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A Great Return to the Homeworld Universe

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 29 / 31
Date: September 11, 2000
Author: Amazon User

If you enjoyed Homeworld this sequel is an absolute must! If you haven't played Homeworld and enjoy real-time 3D strategy games you might want to check it out.

I've been playing games for a long time and have become somewhat jaded and difficult to impress. However the original Homeworld just blew me way! Stellar graphics, an immersive story, great music and a dream of an interface that smoothly integrated tactical and strategic control.

Homeworld Cataclysm builds upon this base very well. Rather than just reusing the original "Mothership" and it's fleet of craft, the developers have created an entirely new fleet and set of technologies for you to explore. Years have passed in the Homeworld Universe and many new technologies have been acquired beyond the original cloaking and gravity well generators. EMP vessels, holographic projections, covert drones and much more add an even greater level of sophistication to the gameplay.

Of course the 3D battles are staggering. Full visual effects, coordinated sound and a high frame rate brings space battles, I imagined as a kid, to life. It makes me wish I had a Video Out on my graphic card to tape to share the visuals.

The user interface has been polished to near perfection. The control of a large and complex fleet is a pleasure, as opposed to the pain, compared to many simulation games. The few areas of the original Homeworld interface that were weak, such as selecting a distant location in three dimensions, have been greatly improved.

The sound is still "realistic" and informative. The music is only "good" this time around. The haunting and highly emotive music of the original is missing.

This game is far less buggy than most simulations I've played. But I did come across a small number that didn't crash the game, but an end of mission condition wasn't recognized. This can be solved by a game restart an then reloading your last saved game of restarting the particular mission.

I've completed the single player game and am taking a brief break before I go on-line and play multiuser. With the game's new fleet technologies, great visuals and smooth interface I'll actually enjoy experiencing the new ways I'll get my butt kicked by kids half my age.

Mother of God

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 22 / 23
Date: September 10, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Okay, I've already written a review of Homeworld, which any of you considering playing this game should look at first. First off, Homeworld gives the background of this story, and allows you to get familiar with gameplay, which some people may find difficult if they try to hop right into this game. This game starts with you as Kiith Somtaaw, a relatively minor kiith (sort of like a clan) after your people made landfall. Without a large power base on your new home, your people return to the stars to make their living, and where you eventually encounter a new menace that threatens the world you fought so hard to gain. For me, hopping into the story midway is a little unfair. I think you should struggle a bit through Homeworld, both so you get used to the game, and so you feel some kinship with the people your kiith is now called upon to defend.

Having said that, and having spent the last couple days playing Cataclysm (i pre-ordered it back in May) I have to say that the leap forward from Homeworld to Cataclysm is about the same sort of leap as from WarCraft to Homeworld (that is to say, an enormous leap forward). Dear Lord! The gameplay is still just as good as the original, but commands have been clarified, and the interface has been enhanced. You can now issue commands from the Sensors Manager, allowing you to make move-and-attack decisions while viewing the entire playing sphere. The graphics are MUCH better, if that's possible, with gas clouds now flashing with lightning, and distant thunder rumbling through the nebulae. There are meteor storms through certain regions, maging the map of 3D space have a topography all of its own.

Another improvement is the added element of The Beast. In the original, the two races you could choose had a difference of exactly 2 ships; all others were more or less equivalent for each race. Now, Beast ships are radically different, and will require learning distinctly from the Hiigaran ships. There are new weapons to learn, and new strategies that must be employed. With cloaking abilities, and ramming frigates, and the fact that EVERY Hiigaran ship now has a special ability of some kind, the strategies required to REALLY play just became more complex.

To top it all off, you now have a limit on the size of your fleet. Each mothership can now only support a certain number of ships. If you built swarms of strike craft, you're going to have to retire them if you want to bring in the big guns. This also will add to the amount of actual THINKING required to play. The winner will now no longer be the one who builds the biggest fleet of Ion Beam Frigates.

So. Play Homeworld; it's a great game that should have gotten much more sales than it did. Play Cataclysm, because it's such an innovative game, and SO much better than anything else out there. Sure, StarCraft is good, but it's nothing compared to Homeworld. Much less compared to Cataclysm.

One final note: Cataclysm does not require Homeworld to play; it's a stand-alone sequel.

