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Now don't get yourselves all worked up over this, I'm just using them as reference points rather than yardsticks of depth and quality, but when you first fire up House of the Dying Sun (and for quite a long while after you've closed it down), the two games you're likely to be reminded of are Homeworld and Freespace. That's not to suggest what we're dealing with here is the greatest space game since either and that you should should stop reading immediately and start playing instead, but if you did do something along those lines you wouldn't be wasting your time or your money. I'd appreciate it however it if you'd come back later, if only to nod through the rest of what I have to say. You'll do that won't you? Good.Despite the fact that Dying Sun is first and foremost a space shooter - and a rather more arcade oriented one compared to the likes of Elite Dangerous - it's Homeworld's metronomic beat that ticks loudest through the game. The battle soundtrack is dominated by pounding taiko drums, behind which crackles radio chatter that is cleverly low enough in the mix to be just about made out while masking the fact that it's actually quite repetitive. Then there are the spartan spacey-hued backdrops, whose distant light was clearly cast back in 1998. Add a selection of boxy ships leaving tell-tale vapour trails in their wake and the obvious inspiration of Battlestar Galactica throughout and the game could almost pass for a Homeworld spin-off to stand proudly alongside Deserts of Kharak.
As for the Freespace parallels, they're less easy to spot once you've gotten past the blindingly obvious similarities in gameplay, because whilst you get to fly a space interceptor in what is essentially a linear campaign taking out fighters, blowing up cargo pods and bringing down capital ships, the vibe of the games are quite different. Where Freespace and its millennial contemporaries offered up righteous campaigns that easily took a good couple of days of relentless play, Dying Sun's cold-hearted acts of murder and sweeping vengeance can be gotten through in an afternoon, though it will take a good deal longer to master the four difficulty levels required to get a hold of the game's high-end ship upgrades. *
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