I was well aware of domestic abuse and sexual assault issues before the SNES launched too.
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Frontlines was a pretty alright game and Red Dawn is a great film, so I'm interested in this one.Also, it's pretty crazy to me that Lumber Liquidators is in this game.
Doesn't look too bad. Wish they'd focus a little more on the single player which seems a ton more interesting.
The battle for first-person shooter supremacy isn't being fought in campaign modes, and it's not going to be won by the one with the most weapons or with the most vehicles. It's going to be won on the servers of Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and of PCs, and it's here that THQ and Kaos's Homefront makes the best account of itself. Homefront, for the record, does have those other areas ticked off handsomely. The backdrop sees John Milius reprise and retool his paranoid fantasy Red Dawn around more contemporary fears, with the Russians of the 1980's original replaced with the united Korea of an imagined near future. In short America has been invaded, its soil churned and burnt by an ongoing conflict sparked by the fall of San Francisco in 2025. While the campaign sets itself at the turning point of the war some two years later, the multiplayer concerns itself with those early skirmishes. It excuses the action in neat fashion – 32 players run amok at Homefront's peak – and opens the door for some distinctive locales. Yes, the idea of a small-town middle America over-run by opposing forces might be familiar from the latter levels of last year's Modern Warfare 2, but Kaos's dedication to the concept reaps its own rewards. Two maps are shown for Homefront's first multiplayer outing. The first, Cul-de-Sac, is a sprawl of once-quaint houses that's been tailored for more intimate battles. It's an eerie blend of the homely with the shanty, its driveways and yards littered with the flotsam of suburbia. Discarded sofas and impromptu iron shacks help describe corridors that flow into more expansive streets and feed into a series of choke points. It's a vision of an America invaded that's at once disconcerting and convincing, and it hosts some exciting gunplay. It's here, with 16 players scooting, sniping and shooting through this tangle, that Homefront asserts its basic credentials. The firepower on offer here doesn't sway from the staples of contemporary shooters and neither do its core mechanics. Smartly, its control system is instantly familiar too, a relief no doubt to those who experienced the muddle at the core of Frontlines, Kaos's last effort. When its combat is up close and personal, it's even got the pep and zip to its action to keep it on a level keel with Modern Warfare 2 - though that 60fps mark is currently some way off, thanks in no small part to the pre-alpha status of the code we play. But it's the deviations from the formula that could make Homefront the dark horse of online shooters. Ticking away underneath Homefront's multiplayer are some mechanics that have an impressive impact upon its make-up. It's chiefly the battle points (BP) that make the difference; they're an in-game currency earned in much the same way as you'd rack up XP in other games, with points pouring in for captured bases, kills and headshots. BP can then be traded for in-game items, from drones through to airstrikes and vehicles from jeeps to through to tanks and much more besides. It makes for a dynamic that Homefront can happily call its own – there's a spend/save mechanic that comes into play as the BP rolls in and you debate whether to call in an airstrike now or hold out and deal out the damage yourself from the controls of an attack helicopter. For a sense of the scale of Homefront's in-game economy, capturing a base is worth 250 BP while the top tier vehicles come in at around 1400 BP. It's a curve that ensures that Homefront's greatest machinery's within reach of the industrious, and also has an influence on the flow of matches. Battles are first fought with assault rifles and pistols; as it wears on they're fought with rocket launchers and Apache gunships. All this comes alive on Farm, the second of the maps on show that can host the full suite of 32 players. It looks like Dorothy's Kansas ripped to shreds, the barnyards and out-houses of a once peaceful idyll making the perfect hideouts for snipers while the fields are torn up by vehicular combat. Those vehicles themselves benefit from another smart twist; if you've enough BP in hand it's possible to spawn behind the controls of a tank, for example, putting an overdue end to the act of players camping out by vehicle spawn points. The one game mode available for the multiplayer reveal, Ground Control, does a good job of playing to Homefront's strong points. It's the mode being shown today. Three territories are spread across the map to be captured, with the team score totting up once they're in a player's possession. Once a score limit has been reached the territories switch, making for an ever-changing battlefield throughout the course of a game. It's superficially similar to Halo: Reach's Invasion mode, though Homefront has more than enough that it can call its own to differentiate it. It looks like Kaos has nailed an intriguing mix of Modern Warfare's dynamism with the open-ended chaos of Battlefield in a way that the forthcoming Medal of Honor reboot is struggling to, and its own additions to the formula make it a worthwhile contender on the FPS battleground.
