In the opening moments of 1999's Homeworld, you get to see the end of the world. Watch helplessly as an entire planet, and everybody on it, is burned to a cinder.

In most other games, such a cataclysmic event would be either brushed awkwardly under the rug and used as a MacGuffin to get you out the door, or form some kind of cinematic money shot.

Homeworld, beautifully, does neither.

It instead realises that the end of the world is an event perhaps more distressing than any other. That going up in flames is not just an entire planet, with its landscapes and animals and oceans and rivers, but its people as well, and everything they ever built and strived towards.

So Homeworld rubs your face in it.

(click through the gallery to continue reading)