Takes an original concept to new heights.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 26 / 36
Date: June 15, 2000
Author: Amazon User

The original Homeworld game was a masterpiece that refined the idea of the strategy game, bringing it into the 3D realm. As good as it is, Cataclysm is completely changing things around -- there's no single Mothership, and the game will have an entirely different feel; however an entirely different feel is exactly what this game needs so that it doesn't become stale.

This game will be quite excellect, and I'm glad they didn't just tack some missions onto Homeworld, but instead brought it into a new direction. I commend them for not just pumping out another sequel; we see enough of that these days.

A sequel that actually is better than the original

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: October 27, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Since Homeworld is already one of the best (if not the best) real-time strategy games out there, it would have been easy to just cash-in on the success.

Lucky for us, Homeworld did not fall in that category. While the original Homeworld gave out a feel of an epic battle between legendary enemies and the survival of a world, Cataclysm gives a more "personal" approach.

Where Fleet Command in Homeworld was a woman lacking any form of emotion when she speaks (hooking yourself to a super-computer might just do that), the voice of command in this game actually has personality. He sometimes anger, sometimes panic, and sometimes is at awe at what is happening around his ship. You really feel closer to your troops. Also, most ship/fighter also comes with their own voices and expression (a worker ordered to harvest REALLY didn't sound very... motivated). You actually feel for them!

What also helps is an equally engaging story. Although very standard in the Science-Fiction genre content-wise, it is very well delivered. As Hitchcock once said: "It is not the cake that is important, but how it is delivered". And although player already knows the story just by scanning the cover box, that third mission really delivered the chills! I really wish game developers put as much effort in establishing a good story...

I must also point out the VERY improved interface. Where Homeworld stumbled with a lack of waypoints and user-unfriendly order issuing scheme (especially from the Sensor Manager), Cataclysm refined the game to near perfection.

Unit wise, we get a more dynamic fleet. Where in the original game, only research vessels could link together to form... a bigger research vessel, in Cataclysm, linking up two Acolytes (heavy-fighters) creates a slower, more powerful corvette. One can acknowledge the tactical advantage of this (speed toward the enemy, linking-up, pummel the enemy, unlink...). Also, the Command Ship actually "evolves" when you gradually turn it from a mining ship into a battleship through the missions.

There is also a ranking system (i.e. ships get better with experience), so there is (supposedly) less incentive of engaging in suicide missions. Personnally, I failed to noticed any difference in performance between a rookie and a wing leader.

A superb effort from the Barking Dog Studios for bringing to the Homeworld universe a worthy sequel!

Excellent Upgrade to Game of the Year

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: September 06, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Excellent enhancements have been added since the original Homeworld. The soundtrack has much more life to it this time around, not to put down the old score at all. Time compression has been added to speed up final resource gathering at the end of single player missions, or to shorten journeys across the map. There's a slew of new craft and new weapons, and control has improved drastically. Notible enhancements include waypoints, the ability to select a group from within a group list, naturally occuring slipgates which produce a beautiful effect on the screen, armor and sensor enhancements, mothership upgrades, and plenty more. The game feels the same, with the same sensor map and the same controls with some minor changes, like now you can dock your craft to your carrier or mothership with a right-click rather than a double-left-click which had a hard time registering due to latency in a heated battle. It's still a system hog with cranked detail, but I found just lowering the texture detail gave you decent frame rates and allowed you to view all of the nice effects like weapon glow and explosions, even with multiple players on a LAN. You can get better frame rates and more detail in a single player game of course. If you liked Homeworld, you'll appreciate the enhancements because it makes the game interesting again, as well as easier to to what you want to do without being restricted by the interface. I seriously can't find anything wrong and I'm not held back one bit. I was under the impression, however, that the multiplayer section of the old game was going to be included for free which would have been great since I damaged my original CD and will no longer install. That's ok though, because you won't even want to go back to the original game after taking advantage of the new features. The internet support has had some minor crashes but I have been able to get through a whole game. It seems it'll only crash within the first minute or not at all which could suggest a variable of the host's machine. Upgrading to cable or DSL will fix this of course and latency is hardly an issue. I'm sure a patch will follow soon, however the single player campaign is flawless under Direct3D with NVidia drivers, however OpenGL crashes. During the brief moment OpenGL worked, I saw no difference compared to Direct3D. Finally, something worth spending the hard earned bucks on.

