Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak

Really enjoyed this game. Having played original Homeworlds 1, 2, and Cataclysm (probably my favorite), this game is in the same vein, in that there is an engaging story, good voice acting, and enough tactical depth to keep me engaged. A lot of things feel streamlined from previous Homeworld games. The resource collection is tighter, without random bits of stuff scattered in random corner of map, that you fast forward time to collect. The fights are entertaining and frantic. I really enjoy the vehicle designs throughout the games. Watching small attack crafts (but actually monster truck size) flip over climbing dunes, and then getting back on their tires, while firing machine guns is a joy. The blue blaze of the rail gun vehicles as their projectile slam into enemy armor sings to my heart. There's even aircraft in the game that has their own separate mini game. These things are powerful, but fragile, and need to be used wisely to maximize their effect. I beat this game twice, once on normal, once on hard, and immensely enjoyed it both play throughs. Not having ships that move in 3D isn't a big deal here, since you have aircrafts and already plenty to worry about on the map. The game goes for sale frequently, and it's pretty worth it on sale.

This is a great PC RTS game, and I have no clue why someone called it consolized. It looks, feels, plays just like what it is: a PC game just like the rest of the Homeworld series. I thought the story was actually pretty good and gives more background to the Hiigarans. Gameplay is great, fun game overall. But what really brings me here is to talk about the graphics and optimization. To this day I'm completely blown away by it. Not because of things like you can shoot planes down and they actually bounce off the sand leaving permanent trails of debris, or how gorgeous it is in general. No, what amazes me is the fact it looked this good even by today's standards and yet I could play the game at highest settings no problem with a freaking HD 7570 1gb graphics card. Granted that was 768p at the time, but still. They just don't optimize games like this anymore. Imagine playing any game on a meh tier 1gb graphics card, imagine getting buttery smooth performance paired with a 4core/4thread Ivy Bridge, and imagine it looking like this. Homeworld games always were known for looking fantastic in their time, but while this is no exception I'm still just blown away by how good it looked and how well it ran on the lowest most inferior hardware. I see 2020 first person games that try to hide how ass they look with film grain and post processing and they still run like garbage on a 1080ti. That, or geometric shape, featureless, textureless phone trash made to run on an android and call its lazy total lack of development "an aesthetic choice" and then port it to PC. Deserts of Kharak looks better and it can run on an actual toaster. You can literally run this game on a used office machine. It looks great even in 2021, has fun gameplay, an engaging story, and a good soundtrack as usual. Hard recommend and praise for the dev team's optimization efforts.

It was not a lie, this game has a strong feeling of playing Homeworld the original. Smooth, efficient, similar ambiance, story and strategy. The desert area is a good simili of the space. Run smoothly and nice on my limited 940M.

Buy on sale, very short, definetly a downgrade from its predecessors.

Finally got around to playing this. The art direction and music is nice, the story is interesting, gameplay reminds me of Ground Control. Unfortunately there are some issues... 1. Despite significantly exceeding the required specs, the game loads slowly. Battletech had this problem too; is this a Unity issue? 2. Can't remap keys? Seriously!? 3. Can't save in skirmish mode?!? Hard pass.