October 11, 1999 Web posted at: 4:24 p.m. EDT (2024 GMT) by Jason Samuel

From...

(IDG) -- With Homeworld, Relic Entertainment has hit a big fat homerun in its first time at bat. Excellent graphics, superb story, addictive gameplay, and a simple interface combine to blast 3D real-time strategy into the vastness of space.

The people of Kharak have lived on that desert planet from their earliest memories, but, as their technology develops, they start to question whether their species is indigenous to the planet. The debate could have continued forever but for the discovery of a giant spaceship in the great desert. And, within that ship, a galactic map engraved in stone, bearing a single word common to all the clans of Kharak: "Hiigara," or home.

The clans unite to create a ship big enough to carry part of their population to Hiigara. You'll control that mothership and the other craft you'll research, build and capture along the way.

And what a journey you are in for.

The single-player will take your people across a galaxy rife with aliens, some hostile, others misguided, a few even friendly. Sixteen missions make up the single-player game and range from all-out warfare to investigating anomalous situations and helping out rebels.

With a story this good you are sucked right into the gameplay, and since your fleet carries over into each successful mission, when a ship dies you really feel it.

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The graphics and sound in Homeworld are so good Relic repeatedly uses the in-game engine to create their cinematics. There are also hand-drawn animation sequences in-between levels, which are impressive, but during a level the only difference between playing the game and a cutscene is your lack of control over the camera and the letterbox format.

The sharp look of the units, the differences in their size (from fighters to giant spacecraft carriers) and the sheer vastness of space give an awe inspiriting sensation that Homeworld actually takes place in space. (The soundtrack only adds to this feeling with dreamy new-age space themes that never seem to repeat.)

Controlling units in the vastness of space must have been a challenge for Relic -- there's no surface for your units to bounce along -- but Relic was up to that challenge. Not only are the 3D controls intuitive, but the developer didn't tamper with the normal ones you expect in a ground-based real-time strategy game.

The only problem with the interface is that it offers only 10 hotkeys to bind groups of units. Controlling specific groups of units is important from a strategic perspective and I found myself juggling ships in and out of groups too often.

In the single-player, which allows you to pause at any time, this limitation was merely an annoyance. But in the no-pause realm of multiplayer, it can make the game more sloppy strategically than I prefer.

I'd also have really liked a way to select all of a specific type of enemy units during multiplayer. As it is, if I want my scouts to attack only Ion Frigates, I might have to select a very large group of mixed enemies or attack one frigate at a time.

Don't get me wrong. Multiplayer is fun. Unlike the single-player game, a mobile mothership, variations in maps, game types, starting forces and rules only make the game more intense. Already players are developing skills tailored to the aggressive, fast-paced multiplayer environment.

In the end, Relic has produced not only a very solid real time strategy game but brought the genre into space successfully. No longer can I look at ground-based 3D RTSes the same way. They just seem so...flat. Homeworld is an epic -- epic in its story, graphics and presentation. This homerun ball has yet to land.

Expect more from Relic; I certainly am.