Still Game? is an occasional series in which I replay a game from my youth, to see if it really is as good as I remembered. This week: Homeworld on PC.
I remember Homeworld with a great deal of fondness, even though I don't think I ever completed it. Why was that? Was it not as good as I thought? I'm curious to find out.
One thing I remember clearly is that the graphics weren't fantastic. They were okay, but when inspected up close, ship textures looked blocky and unimpressive. Fortunately, I now have the remastered edition to play, with all new improved graphics. Let's see how it holds up.
Then
Homeworld did a masterful job of drawing me in by painting a fascinating picture of an alien world and its people, and their striving for the stars. I remember beautiful cutscenes and amazing sound - from haunting and atmospheric music to in game ship-to-ship radio chatter.
There was also something entrancing about the setting - a tiny group of ships hanging in the void, set against a backdrop of stars and nebula. I really bought into that.
Now
The remastered edition stumbled from the start. It took an age to load anything at all, and then the intro animations were bizarrely jerky. Not hugely, but enough to notice. My computer isn't slow.
I jumped straight into the single player. The graphics are massively improved from the original but the mothership still somehow failed to conjure an impression of scale. The controls felt clumsy and unintuitive and more than once my view ended up twisted at an unintentionally bizarre angle.
Tiny problems stood out - why would keyboard shortcuts for the build/research/launch menus open but not always close those overlays? Why was it possible to move the camera freely around the current plane but not up and down? Why were unavailable tabs in the build/research queues not greyed out, so I didn't keep trying to click on them? How am I supposed to know that capturing an enemy ship requires more than one salvage corvette?
Larger problems became apparent the more I played. Yes, the graphics are much improved from the original, but most of the time the only way to play is with the view zoomed out as far as possible. Instead of conveying the feeling of being in the midst of detailed and dramatic space battles I found myself watching from afar as some dots at the end of fading vapour trails danced around the screen.
The other area where Homeworld feels lacking is strategy. There are all manner of settings for each spaceship - their aggressiveness, formations and special abilities - but changing them doesn't seem to make any difference. I was still watching dots attacking dots. Sometimes I won, sometimes I didn't.
Pressing on
I was beginning to get a little bored. Then somewhere around level 8 things started to improve. Once Homeworld has introduced the basics of resource gathering and combat, it starts throwing unexpected scenarios at you - an enemy that mind controls anything that gets too close, an area of space that damages and destroys your ships unless you hide them inside dust belts.
Strategy had begun to play a role. Homeworld was forcing me to play it properly, not just building a load of ships and sending them off into battle. I began to learn the benefits of each ship type and where to employ them.
What's more, I'd started to remember why Homeworld had appealed the first time around. The atmosphere of intrigue had returned. I'd bought into the narrative again. I wanted to know how the story of this tiny and desperate little fleet of ships would turn out.
And strangely, the graphics seemed to be getting better. Sometimes when I level opened I'd just sit and admire the view for a while.
And then I got bored again.
The one big problem
Homeworld has one big problem. It's slow.
It was taking almost an hour to complete some of the missions, and failing late into one is discouraging, considering the time it takes to both build and move some of the bigger ships across the increasingly large maps. Playing felt increasingly like a chore, particularly when the pre-mission briefing demonstrates the scale of the task ahead.
Unfortunately, I haven't found the time or motivation to finish it. I promised I would this time around, but the reality is I just haven't. I'm a little disappointed in myself, but I think that it's at least partly the game's job to keep my attention, and it hasn't succeeded.
Maybe I'll try it again in another ten years, and get a little further.