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[Game] Homefront

My housemate got it, to be fair the SP is laughable ...
The SP is laughable, in spite of what certain individuals are trying to claim.

Clearly there are players that are so undemanding that a bucket of sand and a broken shovel would amuse them.

Chatted with a couple of mates that are playing MP, they too excoriated the SP, but say the MP is reasonably fun, and at least you don't have to watch the ludicrously funny path-finding of the NPC or listen to the B-movie dialogue.
 
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So quote worthy..

HeyCarnut said:
Clearly there are players that are so undemanding that a bucket of sand and a broken shovel would amuse them.

..one day (hopefully) developers will realize there is a valid market of gamers with sophisticated tastes out there. If only they would grow some balls and explore the adult market.
 
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I'll be waiting till its cheap to pick this one up, mainly just for the novelty of playing on MP maps that look like my neighborhood. I like familiar looking maps a lot more than the typically exotic locales.

I heard they are already making an expansion. HomeFront: The Northern War.

Apparently North Korea did not find any oil in the main 48 states so they packed up and went to Alaska to obtain oil. Now you take control of an American Polar bear cavalry regiment of sergeants extreme to push back the new Asiatic threat to save your delicious wild salmon . . . . and oil . . . and freedom.

Now THIS would be a confirmed pre-order from announcement day.
 
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My editied notes from SP gameplay

My editied notes from SP gameplay

The details from my four turd rating. These are my opinions, YMMV.

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Firstly, let’s get my biases out of the way. This is important: each gamer will have their own likes and dislike, their own needs and desires, their own ‘hot button’ items for a given game. A review is mostly subjective opinion and experience. As such, views may differ wildly between two players of a game. Objective issues (e.g. technical issues, bugs, etc.) fall into the ‘facts’ category, but clearly player bias influences the impact of these on overall game experience and satisfaction. There really can’t be a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ subjective opinion: each gamer must make up their own mind in the end as to the quality of a game, barring gross and obvious defects.

I like games that are technically proficient: they run well, with few if any serious bugs. The immersion should not be interrupted by ‘unrealistic’ actions or interactions, at least as far as those having to do with ‘real’ human characters. Sci-Fi games can get away with more here, since who is to say what is ‘real’ in those.

I like eye candy, but not at the expense of game play mechanics.

I like good audio: realistic weapon sounds, character sounds, music. Particularly the latter: really good ‘mood music’ can dramatically enhance the immersion for me, just as good cinema relies on the soundtrack to enhance the viewing experience.

NPC action should seem ‘real’ for me: goofy path finding, retarded activity, etc. can wreck the immersion for me.

Game ‘flow’ is important to me. Don’t cut scene me to death, and FFS, don’t make me have to play too many ‘playable’ cut scenes.

Play time length is important in SP for me. Ten plus hours at $50 for a game seems fair to me. Four or less does not, excepting everything else being absolutely superb. On this, replay value counts a lot for me: open games fare better than very linear games in general.

I am mostly interested in SP: MP Pub play is so wrecked IMHO that other than controlled competitive play or play with trusted friends, I seldom bother playing MP any more.

With that out of the way, my thoughts on Homefront single player, in the rough order of my ‘likes’ above:

Technical Proficiency:
Overall, I encountered only one ‘bug’ (see NPC action below for issues that some might put here but I view as programming choices by the DEVs). A few times, when respawning after a death, a weapon I was carrying was gone, and/or weapons discarded were no longer on the ground. Minor, but irritating, particularly if I’d just made a weapon swap that turned out to be a poor choice. 5:4 aspect ratio seems a bit screwed up: sight picture is oval. I’d like to get wood from the NPC’s supplier. Even thin wood is impenetrable by the most powerful weapon, yet you will see bullet holes tattooed throughout the game’s structures.
B

Eye Candy:
The graphics are good at higher settings. In fact, they're quite acceptable at low settings. Nothing awe inspiring, but good. In most of the game, there seems to be little difference in visual quality between the lower settings and higher settings, despite a fairly significant FPS penalty. Comparing screenshots, the changes are often quite subtle, and in fast-paced play, hardly noticeable except perhaps for water. Some minor and very infrequent ‘hitching’ (from streaming?) on a lower-end test system (Q6600/8800GTS), but quite playable at reasonable settings. No playability issues on high-end test machines.
B-