Better than to original and highly addictive

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: October 29, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I don't understand the complaints about this game. I played it first, before Homeworld and went back to play Homeworld later. Maybe it's the order in which I played the two games, but I found that the interface alone was enough to convince me that this game is better than the original.

The interface is more evolved as I would expect and a lot of the little annoying bits to Homeworld's interface are gone in this game. You can set waypoints as one of the other reviewers stated, but on top of that, you can do everything from the sensor manager that you could from the regular mode in Homeworld. Also, when in sensor mode, selecting ships doesn't automatically zoom in the way Homeworld did. You can also select a group of ships and attack a group of enemies all from the sensor manager - this is highly desireable, since you don't have to zoom in and lose track of ships in another part of space. I would say that the Homeworld interface is 4 star and this interface is 5 star, far superior.

Someone also mentioned that the graphics weren't as good as Homeworld. I find this unusual, since they use the same gaming engine and they look pretty much identical to me, and I've played them almost side by side and both are installed on my computer.

Also, I find the story line excellent, it might not be the Battlestar Galactica story of homeworld, but it is just as engrossing with the release of "The Beast", a bio organism that is intelligent and that threatens to take over the universe. It's your job to escape and try to destroy the beast. It's very cool.

What I love about both of these games is how most of the action is at the macro level, controlling fleets of ships and squadrons of fighters, but at any point, you can zoom in and watch the action in an "over the shoulder" view from any ship and see an individual fighter engage against a squadron of other fighters or even a large capital ship. I love watching destroyers firing their ion beams... it's so movie like that I feel like bringing the popcorn. Other feel that same and I can sometimes have an audience of 2 or 3 people over my shoulder sometimes.

In fact, the overall movie like quality is what made the game great for me. The way that you can direct the camera while letting everything proceed automatically (these 30 ships attack those 22 ships and let them go) is immersive. It really has a Star Wars feel when you see a space battle. This is especially fun when you have large numbers of capital ships on both sides with multiple fighter squadrons. In a situation that large though, you almost always have to direct some of the action, since some small battles finish and you have to re-deploy to other parts of the battle.

The challenge is in finding the balance of which ships to use against which enemies, as fighters are fast and hard to hit, but do less damage, whereas the larger frigates and super-capital ships do tons of damage but are vunerable to large groups of fighters.

All in all a completely superb game. It is 100% of what I wanted in a computer game and have never found elswhere, although there were a lot of these features in games like "Master of Orion", but that was really more concerned with administration aspects of running multiple colonies and space battles were 2D and cartoony. A great game, but not as neat as this.

Addictive!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 12
Date: January 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is an absolutely amazing game. I've lost jobs because I couldn't go to sleep until I beat a level. I'm an old guy, I'm supposed to be responsible. I first found Homeworld, the predecessor to Cataclysm, in the $10.00 bin. It said "Game of the Year" on the box, so I decided to buy it.

Like its predecessor, Cataclysm is a 3 dimensional real time space stragegy game. However, it is not of the Descent or Tie Fighter genre, where the question is how fast you can shoot. The thing that make it so addictive is that it also includes elements of a simulation (such as sim city) and the battles involve stragety rather than how fast you can point and shoot.

The basic story is that 15 years after returning to their homeworld in the epic game Homeworld, a Hiigaran mining space vessel, the Kuun-Lan, inadvertently releases an intelligent interstellar virus of sorts which can subvert living and inorganic matter, almost instantly turning your own ships against you. Eventually, it allies with your enemies, the remnants of the old Taidan Empire, which you (hopefully) wiped out in the first game. You have to conduct scientific/engineering research, build ships, mine resources, and upgrade the mining vessel until you become one of the most powerful armadas around. You get to be the General, rather than the pilot!

Gameplay is similar to Homeworld, but you have the ability to "speed up" the game play to 8X "reality." This is particularly nice at the end of a game level where you want to "harverst" all of the resources so you will be able to build more ships. With one level on homeworld, harvesting all the remaining resources could take over an hour.

The game graphics were excellent for their time, and are very detailed. In fact, they are so good that the scenes between missions use the game's graphics rather than specially done animation. In fact, on the DVD "Yes -- live at the House of Blues," there is a music video of the Yes song "Homeworld" which uses only video from the first Homeworld game.

Fails to carry on the Legacy

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 14 / 26
Date: November 19, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Cataclysm is simply not the mind-blowing experience that Homeworld was a year ago (or even today :). The core gameplay has been tampered with too much. Granted, Cataclysm manages to improve many aspects of the first game, but the sum of the parts do not add up to a complete whole.

