RPS Feature Frontin'
The hot potato of gaming, tossed from publisher to publisher, is somehow complete. Homefront: The Revolution [official site] is out today in the US, and then anachronistically, for no bloody sodding reason, delayed for Europe until Friday. (Is there still a shop that even sells PC games?) In development for five long years, can it possibly hold together? The answer for this open-world shooter is an interesting one.
RPS Feature The Philadelphia Experiment
I’m not sure how a Homefront sequel that I didn’t really care about became a Crysis game that I really want to play, but that’s what I saw the other day. Homefront: The Revolution is Crysis. Hilariously Crysis. So very very Crysis. And yet it’s a Crysis game that Crytek haven’t even managed to make, despite having all the component parts.
Now they are, and it’s a Homefront game. I am confused.
The sequel to Homefront that you probably weren’t eagerly anticipating has been announced in the form of a trailer that you can see below. There’s no in-game footage but we sent roving reporter Craig ‘Craig Pearson’ Pearson to get some first-hand impressions and he managed to enage my interest with one phrase: “It’s basically a sandbox City 17.” Maybe eager anticipation should begin right about now? We’ll have a full feature tomorrow with more on that but for now I’m left with a trailer that shows terrorists freedom fighters striking back at an oppressive military occupation. Drones, explosions and urban gunfights below the break.
THQ is dead. Long live… er, not THQ. But its motionless remains haven’t gone undisturbed. A number of major publishers descended, vulture-like, to make off with the choicest cuts money could buy. And also Homefront. Yesterday, however, we had no idea what exactly was next for the likes of Metro, Saints Row, Company of Heroes, Darksiders, and South Park. Sure, they’ve found new homes, but will they fit in? Or will they be forced to live in the cramped cupboards of neglect, with nary a wizarding school in sight? Well, it’s still a bit early to say for sure, but – based on comments from each publisher – things are at least looking up.
RPS Feature Wherefore Warface?
If you climb to the top of Mt Videogameland, you’ll see that Crysis 3 is just over the thoroughly tessellated, HDR-lit horizon. That, however, is hardly the only thing that’s got Crytek’s tear-powered mega-lair whirring along at maximum efficiency. There’s also Homefront 2, Warface, Ryse, an entire F2P social platform, piracy concerns, and a brand new Crysis – which is totally not Crysis 4, but also kind of is. I spoke with Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli about all of this things and also asked him the question that’s almost certainly been devouring your every idle thought for far too many months: why’s it called “Warface”?
Having closed down Homefront developers, Kaos Studios, earlier this year, THQ have had to look elsewhere to create a sequel for the massively disappointing shooter. They seem to be going straight to the top. It has just been announced that the publishers are partnering with Crysis creators, Crytek, for the project. The company, currently rumoured to be working on Timesplitters 4, and certainly developing a 360 exclusive, Ryse, for Microsoft, is certainly diverging away from its previous EA-only development. And with multiple studios and presumably Crysis 3 a good way off, it makes sense for them to be picking up work like this.
