Homefront

[EngineNo9]

I played the first couple chapters of the single player last night, and so far I'm not really impressed.  Heavily scripted, very linear, just not my bag.  I can see they were trying to set the mood and get across the "war has come home" theme, but it really didn't sell it to me for whatever reason.  I will try to complete it, but I don't expect much out of it at this point.

I tried one multiplayer match, and the only thing I can say about that is that compared to Bad Company 2 it felt really static.  I'm far too used to blowing up walls and fences and everything else, that when I can't it feels wrong now.    The guns didn't feel too bad, though.

[Blackjack]

I picked it up at Best Buy. For some bizarre reason they stick all the new releases (including PC) on kiosks in the DVD section instead of the games section. I at least got the $10 off.

[Blackjack]

I only played a few minutes, not even to the first checkpoint save apparently. Some glimpses -- I'll probably have to turn some settings down/off for a decent frame rate.



Was a little puzzled why KPA are carrying M-4s rather than AK-47s or something. I guess the idea is they've either confiscated it from the U.S. or from South Korea.


The squaddies that some reviews indicate you'll get really sick of. 

[Punisher]

Was a little puzzled why KPA are carrying M-4s rather than AK-47s or something. I guess the idea is they've either confiscated it from the U.S. or from South Korea.

This was explained in the book and some of the intro videos I think... They had this planned out and started training on US equipment before the invasion and yes, ended up confiscating a lot of US equipment..

[Purge]

I think I want to read the book. Anyone done with it?

[Kagath]

A lot of stuff in the newspaper collectible items. Like them or leave them they are usually an interesting read.

[CeeKay]

Has anyone seen a way to read them outside of gameplay?  I usually click through them quickly and haven't paid much attention to them.

[Tokek]

Seeing that I highly doubt that there will be a lot of MP servers with decent pings to me, would this game be worth it for the SP campaign alone?

[Caine]

Seeing that I highly doubt that there will be a lot of MP servers with decent pings to me, would this game be worth it for the SP campaign alone?

so far, my impression of the sp is someone took the urban defense mission out of MW2 and made it into a game.  insert "shocking scenes" into the action with occasional breaks in the combat to make it seem more serious. 

tbh, if you aren't planning on hitting the mp much, wait for a price drop.  besides, crysis 2 hits next week and should be a much better sp game. 

[Blackjack]

Seeing that I highly doubt that there will be a lot of MP servers with decent pings to me, would this game be worth it for the SP campaign alone?

It's an interesting setting (however preposterous some of us and most gaming reviewers think it is), but $50 (I don't know what it will go for overseas, but it certainly seems priced much higher in Australia, see my earlier post) for strictly its 5-hour campaign might be tough to stomach. Too bad there isn't some "zombie mode" or some form of AI-skirmishing to give it some value beyond the campaign for those not interested in MP or not likely to find busy servers for it.

About the opening cinematics...

Spoiler for Hiden:

Given the horrific drug-wars situation in much of Mexico today, I had to laugh at the sequence where Mexico has to "shut down its border" to U.S. refugees seeking "shelter" there.  I'd have found it more believable if we were fleeing up to Canada. 

[Kagath]

Regarding the spoiler:

Spoiler for Hiden:

I would imagine that it was because Mexico is warmer than the frozen wasteland of the north. Especially since they said many were freezing.

[CeeKay]

Regarding the spoiler:

Spoiler for Hiden:

I would imagine that it was because Mexico is warmer than the frozen wasteland of the north. Especially since they said many were freezing.

plus:

Spoiler for Hiden:

they have better beer.

[CeeKay]

finsihed this early this morning.  had fun, even though your squadmate Connor is an a-hole and the ending is a let down.

on the ending:

Spoiler for Hiden:

wow, they pulled a Halo 2 with pretty much a non-ending.

[Purge]

Seeing that I highly doubt that there will be a lot of MP servers with decent pings to me, would this game be worth it for the SP campaign alone?

