By ALEXANDER PECHA
Arts Editor
In Games for the Weak, we continue to take a glimpse at various games that can be played on your average college-level personal computer.
“Homeworld Remastered Collection” is actually a collection of about four and a half games. The bundle includes the original, unedited “Homeworld” and “Homeworld 2,” as well as the remastered versions of both of those games and to top it off it comes with a rebuilt multiplayer system that’s still technically in beta. You get a lot of bang for your buck, here, is what I’m saying.
But what exactly is “Homeworld?” Well, “Homeworld” is a space-based Real Time Strategy game where you take command of a mothership as well as the fleet attached to it and try to survive in a story oddly reminiscent of “Battlestar Galactica.” The story follows the test-flight of a huge mothership which was built by a race trying to reach the stars.
However, it goes terribly wrong when their planet is destroyed and they are forced to flee from an unknown attacker. Again, very “Battlestar Galactica.” The story is actually very good for a Real Time Strategy game, and it’s one of the few times I can honestly say that the main story outstrips the multiplayer and skirmish modes of the game, a rare feat for the genre.
That’s not to say the multiplayer and skirmish modes are bad. In skirmish, you get to choose any one of the races from either of the “Homeworld” games and go head-to-head on a single map with the goal of destroying the other player’s ships. It’s all good fun, compounded with the unique way “Homeworld” handles space combat.
Unlike normal Real Time Strategy games, which take place on an effectively 2D plane, “Homeworld” takes place on a 3D plane, allowing ships to go in any direction- up, down, sideways, diagonal, and so on. This leads to unique strategies, such as placing your ships above enemy ships to avoid a particular ship’s powerful forward-facing cannons, or attacking from three directions at once, including front, above, and below.
It’s a ton of fun to think in three dimensions and outwit your opponent, not because you collected the most resources fastest, but because you figured out that you could avoid their sensors if you went to the very top of the map and got behind them, using a pincer attack.
You’ll be witnessing your glorious strategies take place in a surprisingly beautiful game. Using the lowest settings, the game still looked gorgeous. If you can boost the performance up even higher it looks truly spectacular, but for those of us with toasters with a screen attached the game still manages to look great. A lot of this comes from it being a sixteen year old game that’s been remastered, but it’s still nice to look at.
And if for some reason your computer can’t even handle the lowest settings of the remastered version, you can always boot up the original “Homeworld” and “Homeworld 2” which were designed to run on computers from 1999, which you should easily be able to compete with from a hardware perspective.
Overall, “Homeworld” is a fantastic Real Time Strategy game with a unique take on space combat as well as a surprisingly hard-hitting story that I suggest anyone who likes Real Time Strategy games or even just space games check out. You can do a lot worse than “Homeworld,” and it’s pretty hard to do much better.
You can nab “Homeworld Remastered Collection” on Steam for $35, a somewhat steep price, but if you think about exactly how much game you’re getting for that money it’s more than fair.
