Now Playing: Deserts of Kharak

Deserts of Kharak began life as a ‘spiritual prequel’ to the Homeworld series by the name of Hardware: Shipbreakers. It was a game I intended to keep an eye on, at least until Gearbox bought the rights to the Homeworld licence and news about Hardware fell dark. But a year or so later, Hardware reappeared, retitled as Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak.

Which is great! Because it’s a new, now ‘official’ Homeworld game. A new Homeworld game. That’s something I thought I’d never get to say. I’ve seen some people say it can’t be a ‘proper’ Homeworld game because it’s not set in space. But we’ll ignore those people because they’re dumb. Space or not, Deserts of Kharak is a Homeworld game. And I really couldn’t be happier.

So what makes a Homeworld game so special? For me, it’s all about the story and the tone. Homeworld was always about a journey. A great quest. And that’s what DoK is all about. It’s a prequel to the original game, telling the story of a dying world and a final, desperate mission to save its people. All the HW games had this wonderfully haunting theme of desolation and survival, which is something DoK captures perfectly.

The story is told across a thirteen mission single player campaign. It was the campaign of DoK that I was most interested in. I know there are many people who love the HW games for their skirmish/MP aspects as much, if not more than, the story driven campaigns, but for me, the campaigns were what made me fall in love with the series. And getting to return to this universe, with such a rich history and lore, is fantastic.

Deserts of Kharak also captures that classic Homeworld vibe through its visuals and sound. The look and design of the units is perfect, with a lovely attention to detail, especially in terms of unit animations. But it’s the audio where DoK really shines. The soundtrack is fantastic, and the VA work is of a high quality.

The unit chatter is great, with fun little conversations playing out between combat. I’ve said before how I feel it’s important for an RTS to have ‘personality’ for its units, connecting them to the player. This is something DoK does very well, if not in some ways better than the original Homeworld games. Also good is the battle/unit sounds, with satisfying weapon, engine and explosion effects. All the audio work in DoK is superb.

Although set entirely in a desert, the maps of the campaign are fairly diverse and mix things up quite nicely, with missions set in canyons, during storms, at night etc. Although some texture work can be a little low quality here and there, graphically, DoK is a great looking game. And as for technical performance, overall, it’s pretty good, although there are odd times when the FPS noticeably drops for no obvious reason.

The campaign was a lot of fun, and certainly something I’ll be playing through again. That said, I do have a few issues with it. The first is simply that it’s rather short. Even playing on the hardest ‘classic’ difficulty, I breezed through the campaign in about 8 hours, and that was even when I was taking my time. The final mission is also a little lacklustre, followed by a rather abrupt cinematic.

Speaking of difficulty, I also never needed to restart a mission because the campaign, honestly, isn’t particularly challenging. A part of this issue is due to the way mission triggers are too obviously signposted, allowing you to prepare for the next ‘stage’ of a mission for as long as you’d like.

My only other issue with the campaign is how it never really mixes up your enemies. There’s no missions where you have to combat a new threat. It’s always you versus the same bad guys. There’s no ‘third’ faction for you to contend with, even for a single mission, and this does harm the campaign in terms of variety.

The UI of DoK is very Homeworld, with a tactical sensor overlay and a movement disc to highlight terrain height. Because terrain plays a key role in DoK. As an RTS, DoK is a very solid and enjoyable title. It doesn’t stray too far from the formula you’d expect, but it does add a few neat little dynamics to its gameplay. The first, as I’ve mentioned, is terrain, with high ground providing a useful bonus. Line of sight is equally important, as units can’t hit what they can’t see.

The unit roster is quite small, which may disappoint some, but every unit fulfils a very specific role and many have multiple special abilities. Units also rank up and carry between missions, meaning it’s important to try to keep them alive. I love the mobile ‘mothership’ which serves as a giant, sand crawling aircraft carrier. That said, it could really use more aircraft landing pads, because once you have several squadrons on the go, it’s a nightmare bringing them all in to dock.