It's an interesting setting (however preposterous some of us and most gaming reviewers think it is), but $50 (I don't know what it will go for overseas, but it certainly seems priced much higher in Australia, see my earlier post) for strictly its 5-hour campaign might be tough to stomach. Too bad there isn't some "zombie mode" or some form of AI-skirmishing to give it some value beyond the campaign for those not interested in MP or not likely to find busy servers for it.

About the opening cinematics...

Spoiler for Hiden:

Given the horrific drug-wars situation in much of Mexico today, I had to laugh at the sequence where Mexico has to "shut down its border" to U.S. refugees seeking "shelter" there.   I'd have found it more believable if we were fleeing up to Canada.  

Actually, in one of the hidden news pieces, it states that Canada had also closed up their borders.

Anyone have the book that they're done with? I'd like to give it a read.

[CeeKay]

fired up some MP tonight, and damn, the server I picked was a sniper fest. so I fired up a sniper and was surprised at how painless the made it.  quick scope, seeming no drop on the bullet.. now just to figure out how some guys were getting killshots when people were in the middle of foliage.  a couple of times I couldn't even see what was in front of me and I got pegged by someone who the killcam showed was on the other side of the map.

[Blackjack]

Game Over's dude didn't seem to like it...  
http://www.game-over.com/reviews/pc/Homefront.html

Homefront plays like it was made by somebody who doesn't understand the human concept of "fun." Everything about it is off somehow, from the weapons to the character design to the levels to the single-player campaign's plot, like it was rushed to market as quickly as possible before anyone could have second thoughts. It's fundamentally flawed in pretty much every way you could care to name, and is in no way worth your money.
...
Homefront's multiplayer modes and robust promotion-based system all boil down to one simple thing: if you're not a sniper, you're doing it wrong. The other team is, as with all online shooters, comprised largely of fourteen-year-old cyborgs on a taurine drip who've been playing de_dust since the moment of conception. This is not Homefront's fault, obviously, but it does beg the question of why you would then make a game where death is this cheap.

It is difficult to say anything good about Homefront. It's a half-baked idea crammed into a half-baked game, and while I'll freely admit that a quasi-realistic military-style first-person shooter with a heavy focus on the multiplayer mode is not exactly my cup of tea, I've played enough of them at this point that I feel confident in saying when one has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

I guess the only testimonial they could get out of that review would be something like...

"..the multiplayer game... the ... reason to play Homefront."   It does sound like snipers in MP are terribly overpowered. I never much enjoyed getting head-shotted in MP shooters myself.

[CeeKay]

I tried the 'join game' to find a random match, and if found me one alright.


I was the only player on the server.


matchmaking FAIL.

[Blackjack]

Another thud (reads much harsher than its "Average" rating) review at Big Download:
http://news.bigdownload.com/2011/03/23/review-homefront/

Homefront plays much better as a multiplayer experience, since there's more freedom to move around, but even that is hampered by some severe balance issues. In our time playing the sniper rifles were extremely unbalanced, to the point where players could camp out on sign clear across the map and pick off targets with single body shots. The killcam isn't very helpful in letting you know how you died or how to avoid it. It soon reached a point where we didn't see any more sense in playing.

With all things considered, Homefront's gameplay seems like it's designed more for the 1990s era than a game that's releasing in 2011. It's a linear shooter with a paper thin plot and characters, that entirely uses checkpoints instead of manual saves. [Isn't this the norm today though, even for PC versions of shooters?-bj]

It reaches for some sense of gritty realism, then does everything it can to ensure it never happens. It's not the worst experience we've ever had, but certainly not one we're likely to remember or return to anytime soon.

Now I'm kinda wishing I'm waited, as was my Medal of Honor experience, maybe to a lesser extent. I think I won't be inclined to jump into the pool early on these things anymore.