On one hand, it looks like a low budget MW or Bad Company but at the same time it looks super appealing. Is this one of THQ's $40 games or are they not doing that yet?
Stoney, you in the beta or just going by the vids?
Freedom Fighters was one of my favorite games, previous-gen. I'm always up for more Red Dawn style action.
Okay, the whole "average people with no experience" things starts to fall apart when your team consists of a police officer, former military guy some hunter chick. You being an ex-military helicopter pilot doesn't help much either. I'm still really interested in the game, mostly the single-player which is funny to me because the SP in frontlines was some major garbage.I'll probably rent it and pick it up down the road if the community is there. It's hard for me these days to get excited about MP when I typically find myself going back to Team Fortress 2 or one of the Battlefields.
Shacknews has confirmed that THQ's upcoming "war at home" shooter Homefront will use the company's newly developed Online Pass for multiplayer--recently featured in UFC Undisputed 2010.THQ's Online Pass is a single-use code that is included for free in all new copies of games sporting the "feature." Users who do not have access to a free code--whether it be from rental or purchasing the game second-hand--can purchase an online pass for $10. EA has executed a similar program to sway gamers to purchase new copies of its titles.According to THQ--via Shacknews parent company GameFly--users who do not have an online pass will still be able to play Homefront's online component; however, the experience is limited. Users will have access to all multiplayer maps but can only progress to a maximum level of 5 out of the full experience's 75 levels.Users can continue to play the game online without an online pass for as long as they choose but will not be able to progress past the capped level. The single-player portion of Homefront is unaffected by online pass status.Shacknews has sent a note to THQ to find out how the level progression in Homefront functions, and whether the game unlocks items and modes over the course of the level progression (as seen in recent Call of Duty games, for example) or if it completely open. We have yet to hear back at the time of publishing.
White Castle Do they even have White Castles in the Western US? Isn't that where this game takes place?
I like how GAF is like "BUBUBUBU SO UNREALISTIC, WORST PLOT EVER" like Modern Warfare 2 and BLOPS and shit had these super-realistic plots. Red Dawn 2: Attack of the Yellow People
Why use such an implausible fantasy like North Korea invading America, making Americans victims when there are such an incredible number of real world situations to draw from? I think of that shootout with the baby and how much more powerful if it might have been if it was, say, an American soldier trapped in an Afghani house, being shot at by the Taliban, and having to hear the shrieking of a poor Afghani baby and his or her mother.
How about IGN's Metriod Prime = Citizen Kane arguing with one of the developers? And sounding like a complete dick?http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/114/1142893p1.html
Why can't you affect the player's ability to aim for the sake of the theme and creating emotion? Why can't you tell players this experience is going to be more about feeling than winning?
Quote Games like Killzone 2 took chances affecting the basic controls to make players feel differently.I remember how sluggish controls and feeling like I was playing as a midget had a real, emotional impact on me while playing Killzone 2.Fuck this guy. Why does he have a job? I bet he thinks Braid is some amazing work of art.
Games like Killzone 2 took chances affecting the basic controls to make players feel differently.
During the final day at the THQ "Gamers' Day" event in New York, Xbox Live's Major Nelson revealed that all multiplayer DLC for the upcoming Kaos Studio shooter Homefront will arrive on the Xbox 360 first. Microsoft has a similar deal in place for all Call of Duty series DLC. Additionally, Xbox 360 users will receive an exclusive multiplayer map when the game launches later this year. The map, 'Suburbs,' is here at the event. Expect full hands-on impressions of the map and a new mode for the game's multiplayer next week. Whether the 'Suburbs' map will eventually be available on the PC and PS3 is unclear.
- 1 ps3 sale.might pick it up for 9 pounds though.
How dare they support the console that the game will sell on the most!
