If Deserts of Kharak's development mutation was a difficult, complex or painful one, it certainly doesn't show. Originally known as Hardware: Shipbreakers, the game was transformed into a Homeworld prequel after Canadian developers Blackbird Interactive were handed the license by the mighty Gearbox (outbidding some prestigious peers to snatch it from the still warm grip of a bankrupt THQ). Hardware: Shipbreakers was always going to be at least a spiritual successor, but now it stands proud both as a bona fide prequel and a classy, capable RTS in its own right.
If, like so many, you're also curious whether a ground-based real-time strategy game does justice to its much lauded and still-revered ancestors, the answer to that is a reassuring "mostly." Don't be discouraged. Imagine that "mostly" delivered in warm and confident tones, with a bright smile. Deserts of Kharak will gift you gripes as uncomfortable and familiar as sand in your socks, but there are no scorpions waiting in your shoe here. Blackbird Interactive has made a good game.
Yet the more things have changed, the more they've stayed the same. Deserts of Kharak can present some truly classic RTS frustrations, including ropey pathfinding, particularly if units are trying to keep formation, and frequent total ambivalence to enemy fire. Then, moments later, it's all forgotten as the game woos you with an alternative tank upgrade, with shiny new cruise missiles or with the prospect of another messy skirmish for you to micromanage. It certainly has a few tricks. It also has style.
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