I don't really understand how the sniper "overpoweredness" got into the game. I'm sure it underwent some beta testing, and they must've noticed that... right?   Maybe they just assumed the Commander stuff would designate snipers as targets and balance that out but it doesn't sound like it.

As far as the servers being empty, which certainly sucks, it wouldn't surprise me if most of the people getting it were XBox360ers.

I don't sense that there's going to be momenum for a sequel on this, regardless of platform.  

[CeeKay]

they're saying they have sold over a million copies over all platforms, and they have shipped 2.4 million out there.

[EngineNo9]

they're saying they have sold over a million copies over all platforms, and they have shipped 2.4 million out there.

So that leaves more than half of those copies to languish and flood clearance shelves in a few months.  Yippee. 

[Blackjack]

Another clunker review... (2/5 stars)
http://www.examiner.com/pc-game-in-national/homefront-review

Homefront might be worth a $10 bargain-bin pick-up if you have nothing better to play, but even its multiplayer isn't enough to make up for the single player game's brevity. Then again, even if the single player game was twice as long, Homefront still falls well short of games that inspired it such as Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and others.

My only issue with the review is he doesn't really look at multiplayer at all besides that one dismissive sentence. It sounds bad regardless, but I'd still like a little more detail on the MP badness, even if it boils down to "snipers rule, and it isn't worth trying to play as anything else."   Though perhaps as CeeKay observed, the system couldn't even find anybody for the reviewer to play with.

Something sounds like the game really didn't get any serious testing, internally or externally. Maybe the devs were too busy reading their own hype to ask someone to take a hard look at the game and tell us, "Hey, is this really working? Is this a mess, and should we just start over?" And it's clear from the observations about tutorial screens referencing console controller buttons that Digital Extremes didn't do the basics of a decent PC port.

Clearly I should've either waited for a playable demo, waited for the reviews, or just put blinders on and not read any reviews at all.  

I guess I can keep hoping IO revisits Freedom Fighters at some point since Kane & Lynch: Ugly Hitmen 1 and 2 didn't exactly set the sales charts on fire either.  

[Blackjack]

SIM HQ review:
http://www.simhq.com/_land3/land_123a.html
Guess what? Booooooooooooing! They didn't like it... At least they went into great detail on why the MP wasn't all that and a bag of chips afterall.

The main problem I see is the spawn locations which seem to be completely random. More times than not I end up spawning into the game only to be killed within 3 to 5 seconds by an enemy close by or one of the many snipers/campers that the maps seem to encourage for maximum kills.

I like the idea of points based on performance to buy upgrades, equipment and vehicles but the way it panned out is really only the best players get the great stuff and everyone else is just there to be killed. Now sure, all you good players are saying “well, play better”, but it’s not always that easy. And then when you do buy a vehicle, you spawn with it and if you get out or move to another location, like from driver to gunner, any team mate can jump in and steal your vehicle and drive it right into your death.

How multiplayer usually plays out is that if you get the rank and kills, you get the good gear. So I could throw a grenade at the enemy’s feet and since he’s got some special body armor no harm comes to him. Also everyone and their brother gets a hold of a helicopter or missile system, so crossing a danger area is well… dangerous.

And as usual most players seem to be in for the number of kills. In Homefront the maps and game play encourage everyone to camp and snipe. You’ll see many friends and foes on the outskirts of the maps shooting at the fish in the barrel.

You’ll see many run right past a control point, because they don’t want to capture the objective, they want kills. Now this is a problem in all of the recent action shooters of course, but in Homefront it is really to the extreme and quite comical to see.

I really do get the impression there was no multiplayer testing done on this game whatsoever (external or internal). It sounds as if they drew up a list of "features that would be cool," but never bothered to see how actual players would use (i.e., exploit, just by common human nature) the system.

I will be curious to see if the devs (Digital Extremes handled the PC version, Kaos Studios the rest) are watching and do something about updating and tweaking the multiplayer in response, or if they just throw up their hands and move on to their next project.

