Gaming Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak Review

I'm very much enjoying it so far, they have nailed the Homeworld feeling

The 20% loyalty discount for existing owners of Homeworld Remastered, or a free copy of Homeworld Remastered for people who don't already own it, is a nice touch. I wish more Publishers would offer that as an option.

 

Been playing it myself and do agree it's a touch slow. I'd also say if your just gonna play the campaign it's a touch short with other reviews stating it only takes 8-10 hours to complete.

20% discount was a nice touch but it was still cheaper other places. Think that's just steams rather ludicrous pricing of current PC titles more than anything else.

 

Bring back the percentages. Not a fan of this "good, better, best" stuff. Bah. Humbug.

P

 

Damn right!!!

 

To be honest I think the thing to do is both but in a clever way, so the site gives its badge, then there is some option for readers that own the game to post to a poll which reflects the manner you say, so that is to say, in a week, 2 weeks, a month or longer, several ratings could hopefully give a balanced reflection on the supposed quality / rating of a game.

So I mean to say, would you rather one writer give it 72% , or 35 or more people give a rating and then it gives the average rating, could be some benefits to people giving true reflections too like access to games early ?

just an idea, would be nice to see members feedbacks on games documented and to the side of the badge, nice improvement idea?

 

Simple answer: metacritic says 79%, with a relatively high sigma.

P

 

QFT.

When it's a numbers game everyone complains that the numbers don't add up when compared to other titles. And quite right too, since a superb but 3-hour-long indie title for £4.99 might well be worth 95% - but it doesn't make it as good as Skyrim or Half-life 2.

I think you guys made the right call.

 

The argument over scores or no scores is done and moot at this point, Bit-Tech will do what they want to do... I don't like the way it is now but it has been coming for a while as it has been obvious that those writing for Bit-Tech have long been unhappy with using scores.

I can understand many of the reasons for the change including possible ones that haven't been mentioned such as trying to raise advertising revenue, after all, if people go straight to the conclusion and see the final score that is only a single page hit... I am not sure if Bit-Tech's advertising works like this but I know many do and it wouldn't surprise me. Everything seems to be going click-bait, sorry, page-hit based.

I like the percentage game because it gave me an instant point of reference, not just for now when I am first reading but for further down the line if I should revisit an article for any reason... Now I don't have that and having to trawl the full article gets tedious and still may not give me the comparison I would like.

Yes, the system was flawed but it worked for me... Having a score and then trying to justify it gave a purpose to the article... now it all seems a lot more ambiguous and less defined. I am not saying that the scores made the article or that without them the article is any different but it does seem that without them as an end product the articles have changed and not for the better in my opinion.

 

personally i think the system now is best and i agree with the award.

 

It's 2016...Howcome the visuals in this look like "Ground Control"?

 

This.

 

Is it not more important the game is fun to play? Ubisoft focus only on graphics and look how uninspired most of their games are...

Also, what's wrong with ground control?

 

On the scoring front, I don't like numbered scores much, especially for games. There's simply too much personal preference involved for the score to be very meaningful. That said, I'm quite partial to the idea of giving the game a lettre grading like C, B+ or A. Now I know that technically this is exactly the same thing in that it's an arbitrary score decided by the reviewer, but from a reading perspective such a grade feels like it leaves more to the reader to interpret?

Take for example, comparing an AAA game like Skyrim to a simple Indie title that plays well for a couple hours. With pure percentage scores it's hard to justify giving a score that could land one game over another, but you could easily place both in the A grade category. All that would mean is that they're solid games that deliver on their premise. I feel many of us would have a tough time giving a number rating to the games we play, but a grade probably isn't that hard, it's not too different from the award concept we've got going now.

I read the reviews fully, but sometimes it's just hard to get an overall impression just from the words. Especially when you have reviews that start really positively and then suddenly swing thanks to a few major overlooks that aren't apparent from the get go. For instance, you could have a game that's overall very positive, but you list the negatives all in a single paragraph near the end. To the reader that sounds rather negative, but it might not reflect correctly on the game nor the rest of the review even. A grading just gives that little conclusion wrap up I feel, not truly necessary but nice to have. I feel that you can also be more subjective with it as you're not simply trying to quantify things. After all, a game may have all the necessary components for success, but be missing that extra something. For a score it would be very hard to put a figure on that, but you could definitely note it in a grade without much trouble.

 

Do enjoy reading a Rick Lane article/review!

 

Nothing, hence the comparison.

Ground Control did something fundamentally right with their graphics engine, at the time, you could dial up viewing distance and details so far even the best system ground to a stutter.
I replayed it years later to get the best of the visuals.

Now it looks dated when you zoom in to FPS-level (which doesn't make sense for an RTS anyway)

 

Been thinking about getting the game. How does it compare to other RTS games? Such as supreme commander or Starcraft?

 

It's nothing like either of those two games.

If SupCom was at one end of the spectrum and Starcraft at the other end, Homeworld would be somewhere in the middle.

 

I think the MP community for this died out quite fast, post the very recent 1.2 patch and Soban DLC I logged on to take a look and there were no games in the lobby. I can't help thinking if they want to save it, they should add a link to DoK to the Homeworld Remastered Launcher.