Homeworld: a review

Filed under Reviews on May 5, 2005
Tagged: eBay, Homeworld

I got Homeworld and Homeworld 2 in the mail yesterday. I won them in an auction on ebay about a week ago. I’ve bought quite a bit of software off ebay. It’s cheap, and I can usually find copies in like-new condition (still has box and manual).

This particular item was advertised as like new, and the seller promised good packaging. She was charging over $7 for U.S. shipping, but no insurance, so I was expecting a USPS Priority Mail box at my door.

Boy, was I wrong.

The thing arrived packaged in wrapping paper and masking tape via first class mail (I think). The corners–all 4–were torn. “Missing” is probably more accurate. One of the boxes had been crushed enough to crease. And one of the games didn’t have a manual.

I gave my first negative feedback as a result.

The games themselves appear to work. I loaded up Homeworld and started playing last night. They have a great tutorial, and the interface is pretty straightforward. I found the Move function to be frustrating, and sent my ships off to the middle of nowhere by accident a couple times. There also doesn’t appear to be anyway to hotkey groups of ships, so you are forced to use their overview map to focus on ships in different areas.

Homeworld is a space-based RTS. The premise is that 100 years ago, on an earthlike planet, the wreckage of a spaceship was found in the middle of the desert. Amidst the wreckage was a monument with a galactic map pointing to planet on the otherside of the galaxy labeled “Homeworld”. Your planet’s population unites together to build a mothership that will search out this homeworld.

Gameplay is pretty standard fare for the genre. Your mothership is your production center. There are resource-gathering craft, research ships, and warfleet. The graphics for Homeworld are pretty remarkable for its time (it was Game of the Year when it came out). I was up until 2 AM playing it.

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