Homeworld 2 Preview
We take a hands-on look at Relic's sequel to Homeworld, which puts you in command of bigger space fleets than ever.
No game has re-created battles between fleets of spaceships like Homeworld. Relic's 1999 debut game was the first 3D real-time strategy game that let you move the camera and ships in any dimension, not limiting the action to a 2D plane. When this was combined with dramatic visuals that put tiny fighters next to massive capital ships in combat, the result was a unique experience that represented epic space battles in a way previously only found in sci-fi books and movies. A full sequel to Homeworld is now just months away from release, and it's designed to be faithful to the original while evolving the game mechanics, extending the original game's satisfying story, and bumping up the level of visual detail. We recently had the opportunity to play through an early version of the game that gave us a peek at the single-player story and the multiplayer battles.
The original game told the story of the hiigarans' return to their homeworld, a return that involved building a huge mothership capable of traveling to hyperspace and defeating the taiidan. As it turns out, the hiigarans are one of the few galactic civilizations with hyperspace technology, and this let them become a dominant force following the fall of the taiidan. But now, of course, there's a new threat: the vaygr. The introductory sequence hints that prophesied events are at hand, but what you really need to know is that the vaygr are dangerous, and what's more, they have hyperspace technology. As Homeworld 2 begins, the vaygr launch a major attack on the hiigaran homeworld, but not before a new mothership can be completed.
The preview version let us take a look at the first two of the 15 levels to be featured in the final game, which producer Dan Irish said will offer about 40 hours of single-player gameplay. As you might expect, the first level starts out slowly, and it gives you a short series of simple resource harvesting and attack objectives to figure out the basic game mechanics. At the very beginning of the game, you'll see the hyperspace core being inserted into the mothership; a series of tests has been planned before the enormous vessel will launch from the secret base where it was built. But after only a few minutes of basic tasks, an outlying ship detects something that will cut the tests short: the first wave of a vaygr bomber attack.
For simplicity's sake, the new game organizes the smaller ships into squadrons, and you'll quickly have to build more than the one group of five interceptor fighters you have on hand at the start of the attack. Once you've constructed a few more, you'll be able to quickly get them all in a control group and group-select the enemy to dispatch them. But soon, three of the vaygr's special hyperspace gateway units cruise into view, threatening to bring in enemy reinforcements waiting some distance away if these gateway units are allowed to make the arrangements. However, by this time, you'll have a few bomber squadrons of your own, so you'll be able to take down the enemy reinforcements and let the mothership escape into hyperspace.
Another cinematic--animated in the same simple black-and-while style as in the original game--then appears to inform you of the vaygr's attack on the homeworld and their apparent pursuit of the mothership. But the mothership isn't quite ready yet: A ship as large as this requires a crew the size of a city, and the bare-bones crew that has been testing the ship needs to meet up with transports carrying the full complement. At the rally point, you'll encounter a wider range of enemy ships. To defeat the carrier and missile corvettes that attack the transports, you'll need to respond with corvettes of your own, though some friendly frigates arrive later to mop things up. While those familiar with Homeworld will have a good understanding of how the game's units are balanced, this early fight is a good introduction to how the four major ship classes--fighters, corvettes, frigates, and capital ships--can work together to counter different threats.
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- Sierra Entertainment
- Relic
- Sci-Fi Real-Time Strategy
- Release: Sep 16, 2003 »
- ESRB: Teen
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