Earlier this month, we asked you to vote for your favourite strategy games of all time to celebrate the launch (and glorious return) of several strategy classics this month, including Relic's WW2 RTS Company Of Heroes 3, Blue Byte's The Settlers: New Allies and Cyanide's fantasy Warhamball Blood Bowl 3. And cor, I've never seen such love for individual expansions and total conversion mods among mainline RTS games and 4Xs. As with all strategy games, however, there can only be one victor - and you can find out what that single strategy game to rule them all is right here. Here are your 50 favourite strategy games of all time, as voted for by you, the RPS readership.
]]>Let's not muck about here. Homeworld is essentially just Battlestar Galactica, if it were a real-time strategy game that jumped through a hyperspace gate exclusively onto PC. There's still much more to Relic Entertainment's sci-fi take on the plot of exiles returning home, though. When Homeworld's Kushan civilisation set out on their journey to the lost planet of Hiigara in the space-year of 1999, the game was doing something very unique compared with most other RTS games on the market.
]]>Video games are great at transporting us to different worlds, but none capture that feeling quite so perfectly as intergalactic space games - and 2023 looks set to be one of the biggest years for space games yet, with the launch of Starfield, Homeworld 3 and more all on the horizon. But what games have gone before them and staked their claim already on the dusty planet surface known as 'Best Space Games'? We reveal all below, with our carefully curated list of all the best space games you can play on PC right now. Whether you're a budding space cruiser captain, a wannabe space conqueror or an intrepid space-faring explorer, there's a space game for you.
]]>After almost 16 years, oh me oh my Homeworld 3 is finally happening. Gearbox Publishing today announced the spacefleet RTS will blast off again a full-on sequel. Homeworld 3 is being made by Blackbird Interactive, a studio who were founded by some of the folks who made the original Homeworld at Relic Entertainment then brought the series back with the recent spin-off Homeworld: Deserts Of Kharak. And it's crowdfunding. Now. Already. The actual release is yet a long, long way away.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Confession time! I'm not the biggest fan of Homeworld. I played it on original release and bounced off it like a meteor off a deflector shield. I liked it more when the HD remakes landed a couple of years ago, but it was still more admiration than love. I'm not sure what exactly I found unsatisfying about them, but it may well have something to do with trying to think tactically in 3D space, because while I didn't enjoy the original Homeworlds, I loved the recent prequel, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak [official site].
]]>Homeworld: Cataclysm, the standalone expansion to Relic's splendid spacefaring strategy game, has popped up on GOG after years of not being sold anywhere. Though the original Homeworld and its sequel were rereleased and remastered in 2015, playing Cataclysm has been the preserve of pirates and that 'physical media' rabble. No more! Homeworld: Cataclysm can be yours for £7, though it is now renamed Homeworld: Emergence because Blizzard have since swiped the "Cataclysm" trademark for that World of Warcraft expansion.
]]>Alec was jolly pleased with the Homeworld Remastered Collection [official site], revisiting Relic's spaceship real-time strategy classics after Gearbox spruced them up. Now they've even fancier, as the promised mega-patch has arrived with everything from improved fleet formations to proper ballistic weapons.
The Collection has also now arrived on GOG, for those who prefer their games DRM-free, with a hefty discount t'boot.
]]>After a rather long drought, Homeworld: Remastered Collection [official site] will be getting a sizeable update that will introduce sweeping changes to fleet formations while also adding ballistics to projectile weapons. Oh, and bug fixes, lots of 'em. According to a report by Fists of Heaven, the update has been in the works for more than six months and is the core focus of a small team within Gearbox Software. As of yet, no official release date has been announced.
]]>Oh, blimey. Suddenly there's a new Homeworld game right around the corner. Confusingly it's not set in space, but it's definitely following the same visual design cues nonetheless. It's also now a prequel to the events of the spaceship RTSes we know and love, and is developed by Blackbird Interactive, an outfit founded by various veterans of said original spaceship RTSes. I.e. space or not, sit up and pay attention to this.
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is released very early next year, and there's footage below.
