Homefront a "Disaster"?

[Zac Smith]

Just read this article about the scores for Homefront http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108497-THQ-Hammered-by-Sub-Par-Homefront-Scores

Metacritic at the moment is giving it a 7.0 What I don't understand is how people can rate a game 7.0 and still deem it a " a disaster for THQ" and the game itself a "critical failure. I understand that game designers strive to create good quality titles, but since when is 7.0 a disaster?

Bulletstorm got 7.7 and thats seeming to go down rather well

 

[Hiphophippo]

That's how this industry is. Reviews were already not all that worth reading and then metacritic came onto the scene with it's shady "interpreting" of reviews. If it's not a giant hit it's a disaster.

Better to just make up your own mind about games.

 

[Zac Smith]

I was a little late with the edit, but what about the example of bulletstorm getting 7.7 and seeming o be doing well?

 

[Dingmania]

Homefront multiplayer IS the game, its the only thing kaos can salvage at this point, but the MP is amazing and deep, i gave it an eight out of ten

 

[Zhukov]

What I don't understand is how people can rate a game 7.0 and still deem it a " a disaster for THQ" and the game itself a "critical failure. I understand that game designers strive to create good quality titles, but since when is 7.0 a disaster?

You are assuming that the average is 5/10.

However, for some reason reviewers for games tend to give out really high scores.

So, relative to other review scores, 70% really is a disaster.

 

[Deathninja19]

It's because everything that gets under and 8 or and 80% is deemed to be bad not average but just bad. It's become part of readers and some critics psychology that they view the 80% as a passing grade and not the 50 or 60% it should be this could be due to multiple things such as the price of games forcing people to carefully pick purchases out or that due to lack of AA or even A games that anything less than a AAA game is simply dismissed after a certain grade.

It's a shame because I remember the days of PS2 or even PS1 when you could find a game no matter how it critically did and still have lots of fun with it without nitpicking the fact that it isn't the most advanced or that it doesn't compare to game X.

I believe it's everyones fault the price point of games is too high and so are players percieved standards, if the price is lowered than more people would take chances and possibly find games that they'd enjoy and possibly come to love.

 

[Janus Vesta]

You should also note that a critical failure is not a financial failure. Beyond Good and Evil was a critical success but it sold very poorly.

 

[maxibonito]

the thing is, the developers of homefront said they were aiming to make you stop and think while playing the game. not in the 'this puzzle is hard, im actually stopping to think about it', but in the phscology of the killing. since i wasn;t sure of the game, i decided to play the copy my friend had, just to decide whether i should buy it, and there wasn't a 'wow, what im doing is having a terrible affect on others...' moment at all. boone dies, not the saddest thing, when you consider how the other characters react. innocent civilians getting killed? not linked to you directly. even the token emotional and sensitive character didn't bat an eyelash. the main thing i'm trying to say is: they were given a low score cus they didn't live up to the expectations i set.

(sorry if i went off track there, i often ramble and forget what im saying)

 

[Bill Bread]

From what I've seen, 7 is far too flipping generous.

 

[Rednog]

From what I've seen, 7 is far too flipping generous.

Pretty much this, hell if you read the break down for some review scores, some reviewers go as far as saying the single player is a 5-6 while the multiplayer is an 8 or so and it somehow averages out to ~7.

 

[kane.malakos]

It's been declared a disaster mainly because THQ was relying on it to be one of their big releases for the year. It's probably an okay game, but it hasn't sold well and THQ's stock has dropped.

 

[godofallu]

People are expecting too much from the single player campaign is the problem.

Think about the average AAA FPS game, take COD (pick your favorite) for example. You play the campaign for 8 hours once. Then spend about 150 hours playing the multiplayer.

Homefront is supposed to be the same way, you have a small campaign (5 hours not 8) in order to learn the guns and feel of the game. Then you go online and get sucked into the world and play another 150 hours.

The question should be if Homefronts multiplayer is good enough to compete with COD and Battlefield. If it is then I can see people spending 150 hours playing this game, and for 60 bucks that's one hell of a deal. If it isn't then people will spend 5 hours + 2 before they trade it in.

 

[HasimirFenring]

I believe that it receives 'low' scores because it has placed too much of an emphasis on the single player during its marketing and this way caused people to judge it mostly like a single player game.

While if you look at the battlefield series for example, whose main selling point has always been multiplayer, people judge it for its multiplayer.

So, in short, I blame both shortsighted critics and the marketing department

(I didn't play the game, so I can't judge its actual quality

 

[Malgani10]

I'am shocked that this game wasn't recognized for what it truly is, a generic, underwhelming, exploitative, rip off. Some reviewers have proclaimed that this is a 'fresh take on the FPS genre', others say its a 'breath of fresh air', I ask them if we played the same game. This game has the most rudimentary shooter elements I've ever seen, even the extremely linear COD titles give you more freedom. How come none of the reviewers mentioned that specific parts of the game were imported directly from COD? Slow motion room sweeps? Check. Knife swipe animation? Check. On rails sections? Check. C-137 section? Check. This game is poorly executed, and it wouldn't surprise me if money made its way from the developers into the reviewers hands. 7 is entirely to high a score for this game. A 4 or 5 would have sufficed as a general average.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

If 7/10s, 5/10s, and 3/5s are bad...Then I have played more bad games than good ones.

 

[scnj]

Metacritic at the moment is giving it a 7.0 What I don't understand is how people can rate a game 7.0 and still deem it a " a disaster for THQ" and the game itself a "critical failure. I understand that game designers strive to create good quality titles, but since when is 7.0 a disaster?

Bulletstorm got 7.7 and thats seeming to go down rather well

It's not a bad score, but it's also not a score that stands up to Call of Duty's 8s and 9s. A lot of share holders were hoping that Homefront would be the new CoD and when the score wasn't as promised, they panicked and started selling.