![]() You start each battle with your Mothership and some Resource Collectors. Simply put, the core idea is to construct an army and destroy your opponent. In practice it quickly becomes second nature, and units will automatically change height to match other ships or the enemy if you target them instead. ![]() Right clicking brings up a wheel showing the distance to where you want to go, whilst dragging with the left button changes the height. Ship control is easy, even though battles take place on a 3D plane. Both games use the Homeworld 2 engine, itself a slightly updated version of the original engine. Gearbox can be praised for the graphics, then, but the original Relic engine still holds up as well. It all combines to give a very defined sense of style. Draped over this is the audio: the frantic battle chatter of pilots struggling for their lives, the serene voice of your Mothership (re-recorded for the remaster) giving out orders, and the excellent score. Fighters bob and weave in formation, while larger ships glide sedately into position and fire at each other across the battlefield. The atmosphere this creates is incredible, too. Ships soon become pockmarked where they are stuck, leaving glowing craters in their sides and trailing smoke. Each leaves a fading wake trail, and coupled with the explosions and laserblasts of a battle, this means that each fight is a mass of glorious colour. Ships are crammed with detail, from blinking pilot lights, through to glittering window ports and little towers and crenulations. The effect is incredible, this is Homeworld as you’ll fondly remember it – although with the included classic editions of both games you can go back and see just how big an improvement has been made.Įvery texture looks stunning. The collection includes Homeworld 1 & 2, both of which have had their graphics upped with high definition textures and new particle effects, as well as the original, uncompressed audio files and remade cinematics. It gives me great pleasure then to answer yes on all accounts, albeit with a few caveats.Įarly on in the upgrading process, Gearbox changed the title from Homeworld HD to Homeworld Remastered, as they felt it didn’t convey the scope what they were doing to the games. ![]() Would the original engine still hold up sixteen years later? Would it be able to stand up against more recent RTS games? Most importantly, would it be as I remember? So when I spoke to Gearbox’s Brian Martel and Chris Faylor about the Homeworld Remastered Collection, I had a mixture of relief and dread when they admitted that they had tinkered a little bit beyond overhauling the graphics and sound of the legendary space RTS – but not much. ![]() On the one hand they could fix the original’s flaws, but on the other, they do want to stick true to what it was. It’s a tight-line to tow for developers remastering games, especially those that are over a decade old. Sometimes they are – Theme Hospital is just as enjoyable as it was in 1997 – but mostly they leave you wondering how you ever enjoyed them in the first place. Nostalgia has that really inconvenient habit of making you think that old games will still match up to a modern standard. ![]()
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