The early graphical promise is fulfilled - it does indeed look drop dead gorgeous, even if you don't have a 3D card. It offer a few new twists to the genre too, the biggest of which is being set in space. But it's this twist, more than any other, which also proves to be one of Homeworld's downfalls. In space, there's no terrain to offer tactical advantage or break up the monotony of the old tank rush formula for success. There's nowhere to hide, there's nowhere to run; he with the most ships invariably wins the war - just ask the Americans.

So while the looks are very appealing, right down to your fleet being uniquely coloured to identify them in battle, there are some very fundamental design flaws with the game. The control system for one takes a lot of getting used to. Not like 'a couple of hours getting used to' - that we can all handle - but days, maybe even weeks before you're completely comfortable with it. And let's face it, in that kind of time scale you want to be fighting galactic invasions, not control systems. Get your head around the controls and you find that the levels follow a fixed pattern. Even at the very toughest, it only takes a few premature deaths before you see what you have to do to conquer the stage. Trial and error gameplay like this can put a very solid barrier between you and immersive gameplay.

Don't get me wrong - stick with it throughout the learning process and you get an enjoyable game. It may not offer the immersiveness of Command & Conquer or the long term appeal of Total Annihilation and the Kingdoms follow up, but it makes for a few evenings of fun, if not exactly taxing, gameplay. It's fun, but isn't the ground-breaking, space-based, real-time strategy game we were promised.