By Alec Meer on June 24th, 2011 at 10:06 am.
This seems like some pretty bloody odd timing, but perhaps it’s THQ taking advantage of a temporary lull in glossy manshoots and seeing if there’s room to sell a few more copies of their noisy March release Homefront, which was their own take on CoDiness. The game, made by now-shuttered NYC developer Kaos, sold pretty well but received what could generously be described as a mixed reaction. Did it deserve praise, sneering or the all-too-rarely traversed middleground? Now you can decide by having a go at the newly-released PC demo, now available via Steam. Power-up the independent thought nodes: where you’re going, you don’t need us.
If, following that, you feel this tale of North Koreans invading America and the resulting resistance is for you, the download version of the game is now selling for half-price until June 27: that’s £14.99 in Britisher-coins. Also, here’s John’s verdict on it.
24/06/2011 at 10:11 HermitUK says:
Edit: In fact, scratch that. Turns out this is a multiplayer demo.
24/06/2011 at 16:26 SuperNashwanPower says:
Confirmed, MP demo only. I dont play MP games, so just fired up a practice map. The graphics look nice and its quite cool to pilot choppers and things. This is me being positive.
24/06/2011 at 20:15 Navagon says:
Well if it was a 10 minute single player demo I don’t know who would be willing to fork out the money for the other half of the campaign.
24/06/2011 at 10:19 Thirdstar says:
I might pick this up in about 6 months when it’s part of yet another steam sale and about a quarter of the original price.
24/06/2011 at 10:19 Mashakosha says:
Might give it a try as I never touched the MP when I played it. Kinda wish I had.
Then again, I thought the game was crap as a whole so maybe I wont.
24/06/2011 at 10:20 stahlwerk says:
So, now that it’s cheaper than DNF, is it better?
24/06/2011 at 10:23 Theodoric says:
know the singleplayer is awful, now I can confirm my suspicions about MP! Great!
24/06/2011 at 10:31 RiptoR says:
If you already bought the game to play the singleplayer, why do you need a demo to test the multiplayer?
Oh, wait… I see…
24/06/2011 at 11:06 Carra says:
Something to do with beards, hooks and parrots?
24/06/2011 at 11:27 Theodoric says:
Something to do with friends with consoles, actually. ;)
24/06/2011 at 16:32 Berzee says:
Ruuuu
fiiiiii
oooooooooo
24/06/2011 at 10:27 CaspianRoach says:
This game is so short, demo is going to be about a half of the full game
24/06/2011 at 11:14 Ravenger says:
The timing is all wrong. For a multiplayer game to be successful you need a demo BEFORE release.
You then benefit from the demo as a beta test, plus you build up a community in advance of the games release.
Releasing a demo months later (and when the game has been virtually unavailable in the UK due to distribution exclusivity agreements) just isn’t going to work as well.
24/06/2011 at 12:43 Creeping Death says:
Virtually unavailable? A quick look shows me the game is available from Game, Amazon, and Play.com for those that like retail copies. Steam, Direct2Drive, Gamersgate… Gosh I really wish this game wasn’t so hard to find xD
24/06/2011 at 11:15 metalangel says:
The multiplayer is excellent. It wasn’t at all what I expected (Kaos after all being behind Desert Combat and the tragically unloved Frontlines) but after that slight surprise/disappointment passed I grew to love it for what it was – pitched somehow right between Battlefield and Call of Duty. Battlefield without a base, or Call of Duty with lots of vehicles. MP is straight up US military vs Korean People’s Army, the resistance side of the story doesn’t figure in it.
People savage the singleplayer because it’s the easy target. Giving the multiplayer a chance might take actual effort.
24/06/2011 at 11:19 oceanclub says:
On a side note, I downloaded the Duke Nukem Forever demo last night. Played for 5 minutes. Uninstalled. Jesus, it was appalling.
P.
24/06/2011 at 11:24 ghiest says:
I would have bought it originally if they didn’t do their shady back-room deals with GAME.co.uk about removing it from steam (for the UK) in the first place. Now they have crap sales overall, NOW they put out a demo and unlock it from steam for us UK people to buy freely. I’ll check out the demo but if it’s as bad as people say then I will probably not end up buying anyway, their loss I suppose.
(btw this is what they did with brink as well and a couple of other games recently)
24/06/2011 at 11:53 Hunam says:
I had a chop at this last night at it felt like a mod or something. I can’t believe this is the sort of game that THQ spend millions on and put forward as their flagship title.
24/06/2011 at 11:54 Nikolaj says:
I want a game where Liechtenstein invades China. Maybe that could be the topic of an expansion.
24/06/2011 at 14:57 Tei says:
Great news. I watched a video of TotalBiscuit playing the MP, and looked half-decent. Actually… It looked fun.
24/06/2011 at 14:59 Axyl says:
“A terrible, terrible game released a Demo, many months after release. Zero shits were given”
It’s a f’kin AWFUL game. I wouldn’t play another second of it if I was paid to do so.
Kill it with fire, and lets all start forgetting this PoS game.
24/06/2011 at 15:38 squirrel says:
For publishers which are too sky to demo their crappy works, we have a great tool called youtube to do the work for them.
So no thanks, I know how Homefront is and I dont bother to try out the demo.
24/06/2011 at 17:31 Thermal Ions says:
Pass. Here in Oz, 50% off only brings it down to US$40 (~GBP 25).
25/06/2011 at 00:47 wazups2x says:
Homefront has a bigger community than Brink.