]]>Disclaimer: I played Relic's space strategy game Homeworld [official site] when it first released (because of course I did), but unlike many of its fans I didn’t continue to live and breathe it, so I am simply not your guy to get into the fine detail of how the new version does or doesn’t differ from the original. I’m sure other places and even our own comments section will provide that stuff, but this piece is essentially looking at whether the Homeworld games, newly remastered by Gearbox, still hold up today. I should also note that I’m discussing this as an overall package rather than comparing the two games within it to each other.
Two questions: 1) Is it pretty enough? 2) Is it still any good?
]]>Just before I got hold of some early code for Gearbox's upcoming remastering of unbelievably beloved space RTS Homeworld (which I made some stupidly oversized and stupidly pretty screenshots and video of yesterday), I had a chat with the studio's Chief Creative Officer Brian Martell, plus Community Manager Chris Faylor about the new version of Relic's game. Why do this rather than make their own space RTS? How was melding Homeworld 1 and Homeworld 2's multipalyer going to work? What about mod support, past and future? And did they feel having something as respected as Homeworld in their stable would help with Gearbox's... chequered reputation?
]]>They should have sent - hey, no, don't interrupt me with your obvious, tired pop culture quote. I was going to say they should have sent someone with a triple SLI setup and a 4K monitor. Instead they sent me, with a single graphics card and a 1440p monitor. Even so, I was able to get a preview build of the Homeworld Collection Remastered [official site] running at a preposterous beyond-4K 5120x2880 resolution, via the dynamic super resolution stuff in drivers*. Take a below. It is... well, yeah, maybe I do need that poet after all.
]]>It's only three weeks until we can get lost in space again ourselves, but in the meantime your eyeballs will thank for pointing them at this big chunk of 1080p footage from Gearbox's upcoming remastering of cult classic spaceship RTS Homeworld. Whereas other recent remasterings - Grim Fandango and Indigo Prophecy - focused on making the game less archaic, this looks like it's really going for it. For instance, where once the mothership's textures took up a lowly 100k, now they're a meaty 10Mb.
Can't speak yet for how the game feels, but the results of all this fiddling are spectacularly pretty. Take a look.
]]>February 25th. That's it. That's the day when Gearbox will release the Homeworld Remastered Collection with its two made-over, fancied-up re-releases of Relic's wonderful spaceborne real-time strategy games. After a long but comfortable silence, Gearbox this weekend announced a release date and, gosh oh golly, a trailer with a look at its new look. It is pretty. I'd say it looks as good as I remember Homeworld looking in the first place, which means the Remasters impressively can equal the sludgy haze of nostalgia, memory, and imagination.
]]>We learned last year that Gearbox were planning to re-release the enormously loved Homeworld games. Having plucked the license from the THQ jumble sale, apparently because their Chief Creative Officer Brian Martel has maximum love for the series, they made clear their intentions to release an HD version of the first two games. They're upping their terminology now, from "HD" to "Remastered".
]]>Polygon are reporting that Gearbox have announced their intention to release HD versions of Homeworld 1 & 2 for PC. We already knew this was a possibility, of course, with their having acquired the license during the IP stripping of THQ earlier this year. No date on in yet, but my bet is early in 2014, to coincide with the next International Homeworld Day. That's on everyone else's calendar too, right?
]]>As you may know, me and RTS have never been great bedfellows. But if there's a way to make me want to start caring, it's to give all the units a compelling back-story. The depth to which the former Homeworld developers behind Hardware: Shipbreakers are going, people are going to be able to write passionate fanfic about the recently introduced Baserunner.
]]>Seems unlikely, but it is apparently true. The rumour that the announcement would be today turned out to be actuality! The Borderlands developer said: "Brian Martel, Gearbox Software's Chief Creative Officer, has great love and respect for Relic's brilliant, fun and innovative game and personally spearheaded the acquisition. Brian intends as first priority to direct Gearbox's interest to preserve and assemble the purest form of the original acclaimed and beloved games, Homeworld and Homeworld 2, with the intent of making them accessible on today's leading digital platforms."
