Homeworld 2 (thing)

Homeworld 2 is the sequel to the 1999 Game of the Year Homeworld. Like its predecessor it is a 3D Real-Time Strategy made to simulate space-naval strategy.

The story takes place a century after the first game, the Kushan are again threatened with annihilation at the hands of the Vagyr. The Vagyr are the renewal of the Taiidani hegemon, now under the leadership of a man named Makaan, calling himself Sajuuk-Khar. The Vagyr have secured the third Hyperspace Core, the first of which is in the possession of the Bentusi, the second is in the hands of the Hiigarans. To bring about the End Time Makaan has set out to destroy the Hiigarans and take it from them.

In order to defeat Makaan, a new Mothership has been commissioned, piloted once again by Karan S-jet. It is from the launch of the Mothership that the story begins.

The game play has been changed significantly from the original game, Salvage Corvettes have been scrapped for Marine Frigates, of which one can only build four at a given time. Unit caps have also been changed to restrict ship building in other significant ways. Though this game does have some other interesting features, fighters are built in whole squadrons, which always fly together.

Auto-Tactics have been changed to Aggressive, Neutral and Passive, which changes game play in that one can no longer have their ships become evasive. Strike Formations have been changed to be geared toward entire fleets, not simply squadrons of ships. These formations are: Fighters Front, Frigates Front, and Capital ships Front.

The campaign in this game also attempts to move faster than the original. In Homeworld, once a mission was over and all that was left was resource gathering, you had to let your computer sit for 40 minutes while your harvesters worked. Now as soon as a level is done and the mission objectives are complete, the screen fades, resources are autogathered and the mission ends. This means however the ship building and research that was usually done at this time in the first game has been lost, which results in more micromanaging to get these done during a battle.

The music in this game continually gets high marks. It's maintained the Afghani-Asian themed battle music as well as the wide open sounds of the between battles music.

Graphics wise this game lives up to the expectations that the original conveyed to it. The backgrounds are beautiful, the ship designs original and consistent and the effects manage to dazzle the eye.

The game is original and enjoyable, though without a high end computer(with at least 512MB of ram, a minimum 32 MB GeForce or ATI Radeon video card{Though the author would suggest something more like a 128 or 256 MB video card, even with a 64 MB card I have problems}) it very easily starts lagging badly and the storyline could have been a bit better. Aside from that, everything is just tickety-boo.