Audio:
Decent. The character audio is puzzling sometimes, sounding like you’re hearing them over a walkie-talkie, despite them being next to you. Dialogue is a bit b-movie stilted a times, good for a giggle at how cliche it can be. Music ranges from just OK to compelling. Some parts of the game benefited from the music adding to the tension of the mood. Weapon sounds are fair - certainly nothing like the realism of say recent DICE shooters. Saved from a C- by a few quite good sections of music.
B-

NPC action:
Some seriously goofy, robotic path-finding action here. Occasional NPC stupidity is evidenced. Characters crouching behind a box, weapon penetrating said box while shooting is one of the WTF moments seen by me. NPC happily facing away from a fire fight, standing in wildly open space and apparently meditating, yet not incurring the wrath of the enemy is equally bizarre and immersion busting.The inability to pass an NPC at times (‘playable’ cut scenes), or doors / gates / etc. being impassible until all your NPC teammates have passed leads to yet more WTF moments. Typical “got you covered, go do XYZ...NOT” is seen, and NPC often bypass enemy with no ill effects, only to have said enemy stick a barrel up your butt when you pass. Too much “no, really, that enemy is all yours, I insist” action, where an enemy is practically begging to get dispatched by one of your NPC teammates, but they do nothing. Some movement by NPC (bullfrog like leaps, flitting like they have nuclear powered roller skates) is just plain outlandish. Several instances of ‘sneaking’ by enemy NPC, improbably close and all the while having dialogue yelled at you, with nary a twitch from the enemy is immersion killing.
D+

Game Flow:
Decent. A bit fractured - it is not always clear what your character should be ‘doing’. Very linear game play - despite well rendered locales that seem wide open, you will quickly run into the ‘plexiglas wall’ should you try to wander off of the path the DEVs have predetermined for you. The game started to have the feel of Black Ops 'Here’s a little game to go with the myriad of cut scenes’ at times, but thankfully you can quickly skip most of them. A few too many ‘playable’ cut scenes for my liking, with the frustration of slow-mo movement and inability to pass NPC and do something useful. The Dr. Seuss level of prompting (‘Get to the door’...’look at the door’...’find the door knob’...’open the door’...) for goals seems a bit over the top, appropriate perhaps for a first-time gamer, but irritating if you’ve already played FPS genre.
C-

Play Time:
4.9 Hours, goofing off and testing settings and performance. I’d guesstimate 4 hours for an average FPS player, perhaps a couple of hours on easy and storming through the game. Just when I expected I was about to view a cut scene leading to the mega-battle in the big city, the credits rolled for my biggest WTF moment in the game.Were the game open, replayability might save this, but it is not, and unlike something like Half-Life 2 that has high replay value for me despite being quite linear, there is no desire to play this game again. MP play seems to be satisfying to gaming friends that are playing the game in this mode, but does not enter into my assessment in the SP context.
D-

Overall, with my personal biases weighted for my game desires, a D+/C- game in SP. Worth the $10.00 it cost me considering the free Metro 2033 game the pre-orders garnered, but nothing more. If SP is important to you, wait for the game to be on sale.
 
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Just played the game this morning (got if for free, and afterwards I was very happy about that).

Sp was unplayable because I have to jump over a fence, halfway over the game just puts me back before the fence.
So that was fun....

Mp was a little bit awkward, my mouse will not respond without delay and it's not really anything other than CoD with other maps and some vehicles.
TBH I am very biased because after the Battle points movie I was already like 'Jeez not again...'

Trying the multiplayer again, but the SP was not fun in the least (even the parts I actually could play).
 
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Singleplayer is singleplayer...

But from what I've seen, I don't think Homefront's multiplayer is utilizing the game's theme to its full potential. I had imagined a slightly heavy RPG type element that could've been implemented to the US (rag-tag) forces in online play: Gain experience, unlock new toys, weapon load-out customization, aesthetic customization up the "whazoo"... heck even some type of monetary system akin to what COD is doing right now. The latter being entirely plausible given the theme.

