Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak

Homeworld:Deserts of Kharak

Released: January 20, 2016

Platforms: Steam, Microsoft Windows 7/8/10, Mac OS X 10.10.5 & up.

Publisher: Gearbox

Genre: RTS

ESRB: E 10+

 

 

    A fun RTS that borrows elements of others while filling it with the essence of the Homeworld games before it. Controlling fleets across the dessert terrain can result in spectacular battles as a player's technology develops from small assault crafts to ballistic cruisers. It gets exciting as battles escalate where forces get larger, units get larger and stronger. The Single Player Campaign has a system where player's surviving units at the end of the mission move on to the next.

 

    Learning to play however takes some time to get used to. RTS have some common conventions but mostly do their own thing as Homeworld series is no different in having some uncommon quirks in its control schemes. And the chaos when combat heats up, players need to be able to identify what exactly is  going on.

The game revolves around your Carrier, heart of your forces. It is where you research and produce units and their upgrades. Carriers also have a power shunting system where their carrier has a pool of power to divery to the various subsystems onboard. These can increase the ship's armor, anable unit repair functions, increase attack power, and increase attack range.

Resources the player must collect are also delivered to the Carrier, but can also be dropped off at Support Cruisers when researched and constructed. These resources collected are Construction Units (CUs) common materials native to the planet, and less common Resource Units (RUs) for research and construction of larger more powerful units.

First issue to wrap around is the camera controls to navigate the battlefield. There is no set standard control scheme for RTSs and they all vary in how the games are designed too. It may take a few sessions to grasp and confidently control the camera to better use the units in the game. After that they would also understand the sensors view mode which is the common radar screen or a form of mini-map that shows things units detect in their detection radius outside of their visibility range,

After all that its more like common RTS systems of resource gathering, building armies, and researching tech trees. The starting 2 factions in skirmish and multiplayer are different in mechanics like appearance, production, and research.

    The game's offer great presentation as in-game cutscenes with units are fantastic in presentation. As an RTS the game the units are not high-polygon models, but their simplistic and easy to identify silhouettes help with unit identification during hectic firefights.

Texture work and lighting of the game is also great which helps the lower polygon count models. The general art direction allows this game to not look dated as RTSs over the years have had higher quality technologies powering them as this game was Built upon the Unity3D Engine, which at the time carried a stigma among gamers as the asset swap game engine where the most common games built from this engine were cheap low effort games.

The setting of a vast dessert planet however is sort of bland as the only terrain is the great dessert the entire game is set in. Level design is heavily impacted by the setting as most locations is desserts with almost leveled terrain, with dune hills that units with suspension react to jumping or landing on. There is variance to the design of ancient ships ruins and canyons, some bases, but not much else.

Though by not being as technologically advance it helps in the game's performance and give it a clean
presentation where not too many post process effects that are also not that intense that this are hard to read. In the Single player campaign  there are also moments of animated cutscenes with this brushed art look to everything which is the Homeworld style where its situations the in-game models of units can't be in.

    Along with nice graphical presentation, the game's audio for sound effects help heighten the experience and assists in gameplay. All units have some sort of idle radio chatter being heard in and out of combat as they report on things like unknown enemy objects out of view that are detected on scanners, and also their unit type types. and these callouts will help the player in reacting to threats approaching them. The soundtrack is also a great listen too as it unique instruments and themes help convey the dessert and the main story's theme of a dying planet.

    The main campaign itself is engaging and simple in presentation so it's not hard at all to follow. A group called the Coalition sends out an Expeditionary ship, the Carrier Kapisi, to retrieve an anomaly on the planet called the Jaraci Object, in hopes of saving the people on the dying, war-torn planet of Kharak. As each mission goes on, mysteries are found as the conflict between the Expeditionary force and those whom want to prevent their success escalates. The combined nature of the game's presentation helps keep the player engaged as well as informed about the story to not get lost.

Starting tutorial mission of initializing the Kapisi.

Mostly seem to follow the head of the science team on the expedition Rachel S'Jet who sees hope in  their actions to recover the object, but others are also part of the normal gameplay like the Ship Captain, Intel Officer, and Fleet Ops being both characters and the literal notifications of things happening like unit production, research, and more.

 

    This game though has some inconveniences as the lack of a proper campaign for the other opposing faction to assist in learning the other faction instead of going in blind. The tutorial itself is also lacking as it teaches basic controls but uses the campign to tell the quirks of the units in the Coalition faction, and no information of increasing fleet capacity for more units for skrimish and Multiplayer which have carriers act a bit more differently than the campaign. There is also paid DLCs for a subfaction of each of the main 2 factions.

These inconveniences hinder aspects of playability to newcomers who may just want to jump into something, but the game doesn't initially tell them about it and may give up to early to really appreciate the systems in the game. The missing things are needed and the subfactions better intergrated into the game as something other than extra faction to play in skirmish and multiplayer, like their ownddedicated capaigns.

    However with these flaws I would reccomend this game to RTS players as there has been a long drought of fun accessible RTS games that are not MOBAs or tower defence. The base package itself priced on Steam like an indi-title offers a great campagin and story. This game also appeals to players who favor aspects of strategy that don't include base building as the ship and fleet focused nature, even if the setting is on a dessert and ships have wheels or hover above the ground.