Homefront: The Revolution is coming this week. Is anyone else getting it?

[Ambient_Malice]

Spoiler

This one has gone under the radar a bit. It's an open world CryEngine FPS from Dambuster Studios, formerly known as Crytek UK, formerly known as Free Radical (TimeSplitters). The game is effectively a reboot of the original Homefront with a new alternate universe timeline, and is fundamentally a different sort of game.

The game looks a bit chuggy and buggy in the preview footage, but Dambuster are promising a Day 1 patch that will hopefully iron out the issues. I'm hoping this turns out good because urban open world FPS games are very rare, and this feels very much like the open world game Crysis 2 could have been, just without nanosuit powers.

 

[tippy2k2]

I will be keeping an eye on it and if the reviews are at least somewhat good, I will be picking it up at some point in the far away future (sorry video games but I have one hell of a backlog as it is and by the time I get to you, it would have dropped substantially).

I just hope they do...well....anything with the story. Such wasted potential in the first game that I'm hoping they fix in this one.

So my hopes are low but my hopes were also low for Doom and look how that turned out.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

This is one of the few games that I have thought "Wow, I really don't want to play this". It looks so... mediocre. And the "'MURICA! FUCK YEAH!" vibes don't help.

I might pick it up if it was 10 dollars or something, like three years from now.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

And the "'MURICA! FUCK YEAH!" vibes don't help.

The obvious fact the game is British aside, what strikes you as "'MURICA! FUCK YEAH!" about the game?

 

[Elfgore]

I've been keeping somewhat of an eye on it for a bit. Looks alright. I'll probably wait for reviews and a sale before purchasing.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

And the "'MURICA! FUCK YEAH!" vibes don't help.

The obvious fact the game is British aside, what strikes you as "'MURICA! FUCK YEAH!" about the game?

How is the game British? Sure, it's made by British developers, but all the Battlefield games were made by Swedes, and their campaigns all have American protagonists.

I dunno, that opening cutscene had my eyes rolling. Maybe its because I hate my own country, but I can't stand it when someone refers to their country as a "she". I feel like the "We have to take back our country" thing is crazy overdone. Especially when it's the States, seems a tad hypocritical. For fuck's sake, they have a loading screen picture where a guy is wearing an American flag as a cape.

I guess I'm not the patriotic type. Elections just finished here, and I am feeling real resentful towards my "motherland".

 

[Catfood220]

I had my eye on it but the reviews have not been that kind to it, so I have decided against it. Uncharted 4 and Valkyria Chronicles will have to be my games for this month. Maybe if it gets cheap, maybe if it gets to about ?10 I could get some fun out of it.

 

[Mcgeezaks]

I thought it looked pretty horrendous from the first time they showed some actual gameplay and judging from the reviews I was right. So no, I won't be getting it any time soon.

 

[K12]

I wasn't planning on getting it anyway but after reading this http://www.thejimquisition.com/homefront-the-revolution-review/ I'm definitely not getting it.

 

[B-Cell_v1legacy]

No thanks. it looks utterly generic. and watching some footage it looks like perfect example of how not to make a game.

especially Doom just released there is no room for homefront and its also bombed in reviews.

 

[MysticSlayer]

I'm actually surprised this even managed to release. How much has it been through exactly? If I'm remembering correctly, it's gone through two bankruptcies and at least one supposed cancellation.

All that might explain why it's failing. Sort of disappointed too. The first game showed promise, even if it wasn't that good itself, and I would have liked a good Homefront game. And I was rooting for The Revolution to do well but sort of lost hope with everything the companies working on it went through.

Oh well, at least there's still Modern Warfare 2.

 

[09philj]

A pitch for a good Homefront game:

The idea is to combine management with action. You start out operating from a small, ill equipped base. You can complete different types of job to upgrade it and acquire more gear. In addition, as you complete minor objectives, major ones will be unlocked (The main story campaign). You would be able to choose what kind of research and construction you wanted done, giving you control of what extra abilities you get. So, you could specialise in making traps, stealth gear, and silenced weapons, or make armour, explosives, and assault rifles and get a very different experience.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

No thanks. it looks utterly generic.

...

especially Doom just released

Doom is the literal definition of a generic game. I know you hate modern FPS design with a passion, but let's not pretend Doom 4 is anything original or non-generic.

Anyhow, annoyingly, Homefront 2 isn't being released outside America until the 20th, so I'm still waiting. With some luck, it might get some hotfix patches before then.

Ian Miles Cheong from Gameranx gave it 8/10. http://gameranx.com/features/id/53843/article/homefront-the-revolution-review-make-america-great-again/

I'm actually surprised this even managed to release. How much has it been through exactly?

Was originally a Crytek UK project. (Free Radical with a new name.) Crytek stopped paying salaries, and the IP was sold to Deep Silver, who acquired the entire team and renamed them Dambuster.

