A bit early on this as Amazon postponed my Collector's Edition but sent a Steam code as an apology.
Upon launching the game, a splash screen lets you choose between the remastered or classic versions of HW 1 and 2; I went for the remastered HW1, and after Gearbox's logo the game shown a black screen.
Uh.
Talk about good first impression. A click later and I was at the profile screen. After customising options I start a new game and...no selection between Kushan and Taidaan, or ship colours? I can't exactly remember if the original HW let you choose that from the start though.
The graphics are very similar to HW2 now, from ship detailing and UI. There are some new effects, like depth of field, HDR bloom, more light sources, and resource asteroid change as they get harvested, and it all looks quite impressive. Depth of field can be a bit intrusive when zooming in on single Strike Crafts, as it blur the foreground as well, giving the picture a "miniature" feeling. Radio chatter has been re-recorded, and instead of the generic voice with heavy radio feel of HW1, comms are very clear. Fleet Command and Tactical are still the same, though if my ears aren't failing me, some voices sound like out of the original game while others are new/from HW2; it's a very subtle difference, and probably noticing this because I'm used to the original voices. No customised voices for single units (like Cataclysm or essentially every RTS out there), but that's hardly a problem.
From what I remember of the original HW, voice samples in Remaster sound spoken faster, like everyone hurried in delivering their lines; some voices sound also very amateurish, like producers at Gearbox went around the office and asked if someone wanted to record lines for Homeworld Remaster. It's not excessively bad, and again being used to the old game might make more susceptible to certain things.
Like reassigning formation keys to shift+function rather than function keys only. On formation and tactics, I don't remember strike crafts being so unruly, unable to properly slow down to have every member of the formation fall in place, or breaking up immediately after being assigned a target. I do recall that HW wasn't exactly perfect in managing strike craft formations, but a bit better than this remaster.
The new UI takes from HW2, with a lot of overlay panels rather than full-screen menus. I'm kinda torn on it, because it's better than the original screen swap in HW1 but sometimes it's too big (build/research/launch menu) or too small (good luck understanding how many same-type ships there are in a multi-type selection). Then there are small things, like production/research tabs you can access looking like tabs you can't, or the scanline effect (that you can turn off, luckily) over the whole UI. At 1920x1080, it looks like some scanlines are twice as tick as others; it might be done that way, but against certain colours it looks like a badly rescaled effect; not game breaking, but HomeWorld can be a very slow game in single player and you tend to notice these little things while you wait for your collectors to crawl to the nearest drop point.
Mission and balance wise, there haven't been many changes, the only big difference I've found so far is that there are only two hostile Assault Frigates in the third mission (I recall three). Salvage Corvettes are still the most important unit in the game. Strangely enough, both enemy Frigates in the third mission are scrapped if you capture them. As there haven't been major mission changes, some tasks are still incredibly boring: resource collection during the first missions is one of those. Unless you strip a map clear, you'll end up being short on cash later; HW2 automatically collected all resources when a mission was over, and I haven't found any time compression option. It might not be needed for HW2, but it would have made certain sections of HW1 flow much better, like post-mission fleet replacements.
Like the original game, the Mothership is immobile when playing, and her guns usually stay silent until set to aggressive and actively given a target. The Mothership has HW2-like modules on it (resource drop point and engine), but I don't know if they have an actual impact on single player. Strike Craft/Capital Ship balance is as in the original, so expect Frigates being able to take a lot of punishment from small crafts but being essentially useless against a swarm of those; possibly the Ion Cannon Frigate is more powerful, but I'm basing that on a single encounter between Kushan and Turanic ships of that class, my single Frigate being able to devastate Ion Array Frigates while I was trying to capture them...which prompted me to restart the mission.
I think I've also stumbled on a small bug, my research ship was under fire once for a two-three minutes by Turanic Corvettes but its health never dropped.
So far, I can say that HomeWorld is still Homeworld, with all good and bad that comes with it. The extra graphical detail is great, but the remaining additions are in the "mmmhm...." territory, but probably because I'm used to the old game.
