The games remain unparalleled after ten years

Feb 27, 2015 00:06 GMT  ·  By

I need less than five minutes of exposure to the Homeworld Remastered Collection to jump back in time to my second (or maybe third) attempt to complete the three games in the series created by Relic and to the complex mix of feelings that characterized my interactions with them.

I played the first Homeworld right when it launched, but at that point in my life I was not that interested in real strategy games and I was spending a lot of time in role-playing titles, mostly Baldur's Gate 2, trying to suck out all the story it had to offer and to test as many characters and party builds as possible.

I took a roundabout way back to the series in 2003, when the sequel was out, playing only because a friend suggested that it would be an interesting way to get over the blues generated by finishing FreeSpace 2.

I decided to play through the series in the order the games were launched, but I remember being unable to finish the first one, jumping to Cataclysm, which I completed, and then again getting stuck in the final third of Homeworld 2.

When I launched the Homeworld Remastered Collection I was flooded by old feelings and by fear that the games would not hold up, even after the upgrades delivered by Gearbox.

Homeworld is still a great space-based real time strategy

I played for about 10 hours straight after first launching the game, about five for each installment (Cataclysm is sadly not included) and I once again fell in love with the series.

If you dissect the game, the truly revolutionary element then - and still a high quality one at the moment - is the tactical freedom it offers and the way the player has almost complete freedom to combine units and strategies to solve challenges.

But the subdued storytelling and the great voice acting is what hits the player first, and that, combined with the emotional power of the initial genocide and the way the narrative uses it, is what captures the attention.

As Homeworld progresses, players will find even more gameplay and story elements to appreciate, and the game has the rare quality of creating feelings that linger for a while even when it is not actively played.

Homeworld Remastered Collection Images (6 Images)

Homeworld Remastered Collection has upgraded graphics
Homeworld Remastered Collection offers strategy depthSmall action in Homeworld Remastered Collection
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