[Thin_J]

Anyone claiming that snipers rule the game either didn't play it for more than five minutes or just sucks at it anyway.

You can kill them from halfway across the map with the starting SMG.

[EngineNo9]

SIM HQ review:
http://www.simhq.com/_land3/land_123a.html
Guess what? Booooooooooooing! They didn't like it... At least they went into great detail on why the MP wasn't all that and a bag of chips afterall.

Guess what?  There are these sites that do useful things like aggregating all of the reviews for games. 

And for a less snarky post, the Homefront page has news of the 1.03 PC patch with several fixes, balancing changes and such.  Spoilered for size:

Spoiler for Hiden:

NEW FEATURE – DEMO URL
-         A DemoURL can now be specified in the server playlist, this is used to indicate the location of stored demo files to user’s in-game (see the multiplayer options screen). A good practice for server admins would be to share the demo folder via FTP, this would allow users to grab demos of games they starred in, and also (very importantly!) allow users and anti-cheat authorities to download evidence for cheat reporting. Incidentally, it is now possible to dump all users unique steamID's from both in-game, and in-demos to the console or text file (this will make reporting abusive players and enforcing bans incredibly easy).
 
Improved Squad Based Gameplay
-          Players will now re-spawn at a point nearest to the closest member of their squad.
-          Squad mates will now be colored blue on the mini-map and full-screen maps.
 
GAME BALANCE
-          RPG's now deal additional damage to HMMWV's
-          Lowered m200 and m110 sniper rifle damages. The only 1 shot possible is now headshots.
-          Flak jacket now has a lower BP cost, and a slight effectiveness buff.
-          Diablo damage adjusted
-          Weapon is taken out of ADS and accuracy decreases when jumping.


OPTIMIZATIONS & FIXES
-          The Rhino drones weapon attachment was not being properly moved with the Rhino drone on dedicated servers, causing the rockets to fire incorrectly. This is now fixed.
-          We have added some animation optimizations for large player games.
-          Several UI related improvements were added for large player games .
-          Fixed scaling text zooming on Battle Commander when opening up the battle chat or squad UI.
-          Switched the buttons around on the load out rename confirmation dialog to better abide by conventions.
-          Improved SLI/CrossFireX support.
-          A few reported issues with WinXP 64 bit edition have been addressed.
-          Improved menu navigation with analogue controls.

General Improvements
-          User feedback for kicks and bans has been improved.
-          The intermission lobby now displays clan tags.
-          Text chat is now possible in the kill cam, spawn selection, and intermission lobby screens.
 
New Settings & Control Options
-          EnableD3D10/11 is now accessible via the system settings menu.
-          Mouse acceleration is now accessible via the controls menu.
-          Mouse smoothing is now accessible via the controls menu.

[Blackjack]

SIM HQ review:
http://www.simhq.com/_land3/land_123a.html
Guess what? Booooooooooooing! They didn't like it... At least they went into great detail on why the MP wasn't all that and a bag of chips afterall.

Guess what?  There are these sites that do useful things like aggregating all of the reviews for games. 

Guess what? Neither of those sites have the Sim HQ review.  I pointed it out simply because it went into a great amount of detail of why multiplayer is bleeped up.

I'm glad they're trying to patch it up (I blew $50 on this thing afterall), but well, would've been even nicer if they'd tested the game thoroughly before release and gave it a better fighting chance when it released.

[CeeKay]

now you can see what GT has to say aboot the PC version in the official review.

[Blackjack]

I forgot where I read this, but apparently quite a few Homefront devs were recently pink slipped. I guess it's par for the course for any non-MMO game (once it's done, if you don't have something new for them to work on, there's nothing to do), but it would seem to lessen the chance of an expansion or DLC any time soon.

[CeeKay]

they announced during a earning call that there should be a MP demo coming at some point.