Unfortunately, they decided that only the US Army be playable online. Too bad for me I guess. :(
 
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I've seen some more of the MP and well all I can say is the sniper rifles seem extremely over powered and easy to use. Even more so than in COD :eek:

Plus there's lots of people speed hackers lol.

Well played a few hours yesterday. First thing noticed; CoD heaven:(
over 20 camouflage patterns, a lot of attachments and 'shooter person' achievements.

That makes me approach my second point; I get two awards after killing 3 people, WTF???? I know CoD was bad but this is just lame.
Where is the reward if you get a reward after every second person you kill?
Yes it gets less when you kill more, but it's a very bad start (also kill streak achievements, really supports camping/sniping).

Also the quote is absolutely true, the sniper is always a one hit kill anyway possible. Played with the sniper after two hours of M249 (only gun with some recoil afaik), and my k/d went from 1.5/1 to 10/1. It was just too easy.

Also the cover was really annoying. Every car/truck/bus/tank on the map has the horrible 'invisible border'. When I crouch behind cover and go just to the right so I can aim and shoot the enemy, there is some mysterious invisible cover blocking the shot.
So instead of only showing a bit of my arm, you have to show your whole body when firing from cover (bad thing together with the snipers).

Also the BP mechanic is just rubbish, you always have enough BP and most of the people play infantry anyways, so it is not really rewarding you with the bonus items (I haven't managed to deplete my BP in the total 3 hours I played). If it is intended as a spam limiter, then it works.

Although the game is not bad or something, I will go back to RO1/BC2 for some fun multiplayer action. The occasional kindergarten may not be in RO1/BC2, but the game is much more fun to play.
 
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Man that invisible wall stuff behind cover drives me nuts. It was pretty prevalent in Ostfront, I am pretty sure it was because of the game engine. That, and always running into things when trying to run away just pissed me off when I would play. Fortunately RO was good enough for me to look past that. I'm seeing here that the game is CoD heaven in one post and another says its not as CoD as it looked in the trailers...hoping for a demo soon to tell. MP demo that is. I don't think I'd touch SP with a ten foot pole.
 
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Man that invisible wall stuff behind cover drives me nuts.

That's a collision mesh, it's basically an invisible, very low poly LOD model of the object, that handles collision data.

It needs to be there, and Collision meshes are a good thing when done right, as they allow for things like players, ragdolls and bullets colliding with the object without forcing too many calculations on your GPU, but still creating the illusion of complexity. If you could see a map through the eyes of the physics engine, it would be like seeing the map in Duke3D era graphics, very low poly.

But if done wrong, like if the collision meshes are much bigger than the visible objects that we see, then it's a pain in the butt in a shooter! And it is especially damaging to games that promote shooting from cover, you really need to get the Col-meshes scaled right in thouse, or it's going to suck..


The worst offender i have ever player in this regard was Fallout 3, the Col-meshes in that game where atrocious! You basically had to clear every object (including walls) by 50cm just to make sure your bullet woulden't collide with it, the col-meshes where that badly scaled.

But i have played many others where they just wheren't very good, it's actually a fairly common mistake we see in games.
 
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Another thing that annoyed me in my session;
Things that are apparently placed to walk over (some wood fallen from a truck so you can get on the wood, on the truck, over the wall, for example), but you're unable to do so.
It is possible but you get stuck and slowed and it just doesn't work!
Was very annoying when I thought I could retreat over the wall and apparently couldn't...
 
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Another thing that annoyed me in my session;
Things that are apparently placed to walk over (some wood fallen from a truck so you can get on the wood, on the truck, over the wall, for example), but you're unable to do so.
It is possible but you get stuck and slowed and it just doesn't work!
Was very annoying when I thought I could retreat over the wall and apparently couldn't...

That's actually the same issue, it's related to Collision and Nav meshes, blocking volumes and and all of that jazz. And basically, for such errors to exist, it suggests the team got rushed (yeah big suprice there, huh?), because it coulden't have been hard to find thease problems in testing and get them fixed, unless of course, the deadline did not allow them the time to do it.
 
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