The words "Exellent" and "3 dimensional real-time strategy game" have never been put together before. But that's all about to change.

This is an exellent 3D real-time strategy game.

With those words in mind, let's see why this is such a mind blowing game.

Graphics
First of all, the graphics, which are often the first thing you notice in a game, are just superb. When I first played the game, I cranked the resolution all the way up to max (1280 x 1024) knowing my 3D Accelerator could probably handle it. What blew me away when I started are the ships. Each one is masterfully designed, and are quite detailed for a strategy game. On high resolution, the textures look just look make it look like every little yellow dot on your mothership IS really a viewport. Everything is colorful and bright, but at the same time, not so much that it's fruity or cartoonish. Also, it lets you choose the color of your ships so every one of your ships can be, for example, pink and green. Okay, bad example, but you get the point. My personal favorite colors are navy blue and orange. The ship design is really neat because the ships aren't all asymmetrical and aerodynamic. But they're not really blocky and chunky-looking. Also, something I really liked was the way all ships leave trails when moving. Another thing that looks nice are the backgrounds. They aren't extremely detailed or anything, but they're very smooth, colorful, and you can tell that they weren't just slapped on like in lots of space games. Overall, the graphics feel very complete and polished.
You'll probably need at least a 16MB video card to get the best experience. I'm using a Voodoo 3 3000 PCI which can get you the pretty much the full experience.

Sound
With an award wining soundtrack, the sound in this game is surpassed by none and equalled by few. The music gives you a feelling of being in space. It's quiet, calm and feels bleak but is not without action and suspense. The voices are very clear and perfectly understandanble, with subtitles in the cutscenes. The only bad thing I can see is that the voices of the units are unclear and full of static, but they're meant to be like that and you can just correct that by turning the battle chatter volume up, so it's hardly something you can complain about.

Gameplay
Relic, with Homeworld being it's first game, COULD have made a complete mess out of the control and the interface, but instead pulled it off almost perfectly. The control was the most surprising to me. I thought that, with the ships being able to move in all dimensions, it would be very hard to tell them where to go. I thought that the ships' movements would all be pretty approximate, and I thought that the view angles would often be awkward. Now I know better. Fine control of the view is very easily done. All you have to do is hold the right mouse button and move your mouse around to make the camera go exactly where you want, and when you want. Hold both buttons and you can zoom in and out. Then press spacebar and you'll zoom out to a view where the ships become little dots. Then zoom even furthur using your mouse and you can see the whole map. Zoom all the way in and you can see the individual little guns on a fighter, or inside the hangar bay of your mothership. Controlling your ships probably could have been a very hard and fustrating task, but it was made easy. All you have to do is box in the ships you want to move using your mouse, and press "M". A circular movement guide shows up and there is a line from the selected ships to where your cursor is just click where your want them to go and they're there. To move up and down, or diagnally, you just hold shift to adjust vertical position. There are also various formations you can put your ships in that make them all nice and neat and so you cover more groun... err... space, or so you can all bunch together for who knows what reason. All the menus are clean and clear too, allowing you to build or research without trouble. The only complaint I have here is that it doesn't show a life bar on enemy ships. That tends to make me very impatient when attacking a big enemy ship. Bravo to Relic! It would have been very hard to make the control or interface any better.

Fun
What is there to say here? This game is indeed very fun like any good RTS, and there's not much fustration mixed in at all, like in some strategy games.

Story
There's not much to say here either. It's pretty much a standard strategy game story. Not RPG-good, but better than fighting.

Lasting appeal
This game isn't especially strong here, but not weak either. Once the missions are over, you might feel like another go, or you might not. Depends on what kind of person you are. The internet games will keep you going for just as long as any normal RTS, but not Starcraft or Red Alert-long.

Overall
This is the kind of game that all other games of it's kind are judged by. It's extremely complete and polished. I'm definitly looking forward to Homeworld 2. This replaces Red Alert in my top 3 games list, and with the Game of the Year editon, which includes Homeworld, the guide and the soundtrack in stores for only $29.99, there's no reason for you not to get it.