As you would expect in an RTS, you’ll be harvesting resources, building units and researching upgrades to smash your enemy. It’s not the most complex game in terms of strategy, even with the addition of the line of sight and terrain systems – ultimately it’s still a game of hitting your enemy with superior numbers.

Overall though, despite my few issues with it and its relatively short length, I really liked the campaign a lot. The developers have done a fantastic job of transitioning the Homeworld experience from space down onto the ground, and I have to give them credit for that. But what does DoK offer beyond its good, but somewhat limited campaign? Sadly, not very much.

There’s a skirmish mode, as you’d expect, but it provides barely any customisation options in terms of match set ups. It’s a fun mode, nonetheless, but it’s also a mode which really highlights the flaws in the game AI. The campaign disguises these flaws quite effectively but in skirmish, with the AI on equal footing to the player, it’s way too easy to beat. That’s not to say the AI can’t surprise you, but it’s something they really need to improve. To make skirmish even more limited is the lack of maps. There’s only five. But they have said more maps will be released for free, which is nice.

Skirmish mode is really meant to be the warm up for the MP though. Unfortunately, from what few games I’ve played of the MP, DoK is the type of RTS I can’t say I really enjoy playing online. It’s very much of the ‘spam and rush’ type gameplay, where it’s all about employing an ‘efficient’ build order and then hitting your opponent as quickly as possible.

This makes games, especially the 1v1 mode, very dull to play, because people just end up repeating the same tactics every match. In fact, there’s already a popular rush strategy which I’ve encountered in nearly every 1v1 I’ve fought. I can’t blame people for using it. It’s fast, efficient and it works, but boy does it make playing 1v1 a tedious experience.

I know some people enjoy this style of play, and I really don’t have an issue with rush style strategies, but there needs to be a balance. A certain risk/reward. That balance doesn’t exist right now, so if you don’t roll with the most popular strategy, you’re kind of screwing yourself. And I hate feeling forced into playing in a very specific way. That really kills the experience for me.

I was hoping the ‘artifact retrieval’ game would introduce a different dynamic to the MP. The idea is to retrieve more artifacts than your opponent within the time limit. It’s a really good concept for a mode, with the potential for a lot of back and forth power struggles across the map. In concept. In reality, the mode is totally f**ked.

Because despite the objective, you can still win the game simply by destroying the enemy carrier. And so, people just ignore the artifacts and spam and rush. If they actually tied victory conditions to the artifact retrieval count, then I think you’d have something quite enjoyable and fun, a mode that required more thought and long term strategy. But as it exists right now, you can just ignore the artifacts and rush your opponent’s carrier to win, making the entire mode utterly pointless.

Of course, playing MP, at least at the time of writing, is a bloody nightmare anyway. It seems to be region locked, so trying to find a game takes forever, particularly in the team modes. It might be that the rush strategies of 1v1 aren’t quite so prevalent in the 2v2 or 3v3 matches, but I wouldn’t know, because I’ve never been able to find a game using the auto-match system.

I have played a few team games by joining public matches, but even these are thin on the ground, with only one or two on the go at a time. They really need to remove whatever restrictions they have in place on the auto-match system or the MP for DoK is going to be dead before it’s even begun.

Another annoyance, which applies to both SP and MP is the zoom range. I’d love to be able to zoom out more without relying on the sensor view. Also, it’s not possible to rebind keys and I can’t stress how much this f**king irritated me. I got used to the default keys over time, but I really wanted to set up my own configuration, especially for camera controls and unit hot keys.

I should probably wrap this up. Deserts of Kharak is worthy of the Homeworld name. It’s a great prequel and hopefully a step towards a new, space set, Homeworld 3. The campaign, despite a few issues, is very good. But the skirmish and MP modes are pretty weak and shoddy to say the least, although both of these may improve over time if properly supported.

If you’re like me, and you just want a new Homeworld campaign set in this rich and fascinating universe, then I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with Deserts of Kharak. But if you’re expecting more from it than that then I probably wouldn’t recommend it, not in its current state or price. That said, it’s a new Homeworld game. A new Homeworld game. And that’s good enough for me.

7/10