"He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks." Those are the words of Sun Tzu, a man who would have had a lot of time for Homefront, where everyone is spiritually drawn toward camping behind rocks and using remote-control helicopter drones to spam one another with rockets.Helicopter drones are a lot of fun. Knuckle down somewhere private to spawn a buzzing little friend and you can zoom through the sky from his perspective, raining down hellfire on unsuspecting KPA or US troops depending on your allegiance.The kills you make with a drone - and there will be plenty - are not so valuable to your team's score as ground kills, but they are far more disruptive to an enemy's movements over open ground. They can make the difference between securing an objective and simply being mown down.And helicopter drones, while immediately gratifying, are just one of many delights available as part of Homefront's impressive Battle Points system. BPs are awarded for kills, assists and other things Sun Tzu would probably respect. Prior to each match you can customise your loadouts across six battle classes so that you can spend BPs on buffs, weapons and gizmos in the heat of the action.(Helicopter drones are not as game-breaking as they sound - if the enemy shows signs of over-reliance on drones, you can always go hunting for the operators in the backyards and houses of the neighbourhoods you're fighting through.)Other BP purchases include flak jackets, RPGs, and different drones - there's a little WALL-E style tank with a machinegun who proves very popular - and each class loadout gets two "purchase slots" to stock with them. In battle, providing you have sufficient BP, you just hit up or down on the d-pad to buy and make immediate use of your desired toy.BP can also be spent on vehicles at the point of spawn - tanks, Humvees, even proper helicopters. As you would imagine, the range of available purchases grows considerably as you accumulate experience and graduate up the ranks of officerhood within Homefront's progression system.You can also customise your primary weapon, its attachment, special explosives and abilities (perks) depending on your rank. While all the classes can be modified to some degree the basic setups are assault, SMG, heavy (my favourite), sniper, tactical and stealth.Kaos is also making noises about how accessible its vehicles are ("This is not the sort of game where you spend two hours learning how to fly a helicopter," says multiplayer man Erin Daly, truthfully).But the big change we've been invited to New York and THQ's Gamer's Week to experience is something else. It's called Battle Commander, and it's described to us as an artificial intelligence (we're going to go ahead and guess it's actually a bunch of algorithms) that watches over matches for which it is deployed and tasks individual players with specific missions that make sense to the context of the ongoing conflict.There are shades of Splash Damage's Brink to this, and welcome ones - if a player or a group of players is doing particularly well, the Battle Commander may assign them missions based on their particular proficiency. A sniper may be told to secure another three successive kills, for example. The rewards for doing so are additional buffs and more dramatic Battle Commander objectives.Missions are rated out of five stars. As individuals (or groups, or even specific drones) advance up the star scale the opposing team's Battle Commander takes notice and designates those individuals for specific fire missions, providing heads-up display directions to opposing players so they can try to shut down their killing sprees.Kaos describes it as "making large-scale warfare personal" and "supporting basic revenge instincts with escalating rewards", but a simpler way to put it is that it organises combat so that nobody gets too big for their boots. Moreover, taking out people on Battle Commander missions confers a lot more Battle Points.At first we play regular rounds of Team Deathmatch and Ground Control (a capture-and-hold mode where the frontline of combat is pushed across the map by shifting objectives based on each team's score) without the Battle Commander, and they are interesting enough.The Cul-de-Sac map's abandoned houses, backyard swing-sets and piles of overturned family saloons make for intricate, claustrophobic killzones, while Farm's steep hills, barns and open spaces are a drone-lover's paradise.But the introduction of Battle Commander on Suburb - an Xbox 360-exclusive map full of neat wooden houses and interesting sight-lines for snipers - alters the flow. The best intentions of team-mates at multiplayer FPS press events rarely coagulate into actual co-operation for longer than a couple of minutes, but the Battle Commander's tasking eases players naturally together as they converge on high-value targets.Kaos' goal may simply have been to burnish instinctive FPS behaviour with structure and reward, but it also seems to encourage lone wolves to work together - not unlike Valve's celebrated AI Director in the Left 4 Dead series."If you're not going to bring something new to the table then why even bother?" senior level designer Rex Dickson says to us prior to our first experience with Battle Commander. His comments aren't aiming for any other FPS specifically, but in a genre where everyone politely uses slightly different names for the same systems and annual changes to rulesets are met with great fanfare, it's a nice attitude to encounter.Battle Commander isn't as mighty an advance as THQ's grandiose introduction of it might suggest, but it, along with experience clearly drawn from Kaos' endeavours with the useful if not spectacular Frontlines: Fuel of War, suggest that Homefront multiplayer will be competitive when it hits in March.Allied to a bold singe-player campaign heavily influenced by Half-Life 2, it could make for a game that injects much-needed new energy into a polished but increasingly homogenised modern combat genre. Sun Tzu would probably like that.
whens this shit out again god damn
This leaked a couple of hours ago. Only see the PC version but apparently the 360 version is out there too.Don't believe it can be played yet. Also I'm not sure how games with steamworks are played without using steam. Don't you need to be connected online via a legit steam account.
I have no idea why MS is backing this game... I really did like Frontlines though. So I'm willing to try this one out.
