Enlightenment

Zen and the art of galactic domination

Zen Buddhism is a very interesting religion, and appeals to some of us Westerners in all its strangeness. Our religions make sense. (Relatively anyway, if can you comprehend a being that is capable of anything, knows everything, and existed before creation, but there wasn't a creation at that point. What did he inhabit then? I didn't think so.) Zen doesn't make logical sense, in fact, that is one of the premises of it.

Crackling with energy

A fleet of evil

A common thing studied in Zen is the art of the koan, or a riddle without an answer. These riddles are unsolvable and are meant to be meditated upon to destroy logic and simply intuitively understand the answer, but more importantly, the question. The most cliched one you will hear is: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" (Yes, you are still reading a review of Homeworld: Cataclysm.)

Cataclysm's gameplay is a lot like a koan. At first, you will run through the tutorial, and say "That reviewer was on the 'ja, this game is as simple as arithmetic." Then, you will open up the first mission, or perhaps if you are a cocky guy you will leap right into multiplayer, at which point, you will say: "I need some 'ja, this game is as complex as calculus." The key here is that you will never fully understand it, you will gain limited insight into it, you will meditate upon it, you will have dreams about it, but you will never fully grasp it. People say these things about Chess, but anyone remember a fellow by the name of Bobby Fischer?

Even the research screen is corrupted.

The most important viewpoint in the game

This is the truly great appeal of the game. At first you felt this way about every other RTS, and then about five minutes later when you were easily managing 200 units and leading attacks into four territories at once, the feeling of uncertainty faded. All games are overwhelming at first, but this one lingers, and that is its greatest strength. The game feels like war, it is confusing, it is reactionary, there are ten thousand things happening at once and you can only handle one of them at a time. "No plan survives contact with the enemy." actually applies here.

Generalities are for the weak, speak in specifics

The most fundamental gameplay aspect that can be defined is this: The game is actually 3-D. No, not a 3-D engine, no, not 3-D explosions, no not any other 3-D thing we can slap on a real time strategy game to pull in the first person shooter crowd. The game is a true 3-D engine, yes, it has 3-D explosions, but the gameplay itself also uses the 3-D environment. How does this make things more complex?

In comes the hyperspaced death.

Devastation!

The whole game functions in three dimensions. Once you think you have your command ship fully defended from the incoming fleet, you will find out much too late that they sent a group downwards and upwards. As you send your fleet forward to engage them, and keep your defenses on either side to prevent them from wrapping around, the two prongs of the fork converge on your capitals. One group gets between your capital ships and your fighters to prevent the fighters from getting back through, and… checkmate.

The game is not confusing, I repeat, not confusing because of poor design. The game's camera controls are absolutely innovative, the way the movement spectrum works, of dragging to a position in the first and second dimensions, then holding shift to define a third dimension is revolutionary and the whole game just sings of great design. The game is confusing on the grounds of what it is conveying, the third dimension. The first Homeworld was the first tactical game to ever bring the third dimension in warfare to us strategist types, this legacy carries on in Cataclysm.