]]>An update to the Homeworld Touch and Homeworld 3 Kickstarter announces that the teamPixel bid to obtain the Homeworld IP has failed. They explain: "The auction for the Homeworld license ended April 15, 2013, and while we reached qualified bidder status for the bankruptcy auction, we were unable to raise the necessary funds to remain competitive against the other parties at the auction." teamPixel will be offering refunds, and starting their own space game. We don't know who got the license. It wasn't Paradox or Stardock, although they were both bidding.
]]>When Sega plucked Relic from the ashes of THQ last month, it appears they didn't get the Homeworld license along with it. So for now the sublime space RTS series remains without a home, in an odd case of life imitating art. The Homeworld IP is now up for sale in an auction of THQ's remaining stuff - as is the likes of Supreme Commander, Red Faction, Darksiders, Titan Quest, Full Spectrum Warrior and a whole host of names known and forgotten.
]]>Long-haired lover from Liverpool David Valjalo speaks to ex-Relic art honcho and founder, Rob Cunningham, about his new project: a planet-spanning free-to-play RTS called Hardware. Oh, and he also discusses how he's building giant, working robots in his spare time.
]]>David Valjalo peered into the auditory world of game soundtracks for us in a wide-ranging interview with former Relick-er Paul Ruskay.
Homeworld is a milestone for space strategy sims. I'll wager that some time since its 1999 release NASA burned its entire archive of the original Star Trek series and replaced it with a single copy of the game in the section of its employee library called "What The Future Will Probably Be Like And How To Survive It". It's a titan of the genre remembered and revered for myriad reasons. Be it the delicately balanced systems rumbling beneath its clean lines of (at the time) unprecedented beauty or, not least, it's atmosphere. A big part of that atmosphere was conjured by the award-winning musical maestro Paul Ruskay, whose journey to, with and beyond the project has, until now, gone untold. I chatted with Paul about everything from Radical Entertainment's role in the Vancouver scene of the 90s to his return to space with Strike Suit Zero next month, and why he spent so long out of sight and sound.
]]>Last week I found myself in two conversations about resurrecting dead games. One was about Homeworld: I'd made a flippant comment about pressuring Relic to do a Kickstarter to make a sequel, and other people agreed. If Double Fine can raise millions for a point 'n click, then why not millions for our lost and beloved space RTS? The other was about Syndicate. Wouldn't it be great if we got a Syndicate sequel, finally, in the way we got a “proper” X-Com remake? No right-minded gamer would disagree. Hell, Paradox even seem to be planning to do so.
But I got to thinking about how this turn to “how games used to be” shouldn't be about nostalgia, or the past at all, really. It should be about the future. The point of looking back must be to identify, rescue and save the futures we were promised.
]]>Well, 10-and-a-bit. We're a couple of days late with this, but that's only so we can look fashionably nonchalant. Landmark strategy game is a decade old, you say? Yeah, whatever. We're too busy listening to Dizzee Rascal records and calling LaRoux the new Dido.
No, of course we're just tardy - Homeworld is a game to be celebrated if ever there was one. Ten bloody years! Yet it still seems so fresh and modern in many ways. And, thanks to its creators, it looks as though it's not going away just yet. (That isn't a tease for Homeworld 3, I'm afraid - but the news is still good, honest guv).
]]>Some are speculating this is related to the recent Actard merger, but it's possible it's simply ruthless, Logan's Runny culling of the elderly. Whichever, the facts are these: come November 1st, the plug will be pulled on the official servers for 21 Sierra PC games (of varying classicdom).
Several RPS faves number amongst them: Jim's beloved Ground Control, my semi-beloved Aliens vs Predator 2 and the revered likes of No-one Lives Forever 2, Tribes 2 and Homeworld 1. Full list and more wittering from me below the cut.
]]>It's been a day of mumbling and moping and growling and groping at RPS today (Except without the groping, sadly). But before everyone heads bedwards, here's some news to put a spring back in your step. RTS legend Homeworld? Coming back.
]]>Reader David links us to Point Defense Systems, a particularly hardcore-looking overhaul of Homeworld 2. "The gist of the mod is that it turns HW2 into something much more akin to a space-navy simulation, rather than the arcadey feel of the original," quoth he.
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