Recent reviews by Solace-10

This is a rather difficult review to leave, as I've been enjoying the series since the original Homeworld. It is the game that got me into games development, and as such it holds a special place.

For the positives, the game looks beautiful. There are some stunning environments, the lighting is excellent and overall it is a pleasure to watch. The audio design is top notch and the ship sounds are great and have that classic chunky feeling we've grown accustomed to, and the radio chatter is detailed. The music isn't as remarkable as in previous entries, but there are some high moments with links back to previous sound tracks which are exceedingly well done. Mission design also has the occasional nod to the first Homeworld which I thought were good touches.

Gameplay wise, however, things start going wrong. Staple functionality such as formations just don't work very well, with ships breaking formation even without being in an aggressive stance. Controlling the flow of battle becomes significantly harder, as ships move ahead of the main fleet or move in unpredictable ways, leaving themselves or other ships exposed.

Some ships will occasionally just... not fire. I'm assuming this is something that will be fixed in a patch, but when there are cruise missiles making their way towards your ship and your fleet just watches them go by, it is reasonably frustrating.

The ships themselves are also uninspired. They're quite straightforward, but there's very little... interesting in the array of ships the player has available. The torpedo frigate with its extreme range when in its alternate firing mode is perhaps the only ship that made me think "that's interesting". Gone are any sort of odd, niche ships, such as defense field frigates or gravity well generators. There's also a single "corvette" class ship. The outlines of some of the ships are also somewhat generic, and I struggled to identify ships at a glance, an issue I don't recall having with previous games.

As for the environments, although some of them are truly beautiful, you're almost always fighting in a megalith, and you're constrained in every map. There is no open space, the distances are too small, and it all makes the scale feel diminished. There are no tactical hyperspace jumps either, and the routes / tunnels inside the megaliths are unpleasantly fiddly to navigate.

As for the campaign. I'm sorry, BBI, but you've missed the mark. The campaign is very short (I've finished it in 8 hours in the standard difficulty) and it just felt rushed. Technologies were getting unlocked at breakneck pace, and it doesn't take long until you're fielding destroyers. It handholds you all the way, leaving little space for discovery. The storyline felt contrived and insufficiently developed, while putting all the focus on individual characters. I find that it greatly diminishes the story. And you'll find no Gardens of Khadesh

Finally, the cutscenes. The developer has moved away from the more stylised, sombre style of previous entries, and has embraced something that seems to have been heavily inspired by Pixar animation. The really exaggerated, overly-expressive characters and repetitive dialogue just take me out of the game entirely. The campaign would almost be better without those cutscenes (and there are _a lot_ of them).

So, overall, I can't really recommend it. It's too short, the campaign feels meaningless and it is plagued by too many gameplay issues. It has the seeds of greatness, but it has got lost somewhere in its journey.

I'm not terribly far in the game yet (4h at the time of writing), but this game definitely needs some more reviews!

As a fan of hacking games such as Uplink and Hacknet, I can only recommend Midnight Protocol. It is very different in that it takes a turn-based approach rather than real time, but this is in no way a downside.

The game is sleek, polished and the developers have clearly taken a great deal of care in putting everything together. The missions have been varied and the branching dialogue based on your actions during a run are a definite plus.

As another reviewer mentioned, because the ICE location is static, some missions are made considerably easier when you do a rollback as you'll know their location from the previous run. However, this isn't a major issue and the game gets a definite recommendation from me.

Hack the planet!