Somewhere around this point, the lead developer decided that he wanted to rework the game, which was at that point a linear FPS game, into an open world one. There's something ridiculous about the basic paradox here. If the game was left as it was, people would cry, "Call of Duty clone", and by making it open world, people cry, "Far Cry clone!" Nevermind that the same people were whining for years about Crytek making their games less open, and this being basically the opposite of stuff like Crysis 2.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

This isn't exactly a fresh complaint, but is anyone else getting increasingly sick so many narrations being read out by Gravelly McGravel-Voice the amazing chain smoker? I cringed at that narration and how hard they were trying to make him sound tough and rugged.

Speaking of cringe, after watching the first few cutscenes for the game I think I've got yet more confirmation that games that stop the gameplay constantly for high production-value cinematatics should absolutely fuck off with their silent protagonist fetish. I could not give less of a shit about people's defense of this absurd practice with "but my immersion;" I really can't be immersed in the story of a severely socially-retarded mute who seems to hold a religious conviction to never uttering so much as a sound.
I just watched up to 20 minute mark of the linked video, up to the point where we've had the cliche "resistance member finds their way to the super secret rebel base and is mistaken for a spy/enemy" part of the plot, and past the point where the protagonist is about to be tortured by said resistance, and at no point did this cretin think to tell them he's with the resistance and make them check his ID to prove it, he just awkwardly stares at them until someone else coincidentally does it for him.

It seems like such a waste of money to pour all this time and effort into animating every facial muscle and normal mapping every crease into people's foreheads when it's at the service of these awkward cinematics where you can practically feel the effort they've put into bending over backwards to make sure the protagonist never speaks.

Either give us some kind of character creator and/or gameplay options that allow us to shape this character through their actions in the story; or give us a well fleshed out character with a personality of their own. Or just throw story and narrative in the bin and focus on creating a fun game, but don't pour the majority of the budget into obsessing over the preset story and its expensive cinematics while paradoxically setting the entire thing around some blank slate protagonist.
Now, you can have a well told story with a protagonist that's not very interesting if the rest of the characters make up for it, but there's a difference between "not very interesting" and "purposefully blank," and when their vow of silence starts creating problems for the story that's when it's time to pack it in. With every question posed towards the protagonist that goes unanswered my ability to suspend disbelief of all these video game tropes diminishes significantly.

 

[Zhukov]

Well, as if the abysmal reviews weren't enough to turn me off it, that video just went ahead and finished the job!

Visuals: Shit.
Sound: Exists.
Gameplay: Definition of Generic
Story: AAAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Oh, and something about it makes my eyes hurt. Literally. Might be a combination of low FOV and framrate. Not sure.

Lastly, trying to make the modern USA an underdog comes across just as dumb and contrived as it did in the first game.

 

[Skatalite]

No thanks. it looks utterly generic. and watching some footage it looks like perfect example of how not to make a game.

especially Doom just released there is no room for homefront and its also bombed in reviews.

But I thought reviews didn't matter? You know, ''reviewers only rate hype'' and all that.

This isn't exactly a fresh complaint, but is anyone else getting increasingly sick so many narrations being read out by Gravelly McGravel-Voice the amazing chain smoker? I cringed at that narration and how hard they were trying to make him sound tough and rugged.

Depends. I think it's done well in this Mafia III trailer [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTnriTnBDAg] for example.

 

[Dalisclock]

Lastly, trying to make the modern USA an underdog comes across just as dumb and contrived as it did in the first game.

I think that's what gets me with these games(and the New Red Dawn film). China or Russia invading the US aren't likely but at least come across as plausible given a large enough military buildup and a seriously antagonistic government. North Korea,OTOH, so far is unable to even invade South Korea, let alone mount a successful trans-pacific invasion. North Korea having hovertanks was stretching it pretty bad in Advanced Warfare but I let it slide because that was the intro mission and the rest of the game has little to do with it.

Seriously, I wish they'd just go with alternate timeline of "China is really expansionist and militaristic in this universe and they're invading the US after a protracted pacific war which the US has been on the losing end of for years" instead of "North Korea, because we don't want to offend the Chinese and lose out on their sales".

It's up there with ISIS invading Texas and somehow managing not only to conquer, but hold it. It's not gonna happen in any semi-realistic scenario.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

After looking at the actual gameplay I can certainly see why people keep comparing it to Far Cry. Pretty much everything from the gameplay, interface, story, and even certain visuals make the game look a Far Cry rip off with less polish. At first I was somewhat reluctant to call it a Far Cry clone due to how often people will declare something a rip off, but having played both Far Cry 3 & 4 it's just unmistakable how much they ripped off gained inspiration from it.

 

[Cowabungaa]

I want to but uhhh...


Oh my that's sloppy. It's a shame too, I liked the idea of this game. But the execution looks pretty damn bad.

Doom is the literal definition of a generic game. I know you hate modern FPS design with a passion, but let's not pretend Doom 4 is anything original or non-generic.

In this day and age Doom 4 is anything but generic. It and Shadow Warrior, and the odd indie title (Hard Reset comes to mind), are pretty much the only big examples of the kind of FPS gameplay that they offer.