainly does not disappoint when portraying this theme, for the massive vessel that would be the mobile headquarters of the player's armada is one of the first things that the player would see after having started the game. In fact, such noble vessels play a big role (pun not intended) in the plot of the game.
Developed by Barking Dog, Homeworld: Cataclysm has a story that continues from the original Homeworld (though the former's story was later implied to be somewhat disowned as non-canonical by the developers of the original, Relic Entertainment). A people (canonically considered the Kushan from the first game) that had recently regained a home planet from which they had once been purged from are now rebuilding their civilization. With little threat from their broken erstwhile oppressors, the Imperialist Taiidan, the Kushan are able to do so in relative, perhaps complacent peace.
The Kushan has long been divided into clans, called Kiiths in their tongue, and Barking Dog decided to focus on the labourer caste that is Kiith Somtaaw. This choice is certainly not as fabulous as the warrior clans, but it does allow for an inspiring character development as the story progresses. During one of their mining runs, they came across an alien device that they should have left alone, but did not.
As typically expected of suspicious alien devices and their unwitting discoverers, a great menace ended up being released from said device, developing into a dangerous threat that verbally promises a messy and ugly doom to the ones who freed them. In swearing to combat this terrifyingly hideous menace, Kiith Somtaaw awakened its tremendous latent talents in engineering, building all sorts of ships and weapons that would be critical in the battles to come.
The gameplay is similar to the original: the player is required to collect resources (of which there is only one type, simply called Resources) from asteroids, space dust and even nebulae (among other sources). With this, the player can manufacture more ships from the Mothership and purchase upgrades and research options for just about every sort of vessel, eventually building a fleet that could complete the objectives at hand (which also involve the typical annihilation of opposing forces).
There is no static base to worry about, as every facility needed to support and develop the fleet is practically packed into the Mothership and its auxiliaries, the Carriers. This is a trademark of the Homeworld series, and this game design has been utilized or otherwise exploited by veterans of the IP in many stratagems that could not otherwise be performed using static bases.
Another trademark of the game and the Homeworld IP in general is its complete freedom of movement. While there is a default orientation of sorts, all vessels, from the nimblest of strike-craft to the ungainly Mothership, can twist, turn and revolve about any axis as they like and move in just about any direction, even upside-down relative to whatever ship that they need to approach. This gives the freedom for players used to the six-axes of movement to pull off elaborate flanking maneuvers, striking deep into enemy territory and slipping past a scout to spy on opponents, among many other tactics made possible by this navigational freedom.
(On the other hand, this very same freedom of movement was also a turn-off for some players, who are just not able to handle the nausea induced from having to worry about so many axes of direction at once.)
In the case of Homeworld: Cataclysm, this freedom of movement can be further exploited by some units with interesting designs, such the Somtaaw's Composite Vehicles, which can be immediately broken off mid-flight to dodge incoming fire, and the nimble and deadly Cruise Missile of the Beast (the antagonist faction in the campaign).
Furthermore, most capital ships (especially the Somtaaw's, which are very different from those in the first game) have weapons mounted in a circulatory fashion from their bow to aft, such that they are able to engage targets in any direction relative to their position.
Otherwise, most ships are actually extensions of the ones in the first Homeworld, pretty much serving the same function. However, unlike the first game, there aren't any limit on each of the category of vessels that the player can build. Thus, the player can have a fleet completely composed of capital ships or fast swarms of strike-craft. It's a clear (and some would say disrespectful) deviation from the formula in the original Homeworld, but it does make for more diverse strategic decisions.
To spice up gameplay, certain irregular objects or events also appear in secluded places around the map. Extra resources could be injected into the map to ensure players do not run dry on supplies, but these occur in the form of very dangerous asteroid storms that could bludgeon ships silly. In addition, strange pink crystals occasionally pop up (often far away from any player), which when harvested, yields substantially more resources in the same amount of time than other sources of material can. The same crystals can also be deliberately shot at to detonate them, causing huge explosions that can obliterate even capital ships. These features serve to reward players who explore the map, as well as shake up matches a bit.
Much of the missions in the campaign are tied into the story. There are exciting missions that range from preventing the overrunning of a convoy (which can end up becoming sources of danger themselves) to stalking a prominent Beast vessel. This reviewer would describe more, but any further mention would constitute as spoilers. Suffice to say, the campaign is full of intrigue and acts of valor performed in desperation, and is well worth experiencing.
The graphics of the game does not appear to have developed beyond that in Homeworld. However, the developers make up for this by having ship models that are very different from those in the original game. The Beast vessels are very much the same ones from the first game, but with satisfactorily disgusting-looking textures covering them to remind players that they are definitely not the same ships that they once were.
The game's audio design is appropriate to its theme. Zooming in on ships lets the player hear the noises emitting from their thrusters (ships of different categories have different sounding exhaust too), every type of weapon fire has its distinct sound effect (the whine and sizzle of Ion Cannons are especially great to listen to) and the demise of ships is as loudly spectacular as they look, among many other aural highlights.
The voice-over is great, especially those of the main characters, the commanding officers of the Somtaaw. One who has played the original game can argue that the voice-over in Cataclysm sounds drastically more melodramatic, but then, the protagonists (and others) were facing not the mortal enemies that were the brutal antagonists of the first game, but an insidious hive-minded being that melds the crew of a subverted ship to its hull. That said, the voice-overs for the Beast can be off-putting, but they are very much in line with this faction's warped nature.
Multiplayer is a somewhat skewed affair. The Beast faction clearly has very little research and upgrade choices, making any sessions played using them a battle against time; the Beast player needs to stop any Somtaaw players from accessing their higher tiers of technology, which often spell doom for the Beast player. On the other hand, the Beast player starts with a Mothership already armed with a dangerous and powerful beam attack that can subvert control of multitudes of small vessels in its vicinity, thus making the Beast player terribly effective at early raids. Such differences do keep players on their toes, but it does seem that time is every player's greatest enemy and/or ally, not other players.
In conclusion, while Homeworld: Cataclysm may not carry the same feel as its predecessor, it is still a great game that contributes to the space strategy genre.