Changes are made to the very basic way you can play the game, and at first they seem exciting, but after a few battles they quickly become tedious. For example, the technology tree now adds "upgrades", which means you must take time out of the fight to search the map for outdated ships and stop what they are doing to upgrade (downright annoying). Also, there are many new technologies which must be micro-managed for them to work, such unlink ships to fire missles, then linking them again to attack once the missles run out. Overall, all this forces you to micro-manage every battle you have, instead of concentrating on the big picture. A fight in two seperate places usually means that you'll lose in the place you can't watch over.

The graphics engine has been improved for the better. The game can now handle more ships on-screen at the same time before slowing to a crawl. Progress bars tell you the status of research or building without having to go into those respective screens. The almost useless "fog of war" has a single redeeming factor - it adds a sense of depth the sensors screen, and you can more easily tell the relationship of different positions in 3 dimensions. Too bad you can't use the old ships in Homeworld with the Cataclysm engine.

Finally, the worst offense - the story in Cataclysm is nowhere near as good as Homeworld. The feeling of mystery and strangeness present in the first game is just not there in the second. The voice work is over-acted, and even the music is a step down. Given that the single-player campaign was much harder and more frustrating, the story barely motivated me to finish it.

If you loved Homeworld and want some change to a comfortable game, give Cataclysm a try. Just don't except lightning to strike a second time.

Cataclysm--better than the original

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: October 11, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Forget Starcraft, Warcraft, Ground Control, Tiberian Sun, what have you. Once you play Homeworld, I assure you that you will never, EVER want to play those games. The reason is simple: after homeworld's immersiveness, flexibility, and strategy, everything else is too simple, too boring, just not fun. The 17 missions isn't a drawback, each will take you around an hour to beat. When you've beaten the game, play the multiplayer against the computer or fellow humans for much more excitement. The two playable races, Somtaaw and Beast, are opposites in playing style, so once you've mastered one, the other presents a challenge. The 3D enviroment lends a new breed of strategy, much more complex then other RTS's "Build a million units and do an all-out strike". In homeworld, a handful of properly used units can defeat a bluntly controlled deathfleet. Stop reading reviews and BUY THIS GAME!!!

The Experience Equals its Great Predecessor: Homeworld

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: June 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

The game starts 15 years after the original Homeworld war: the remnants of the Higaraans are divided into two kind of Kiiths(clans?), the ones that was not hybernated and so had to fight their way and later became the inner circles of power in the new homeworld, and the ones that was hybernated and missed the whole, bloody journey and woke up to find their original clan back home destroyed and end up as a less powerful clan. You get to play one of the latter clans called Kiith Somtaw, who mine minerals from asteroids in the near galaxy.

The game opens with the two major powers vying for the Higara: The good side: the Higaarans(your people), the new, democratic Taiidan Republic that is on good terms with Higaarans, the neutral Bentusis, and the bad: the remaining Taidanni imperialists and their pals, the Turanic raiders. The balance of power between these two are broken when the Somtaaw fleet finds an ancient emergency beacon that contains a powerful virus capable of eating up organic and inorganic matters. The virus soon turns out to have intelligence and devours anything and everything that comes in its way that includes the initial victim, the research deck of the Somtaaw's mothership that had to be discarded and latter becomes the Beast mothership, and the revengeful Taidanni imperialists literally signs a contract with the devil by joining forces with the creature now known as the Beast in hopes of overthrowing their long time foes...

As can be seen, the story is still intriguing, the graphics still superb, 3D functions are still awesome. Nevertheless, some of few downfalls are the lack of new 'enemy' fleet and (still) confusing manuals. Notice only the enemies, whereas the Sometaaw has their own new arsenal. In addition, the part of the manual that explains the past history was still vague(like the original), and that is the reason I wrote the above story line.

Overall, having believed what some people criticized 'Cataclysm' as un-original than the 'Homeworld' for a long time and not playing it, I regret that now: this is certainly an improved Homeworld or Homeworld version 1.5. Anyhow, this game is more than good: it is one of the best titles out there for the money right now, and because of this game, I really look forward to Homeworld 2. Grab this title before it becomes a jewel version with no manuals to help you at all. It was a joy to play this game, I applaud the Barking Dogs Studio for their great work, and I definetely give it an A+.

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