Upon launching the game, a splash screen lets you choose between the remastered or classic versions of HW 1 and 2; I went for the remastered HW1, and after Gearbox's logo the game shown a black screen.
Uh.
Talk about good first impression. A click later and I was at the profile screen. After customising options I start a new game and...no selection between Kushan and Taidaan, or ship colours? I can't exactly remember if the original HW let you choose that from the start though.
The graphics are very similar to HW2 now, from ship detailing and UI. There are some new effects, like depth of field, HDR bloom, more light sources, and resource asteroid change as they get harvested, and it all looks quite impressive. Depth of field can be a bit intrusive when zooming in on single Strike Crafts, as it blur the foreground as well, giving the picture a "miniature" feeling. Radio chatter has been re-recorded, and instead of the generic voice with heavy radio feel of HW1, comms are very clear. Fleet Command and Tactical are still the same, though if my ears aren't failing me, some voices sound like out of the original game while others are new/from HW2; it's a very subtle difference, and probably noticing this because I'm used to the original voices. No customised voices for single units (like Cataclysm or essentially every RTS out there), but that's hardly a problem.
From what I remember of the original HW, voice samples in Remaster sound spoken faster, like everyone hurried in delivering their lines; some voices sound also very amateurish, like producers at Gearbox went around the office and asked if someone wanted to record lines for Homeworld Remaster. It's not excessively bad, and again being used to the old game might make more susceptible to certain things.
Like reassigning formation keys to shift+function rather than function keys only. On formation and tactics, I don't remember strike crafts being so unruly, unable to properly slow down to have every member of the formation fall in place, or breaking up immediately after being assigned a target. I do recall that HW wasn't exactly perfect in managing strike craft formations, but a bit better than this remaster.
The new UI takes from HW2, with a lot of overlay panels rather than full-screen menus. I'm kinda torn on it, because it's better than the original screen swap in HW1 but sometimes it's too big (build/research/launch menu) or too small (good luck understanding how many same-type ships there are in a multi-type selection). Then there are small things, like production/research tabs you can access looking like tabs you can't, or the scanline effect (that you can turn off, luckily) over the whole UI. At 1920x1080, it looks like some scanlines are twice as tick as others; it might be done that way, but against certain colours it looks like a badly rescaled effect; not game breaking, but HomeWorld can be a very slow game in single player and you tend to notice these little things while you wait for your collectors to crawl to the nearest drop point.
Mission and balance wise, there haven't been many changes, the only big difference I've found so far is that there are only two hostile Assault Frigates in the third mission (I recall three). Salvage Corvettes are still the most important unit in the game. Strangely enough, both enemy Frigates in the third mission are scrapped if you capture them. As there haven't been major mission changes, some tasks are still incredibly boring: resource collection during the first missions is one of those. Unless you strip a map clear, you'll end up being short on cash later; HW2 automatically collected all resources when a mission was over, and I haven't found any time compression option. It might not be needed for HW2, but it would have made certain sections of HW1 flow much better, like post-mission fleet replacements.
Like the original game, the Mothership is immobile when playing, and her guns usually stay silent until set to aggressive and actively given a target. The Mothership has HW2-like modules on it (resource drop point and engine), but I don't know if they have an actual impact on single player. Strike Craft/Capital Ship balance is as in the original, so expect Frigates being able to take a lot of punishment from small crafts but being essentially useless against a swarm of those; possibly the Ion Cannon Frigate is more powerful, but I'm basing that on a single encounter between Kushan and Turanic ships of that class, my single Frigate being able to devastate Ion Array Frigates while I was trying to capture them...which prompted me to restart the mission.
I think I've also stumbled on a small bug, my research ship was under fire once for a two-three minutes by Turanic Corvettes but its health never dropped.
So far, I can say that HomeWorld is still Homeworld, with all good and bad that comes with it. The extra graphical detail is great, but the remaining additions are in the "mmmhm...." territory, but probably because I'm used to the old game.
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