The oddball middle child of the Homeworld series, Cataclysm measures up surprisingly well. In almost every aspect it meets or exceeds the extremely high level of expectation created by the original Homeworld. And for a seven year old game, it has aged surprisingly well - it still looks good, even in 2008, and its interface is every bit as robust as modern games - something not many pre-Warcraft III RTS games can boast.

The story, while not as epic-feeling as the first game's, works very well. It can also be looked at as the same underdog story of Homeworld, just on a much smaller scale. As the leader of a small mining clan, Kiith Somtaaw, you are drawn into a renewed war with the remnants of the Taiidan empire and a new, sinister enemy known as the Beast - the standard organic tech enemy with a twist. The plot follows Kiith Somtaaw's discover of and battle against the Beast as its viral technology threatens to overtake Hiigara and the whole galaxy.

While probably nothing will top the destruction of Kharak (from the first Homeworld) for pure emotional power, Cataclysm keeps the stakes surprisingly high. It does a good job (for a fairly impersonal fleet-based narrative) of evoking the loss and assimilation of friends and family to the Beast, and the voice acting does a good job of conveying that. The voice acting is actually good all-around; though a couple of the ship pilots sound either bored or stoned, the main characters are all quite well-done. And the Bentusi, voiced by the incomparable Campbell Lane, provide some of the most moving moments in the entire game.

The gameplay is very solid, fleet-based combat. Like its predecessor, Cataclysm is one of the few space games to integrate the third dimension in any meaningful way - most maps require some moving around on the Z-axis, and in many cases it's prudent to flank your enemy from the top or bottom. The control scheme is superb - moving and ordering ships around is easy, and the UI is very minimalist. It gives you all the info you need without cluttering your view of the beautiful backgrounds and ship battles.

The player's fleet is pretty well balanced against the various enemies encountered in the game. The Turanic Raiders are, as ever, mostly a nuisance, the Imperial Taiidan forces are good opponents, and the Beast is powerful without being too frustrating. Especially well handled was the Beast's ability to assimilate/convert enemy ships into Beast ships. Normally this kind of mind control-esque ability is at best frustrating, but the AI doesn't overuse it and the ability itself isn't overpowered.

The only real flaw in the gameplay is how long it takes to gain access to the bigger, more powerful ships - you don't gain access to any really useful capital ships until nearly halfway through the game. The player's fighter-class vessel, the Acolyte, is more than sufficient for all the encounters up to this point, but it's still frustrating to be deprived of the variety of frigates and super-capital ships you probably got used to from Homeworld. Granted, this lack of big battleships until the endgame is in keeping with the fact that your forces are a small group of miners, but it's still pretty annoying.

Even today, the graphics still look pretty darn good - the backgrounds are very pretty and usually interesting. The weapon discharges are well-rendered and have a good variety to them, though the explosions don't leave debris like in some more recent games, though this is more a product of the times than the quality of the game. Also, while the ships made new for Cataclysm look very good, the ones imported from the original Homeworld could have benefitted from a re-skinning. Overall though, it has held up surprisingly well.

I actually started playing Cataclysm three or four times since it was released before finally playing it all the way through - I think this was mostly due to the slow-ish start of your fleet, at least in terms of big ships. But I'm not extremely glad I did play past the early, fighter-heavy phase and through the whole game, which I heartily recommend.

Learning Curve: Takes a while

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