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.
Face-shooting Red Dawn fanfic Homefront: The Revolution [official site] has had a funny old time. After shutting down Homefront creator Kaos Studios, publishers THQ turned to their Montreal studio for the sequel, then looked to Crytek UK as THQ fell apart. Crytek bought the game and rights in the THQ fire sale and revealed the game at E3 2014. Less than two months later, suffering their own financial problems, Crytek sold Homefront to Deep Silver and shifted the dev team over. Strange times.
Now Homefront: The Revolution has resurfaced at Gamescom, with a new cinematic trailer showing how happy everyone in Philadelphia is living under Korean rule:
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.
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.
I KEEP saying I’ll do this regularly, but something about numbered lists makes me curl into a tiny ball and weep for mother. Anyway, let’s do it this week and maybe I’ll be a better boy again next week. Here’s the top ten best-selling released PC games on Steam last week, in comparison to the top 10 at UK retail. As always, there are some verrrry interesting variations, which have much to say about both Steam and retail’s own peccadilloes…
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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.
IP! It’s all we really want. IP! It’s all games really are. IP! It’s more precious than gold. IP! Creators don’t matter, only owners do. IP! It’ll eat your children, and your little dog too.
Another Homefront game has been confirmed (to Eurogamer) by THQ, in spite of middling to scathing reviews, which is because it sold pretty well. Sadly, apparently not well enough to ensure the future of its primary creators, New York studio Kaos. They’re being closed down as we speak, with the given reason being “a strategic realignment.”
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Another week, another Spotlight On Biscuit, wherein we direct you to one of prodigious gaming commenter Total Biscuit’s videos for the week, and also discuss a biscuit. This week, it’s Homefront Multiplayer and the humble Bourbon biscuit.
I wouldn’t say I’m starting to regret this idea just yet, but I have realised that there are more weeks in the year than biscuits that I could name. Hm.
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Homefront was finally released in the UK yesterday after a pointless three day delay. Unfortunately a wayward postie failed to deliver our copy in time for a day one review. Day two it is then, because wow, this isn’t very long. But is it concentrated glory, still worth your time? Read on to find out Wot I Think.
The real headline here is that Homefront has sold 375,000 copies on its first day of release. In the US. Where it has been released. Unlike the rest of the world. And honestly, I’ve had enough of this nonsense. So you know what – I’m going to get it changed. I pledge that by this time next year, games will be released on the same day in the UK as they are in the US. The rest of the world, you can organise your own campaigns. I’m only one man, with one powerful website behind him. Watching Homefront preload, even though the internet contains no oceans.
Good morning, good morning, my frail and noble villagers of this leaky hamlet we call PC gaming. Homefront‘s out in America tomorrow and in Europe and Australia on Friday, so if you ever wanted to shoot a man with a gun then this is the week for you. All the reviews I can find online are 9/10s so far, which sounds good. The launch trailer awaits you below, packed tightly with footage of expensive military hardware blowing up. Better than any morning cup of tea, eh?
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I’ve been looking forward to Homefront ever since I saw it at E3 in 2009. Along with Just Cause 2, the demo we saw showed a game with a mad sense of catastrophic glee, set in a refreshingly familiar world of suburban cul-de-sacs and department store carparks. Accompanied by a remotely controlled armoured vehicle, Goliath, it looked like it could be the buddy game of the century – just you and your indestructible rolling weapon machine. The narrative intrigued too, by seeming so ludicrous: by 2027 North Korea has invaded and occupied North America, with you playing as part of a group of rebels attempting to overthrow the new leaders. Now having played the first three levels of the game, it’s safe to say that all my expectations have been subverted.
Machinima has an exclusive new Homefront trailer. Yes. I’m not sure it’s quite as interesting as the more detailed alternate timeline stuff the developers have been putting out that shows how North Korea could successfully invade the USA, but it does feature many explosions. The game’s out on March 18th, you know. So soon! The explosions will be ours so soon.
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What do you own? Not “pwn”, you nu-gamer young person. But own. What do you pay for that’s yours to do with as you wish? Food, clothes, knitting needles. But what about games? When you pay money for a game, do you own it? Increasingly, not in any understood meaning of the word. Like music over the last couple of decades, we’re currently sleeping through having our rights as consumers taken from us, while the prices stay the same. If you buy an album, do you own that music? No – not at all. If you do anything with that music other than listen to it on the CD it came on, or as the files you downloaded, then you’re breaking an ever-more spurious collection of laws. And increasingly, gaming is going in the same direction. What was once considered sharing – and we’re not even talking about copying here – is now being treated as theft. And THQ, as reported by Shacknews, are going out of their way to prevent sharing or re-selling of Homefront.
Is Homefront poorly-timed or perfectly-timed? I’d love to have been a fly on the wall in THQHQ when news broke about the recent violence between North and South Korea. “Does this mean the game’s screwed or a guaranteed success?”, I imagine a man with expensive business cards saying. No-one at THQHQ actually said that, of course. I’m just imagining what it might have been like. It’s like The West Wing, but with Rachael Bilson’s dad and some Space Marine statues in the halls.
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Hup, hup, quickly now. Over on Eurogamer at the moment is a preview wot I dun wrote about THQ’s upcoming COD-like shooter Homefront. Looks promising, but the whole ‘North Korea invades America’ plot isn’t a particularly comfortable or believable concept. The game’s definitely THQ trying to hit it out the park rather than hang around in the cheap-seats, though.
For more on how the once-beleaguered publisher is trying to rejoin the big leagues, have a read of my interview with one of their biggest (and mouthiest) wigs, Danny Bilson. Yes, perv-o-gossips, he’s the father of the OC’s Rachel Bilson. Also includes him frothing about the Warhammer 40K MMO, and comfirming the inclusion of Titans. Titans!
Yesterday I mentioned that there had been two games at E3 this week that had made me laugh out loud at their scale and audacity. The first was Just Cause 2, the second was Kaos Studios‘ Homefront. The first thing you’ll read about Homefront anywhere is that it’s written by John Milius, the screenwriter behind Red Dawn and Apocalypse Now. But let’s not forget he also wrote and directed Conan The Barbarian. It would be inappropriate to do otherwise. Anyhow, the more important thing to know about it is the Goliath armoured vehicle that accompanies you for much of the game.
