Taking Shortcuts: Don’t do it – it shows

(Homeworld vs Wargames)

Time for a couple late 90's Real-Time-Strategy Games now.

For those of you who have only just reached (mental) puberty, have spent your entire life playing console shooters or believe the Wii is the epitome of quality gaming there is a very good chance that you haven’t heard of either Homeworld or Wargames.

If you haven’t heard of Wargames, I’ll forgive you.

If you haven’t heard of Homeworld – sell your console, delete all your iphone games and donate your gaming PC to charity because you don’t deserve to possess either, nor should you ever even think to call yourself a gamer. Leave now and go play some football.

Anywho…

For those that don’t know, Wargames was a popular movie from the 80’s that involved a military super computer, a hacker who just wanted access to the latest games and… nuclear weapons. In short it was – just like every movie from the 80’s that used videogames as a plot device – totally awesome.

So when some good-intentioned sole gave me a copy of “Wargames” the PC game I was curious, even excited – I was also young, stupid and terribly, terribly innocent.

The problems stemmed all from the fact that not only was it one of those short-term movie licence games, it was also a port (as I only recently found out). Not only that, the original game – Wargames: Defcon 1 – was a tactical shooter…

I have to give them some credit for trying to jump onto the RTS gravy-train that was all the rave in the late 90’s but let’s just say that the decision to convert a console shooter into a PC RTS was not a very smart one.

This is turning into a rant post so I’ll just quickly sum up and move on: the interface was terrible, the mouse controls were not properly implemented (as they were originally designed for a tactical shooter on a console), path finding didn’t work (again, because the game was not designed to handle the larger unit numbers of an RTS and no effort was made to adjust this during the making of the port), all the missions were exactly the same as the PS version – except isn’t of being a shooter it was now an RTS (magic!) and lastly (of the top of my head) the game had some of the worst sound bites and voice acting that I have ever come across that not only just sounded bad, but was at times completely out of sync with what was going on.

Example: you have a small base building up when a single small enemy unit comes along and starts shooting at one of your buildings. It’s a scout unit and the buildings are very sturdy so the attack is doing virtually no damage. All of a sudden a loud terrified wail screeches out of the 4 watt PC speakers screaming: “They’re destroying our base!!!1112” over and over and over again until a squad is sent over to blow up the f***ing thing up.

It quickly becomes evident that this game is just a very hastily put together port of a completely different game slapped together slightly differently in the hope of scoring a few quick dollars out of some uninformed RTS fans. To sum up my opinion quite nicely: “The only winning move is not to play.”

Homeworld on the other hand is the complete and utter opposite. It is a shinnying example of want can be done if a design team really goes all out and makes the effort to produce a really good product.

Again, for those that do not know (shame on you) Homeworld is an RTS that tells the story of a group of exiles who re-discover their past and attempt to make the journey across a hostile galaxy back home. In it, you control a large ‘mother ship’ which acts as your centre for unit production, resource collection, research, etc.

Homeworld introduced a number of design innovations to an otherwise tired and overdone RTS genre. Firstly, there are no base structures at all – everything is based around building a mobile fleet of starships. No structures also meant no base defences and the like which completely changed how the game was played. However, the biggest innovation by far was the 3D movement. Now in addition to going left, right, forward, back you could also command your units to go up and down – best of all it was coupled together with a completely new and effective interface that made such movement very simple. It just… worked. All the while the basic rules of a good RTS were retained - units fit adhered to a 'rock-paper-scissors' balance very nicely, there was no dominant strategy (that I'm aware of - frigate-rush kekeke! (y/n)?), all missions and objectives were clear and consise - yet still left enough untold to keep you guessing when need be and lastly said missions were varied so as not to become repeative or boring - yet still tied together and the storyline.

At this point they could’ve stopped, through together a half decent story with some basic missions and they still would’ve had a decent game that would’ve sold well. But they didn’t. When this game hit shelves it had some of the best produced sounds and music in addition to fantastic visuals that still look good to this day. The game had a very atmospheric feel that just drew you in and the story that went with it is worthy of any epic space odyssey ever told in previous forms of media.

In short – the attention to detail paid to this game is quite evident. It’s a shame in some way that this game came out after Starcraft (and not before) else it would’ve been much more popular.