The plot of Homeworld is (gasp) intelligent and involving. No, we're not kidding. Here's the scoop. Your people have lived on a planet for thousands of years, a planet that apparently is not the planet your race evolved on. A gigantic space ship is found in a desert area of the planet and within is found a plaque. Upon the plaque is a map of the galaxy with a route drawn from your planet to a planet near the center of the galaxy. That planet bears the label, "Home." And so your people set out on the tremendous task of sending a gigantic colony ship thousands of light-years through the void to return home… While this is just an appetizer we're serving up in our review and is therefore not wholly filling, the plot in action is as good as any classic space opera sci-fi novel. The plot unfolds both between and during missions with scripted sequences that further the story. Relic's Homeworld has a story-telling feel much like that of Bungie's enthralling Myth series, but even better.

Much of Homeworld's game play is just like the rest of the real-time strategy (RTS) genre. You control your mother ship, which acts as your production facility and main base. You research new technology to give yourself a choice of ships to build, you mine asteroids to give yourself raw materials and then produce your fleet. You use your fleet to blow the snot out of nasty aliens who want to blow the snot out of you. Tried and true RTS so far, but then you get into the 3D aspect of combat. When there are six degrees of freedom, things get a bit monkey funky. First of all, there is no such thing as the high ground. Instead, you have to deal with the delicate balance between your ships' direction of motion, the direction of your ships' engines, the direction of your ships' guns, and the position of your enemies in 3D space. Add formations and resource management to it all and you can see that Homeworld is an RTS addict's Holy Grail. The play is not perfect though. Controlling your fleets is difficult and, while the interface is easy to use, we often found we couldn't get our ships to where we wanted because the interface did not have enough power. In the end, things are far from perfect and are often frustrating, but if you're a skilled and accurate button clicker you'll be ok.