Utility aside, the retractable menu also removes the claustrophobic effect created by having a permanent dashboard-style command bar. It's an intelligent, crucial change, considering the strategic importance of exploiting the weaker top, rear and underside armour of your enemies.
The dashboard-style interface, popularised by games like StarCraft and still evident in many RTSes today ( DOTA 2, Grey Goo, League of Legends and StarCraft 2 come to mind), has been scrapped in lieu of a transparent interface that can be hidden when necessary. Homeworld 1 has received the bulk of upgrades, with Gearbox using the superior interface of the sequel as a starting point. The improvement across the board is genuinely so staggering that playing the originals, despite them being packaged in with their remastered counterparts, is nigh on impossible.Įven a nostalgic would struggle to tolerate the downgrade for long periods, particularly for the many who were entranced by the galactic quest to rediscover your home planet that defined the original Homeworld. It's also not a stretch to say the new Homeworld is the gold standard for modern re-releases, given the stark upgrades to the user interface, graphics, audio and the multiplayer, without sacrificing an inch of compatibility on current systems or any of the soul that set Homeworld so far apart. It is, however, neither an exagguration nor an embellishment to place the Remastered Collection alongside Grand Theft Auto V in terms of modern re-releases, both for their improvement on the original formula and their value to gamers today. This is not to say that the Homeworld Remastered Collection is perfect, or that Homeworld is the definitive real-time strategy.
Homeworld remastered collection online multiplayer series#
Not only has Homeworld Remastered Collection, a bundle that makes the original Homeworld games playable in their blocky, pixelated glory, transcended the reputational quagmire that Colonial Marines created, but it has also surpassed the Borderlands series and even past glories such as the underrated Half-Life: Opposing Force expansion Gearbox produced almost 15 years ago. So, heading into last week, the question remained: would Gearbox treat Homeworld with the same level of reverence and respect given to the Borderlands franchise, or would it be another exercise in misdirection and disappointment like Duke Nukem Forever and Colonial Marines?Īs it turns out, the answer was neither. Initially, the collective gaming polity was thrilled at the prospect of getting Homeworld in a playable format once more, but that goodwill soon disintegrated following the Aliens: Colonial Marines debacle and the Homeworld Remastered Collection missing its original 2014 release date.
The crowdfunded campaign eventually failed - despite raising around US$70,000 - although it wasn't revealed until a few months later that Gearbox, makers of the Borderlands series, had outbid the mobile app developer for the rights with a US$1.35 million offer. The prospect of such an iconic series, still the only games to fully utilise the third axis in strategically meaningful and eye-catching way, being dismissed as creditor garbage was heartbreaking for many surely someone could do something with the rights? Something? Anything? Reports circulated that the Homeworld rights were going on the cheap were buoyed by a Kickstarter campaign asking for a minimum of US$50,000 to save the series from an irrelevant oblivion. But amongst the all kerfuffle, two items caught my eye: the sale of Relic Entertainment, the developer responsible for the Company of Heroes and Dawn of War strategy games, to SEGA for US$26.6 million, and the supposed availability of the rights to Homeworld, the contemplative space 3D real-time strategy that made Relic's name. It was a creditor-enforced auction of all the properties owned by THQ, a once-great publisher who enjoyed more than US$1 billion annual revenues and stocks reaching US$36.16 at its height. Only two years ago, the futures of the Saints Row franchise, South Park: The Stick of Truth, the rights to the rather unspectacular Homefront series and the ownership of Volition, Inc, the Saints Row, Red Faction and FreeSpace developers, were finally resolved in the fire sale to end all fire gaming sales.
0 kommentar(er)
