Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak review: A classic resurrected - romriellsignatich

At a Carom

Expert's Rating

Pros

• Maintains Homeworld's sense of scale and awe
• Art commission is superb, from the ships to the sand dunes

Cons

• 2D movement limits your options (at least when compared to predecessors)
• Tough to live up to twelve days of expectations

Our Verdict

While not perhaps a standard like its (ahead-of-their-time) predecessors, Homeworld: Comeuppance of Kharak manages to resurrect the serial publication with aplomb. Yes, evening though it's set on a planet.

Creating a followup to a legendary game like Homeworld is an unenviable task. Even more indeed when it comes Sir Thomas More than a decade after the fact, playacting pretender to a throne buried under the weight of collective nostalgia. Assume twelve years and you picture "Homeworld is a great real-time scheme serial" get "Homeworld is ace of the greatest." It's the uncomplete-memorized speech we give even as we strike out the serial to wherever games belong when we've decided they're past their prime, when we've entered their greatest feats into industry canon. We pass on. We block hoping for more.

The reaching of Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, the first wholly-revolutionary game in the series since 2003's Homeworld 2, is to a greater extent than surprising. To some, the faithful, Deserts of Kharak arrives like a Resurrection. To others, it's like a beloved museum display someone decided to tamper with.

The spice moldiness catamenia

What I'm expression is: Heavy hangs the summit of twelve years' dreams and expectations upon Homeworld: Comeuppance of Kharak's head word. And the question I've seen repeated most much is, "Can this really be a Homeworld game if it doesn't take place in quad?"

(Click to spread out)

Information technology's not just a issue of setting. Homeworld made its name, in part, off an innovative Z-axis movement system—meaning you moved not right in a two-dimensional plane, a la most RTS games, but all told six directions. (Think Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.) A Homeworld lame that takes place along the Earth's surface of a planet seems to cut exterior a full of life aspect of what makes the series unparalleled.

And yet. And yet.

I'm not going to say all fan will be satisfied with Deserts of Kharak, but I reckon most will. For a game that started life atomic number 3 a mere spectral successor (primitively titled Hardware: Shipbreakers), Deserts of Kharak does a remarkable Book of Job recapturing the nub of Homeworld.

It helps that Comeupance of Kharak deals in exodus. Right departed, you adjust heavenward an obvious parallel to the original series. In Homeworld, you rig off across the galaxy in look of a new home. Here, you lead your mass into the desert in search of an ancient keepsake, the Jaraci Object or Basal Anomaly.

The journeying is an magnitude smaller, but the event is the same: Unrelenting fleets. Part of Homeworld's appeal was that your units stayed with you throughout the game. Any survived a mission, that's how you'd start the next. A unequalled mechanic, yes, but it was also thematically appropriate. It preserved the estimate of a send off alone in space, no magical supply lines to fill again you after a Pyrrhic victory.

Deserts of Kharak retains this concept. Protect your units, because you'll start each mission with whatever survived. No help is on the way. Sure, you can jump back up to the principal menu and start any mission with the Default Fleet if you've dug yourself into a hole, just playing the "right way" means you're alone, a bastion of science and order crawling through canyons and peripheral sand dunes. Self-sufficient—barely. Making what you penury, when you need information technology—hopefully. Scavenging—when there's time.

Your efforts are hindered by the Gaalsien, a airstream of people who live call at the desert and are determined to protect the Primary Anomaly from tampering. They'ray install like raiders or outlaws, and yet their hovercraft technology surpasses your own. They're a formidable threat. And a mystery.

It's a decent albeit sure level, made even more so by the fact that this serves atomic number 3 a prequel to Homeworld. Any lore nut knows where Deserts of Kharak is headed, so there are few surprises on the way. Yet, the world of Kharak makes for a strong setting (at least by RTS standards).

As for the main interrogation, "Can you set a Homeworld courageous on the grade-constructed of a planet?" I think so.

Information technology's in the small touches: The way your petite dune buggies whirl or so enemy troops, a deadly cloud of interweaving ships looking for an angle. The web of honey oil and blood-red lines that stretch fort from your units after a move order. Or the untied scale of measurement of Kharak, your army rendered in minuscule amidst dunes that stretch to the horizon, broken only aside the small plumes of debris that kick upward from your wheels.

It moves like Homeworld, information technology sounds like Homeworld, and—even when you swap stars for grit—IT looks like Homeworld. The game feels like Homeworld. Which is no midget feat.

Deserts of Kharak even pays homage to six-direction trend, factoring terrain into combat. Winning the high base bolsters your sight lines and allows you to do more damage. It's not a ideal one-to-one substitution but does make for an interesting system, although I found it sometimes hard to position my military personnel where I wanted them—Homeworld's always been better at control on a macro level. Deserts of Kharak kept that "feature" too.

Bottom line of descent

I imagine the sidereal day Gearbox gave Blackbird Interactive permission to use the Homeworld name was triumphant, but also alarming. Triumphant because the project mired a distribute of the original team members and they got to resurrect their mothballed series. Terrifying because doing so meant making a successor to—gravely—one of the best strategy games ever made, and doing so afterward dozen long time of rose-colored eyeglasses.

Comeupance of Kharak ISN't a perfect version. Missions often rely on choke points, e.g.—a foreign concept for Homeworld, given that in 3D space choke points don't exist. And units don't seem very durable, and so the game feels on-the-wholly a bit faster/deadlier than the originals. Some people leave complain the story takes a escaped approach to bits of the preexisting lore. Diehards testament dissect the units in Deserts of Kharak and argue incessantly over the game's minutiae. I'm sure we'll see no end to balance tweaks for a while.

But as far as I'm attentive, Deserts of Kharak achieves its goal: Information technology's made me tentatively mad for a forthcoming Homeworld 3. Aside staying largely faithful to the aesthetic of the originals, by recreating the gritty lived-in realism of that universe and the do-or-die exodus and the vast shell of the classics, Comeuppance of Kharak manages to feel like a proper part of Homeworld canon—even though it's situated on the surface of a satellite.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/419231/homeworld-deserts-of-kharak-review-a-classic-resurrected.html

Posted by: romriellsignatich.blogspot.com

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