Homeworld 3's new Steam demo has atmosphere, but I'm not sure about the controls
Try out War Games mode, transfer your progress to the full game
Good news, star admirals with decent CPM! Gearbox and Blackbird Interactive's strategy escapade Homeworld 3 has a demo on Steam. It's been live for a few days, actually, but whether due to the bombardment of other Steam Fest goodies or my being led astray by the similar-but-nerdier Nebulous: Fleet Command, I didn't try it till last night. The demo includes a tutorial mission, four maps and the War Games mode, a one-to-three player affair which essentially turns Homeworld into a roguelike - pitching you up against unpredictable opposition while unlocking new fleets and doling out Artifacts that augment your vessels.
If you already have your heart set on the game, you might feel like waiting till the space sim's full release on March 8th (Feb 8th update: it's been delayed till May 13th). But here's the kicker, O would-be Commander Adama: any War Games progress you make in the demo - Steam link here - will transfer to the final release. Besides, I have a feeling you'll want to give the controls a try before buying.
Homeworld 3 gives you a choice of two, somewhat deceptively-named camera control schemes, "modern" and "classic", which determine whether you'll need to say, right-click to engage WASD camera movement, or whether you can mouse-wheel-zoom right through the ship you're locked onto. Neither system feels intuitive, with much of the tutorial given over to belabouring their differences, and there's been a certain amount of player pushback on the Steam forums and Reddit.
Part of the problem is that Homeworld 3's encounter design emphasises precise control more than its predecessors. One of the threequel's headline selling points is the ability to have units take cover behind larger celestial objects, including your own capital ships. There's also more in the way of micromanaging formations than I remember from Homeworld Cataclysm, the last Homeworld outing I played properly, with different groupings suiting specific combinations of little and large starcraft. Interceptors gain a defensive advantage when they fly in a V, for example.
There's a slow-mo option to alleviate the stress of managing fleets. You can spin it up from almost-stasis to 25%, 50% and 75% of real-time. Slowing time also gives you a chance to admire each ship's workings, of course - turrets swivelling, hulls blackening under fire, smaller ships emerging from hangar bays, all manner of greebly wonderment. The maps are as gorgeous as the ships. It's been decades since the last brand new Homeworld game, but somehow no other space series has ever managed quite the same majestic underwater ambience, with cubic lightyears wrought in hazy shades of blue and purple.
I'm surprised by how finicky Homeworld 3 feels in the hands, but I feel like I'll acclimatise with practice - and I'm prepared to put up with a fair amount of unwieldy camera behaviour for the sake of a new Homeworld single player campaign. What's the story this time? "Since the end of Homeworld 2, the galaxy enjoyed an age of abundance thanks to the Hyperspace Gate Network," the Steam page details. "Cycles of plenty and war have come and gone. Now the gates themselves are catastrophically failing and Karan, who has passed into myth and religious idolatry, is the key to the mystery threatening a galaxy's future."
The Karan here is Karan S'jet, visionary neuroscientist and Cortana-style cyborg soul of the original game's Mothership. In Homeworld 3 she's been replaced as Mothership-minder by her apparent descendant, Imogen S'jet. Amongst other things, this means that Homeworld 3 will avoid any undesired Twitter popularity resulting from somebody misspelling the Karen meme.
Again, the full game's out on March 8th. I would welcome reader thoughts on the demo. I can't quite work out whether the controls are genuinely awkward or Is It Just Me, etc.