THQ Hammered by Sub-Par Homefront Scores
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
I remember a time called the age of gaming magazines, where getting equivalents of 8/10 or above was considered a great score and a worthy purchase.
I remember games scoring 7 or 6 outta 10 being accepted as "good games, with some flaws", now its a guarantee of failure it seems....
How times have changed.
I remember games scoring 7 or 6 outta 10 being accepted as "good games, with some flaws", now its a guarantee of failure it seems....
How times have changed.
not entirely. Playing through the game and I've noticed a few things. it IS a challenge, but the game is also quite short with no real definitive climax. Also there are lots of small things that just take you out of the game. Like some of the reload sequences, and other small factors. Also, a lot of the guns seem to be clones of eachother, sometimes i can't tell if I'm holding a fully-automatic rifle or a semi-automatic because both weapon designs are exactly the same, if not exactly, then pretty darn close.DaHero said:
The game WANTS to be COD with all it's might without being COD. It succeeds in just being a COD clone. I'm not a fangirl of COD, but I can recognize superior gameplay.
QFTBlank Kold said:
All these kids talking big game, pretending like their opinion reflects reality. Oh the game is similar to COD and COD sucks! Yeah... except COD is by far the best FPS series on the market. Don't believe me check the review scores. Don't believe that check the player base, don't believe that check the units sold.
Homefront is multiplayer focused, so who cares about it's short singleplayer? Frankly I havn't liked the new Battlefield games for a while, due to poor class and vehicle balance. If homefront fixes those problems then it might be one hell of a multiplayer FPS.
The only game Homefront should compete with is Battlefield. I'm looking forward to renting it and discovering if it can take down that giant.
I agree. I really hope some of this overly negative press homefronts getting doesn't affect it's sales. I hate seeing good multiplayers with no players.fire-exit-man said:
And will people stop comparing it to cod!? Just because it's an fps set around the present does not mean it's necessarily a cod clone! Give it a gorram chance!
it's biggest problem is it's story, about everyone was already skeptical of it's story from the get-go, but we were also willing to give it a shot. When the game came out, most critics said the same thing "It's single player is short and unsatisfying, but it's multiplayer is excellent." The problem being is that for games like this, the single player is the bate to bring gamers in, and multiplayer is the hook to keep them. So it's not going to matter how good your hook is if nobody is going to bite!
so ya, bad move for THQ, they should have seen this coming, but they charge foreword and fell.
so ya, bad move for THQ, they should have seen this coming, but they charge foreword and fell.
The quality was part of it, but honestly the market is just saturated with "realistic shooters" right now. Bulletstorm is showing that more zany stuff can be successful, though even that game was bogged down by seeriousness. Hopefully DNF overcomes that hurdle and we can go back to run and gun gameplay.
Technically, if you buy it for the multiplayer, you can squeeze hundreds of hours out of there. I never liked online competitive shooters and thus have never paid money for a CoD game. I did borrow them for the single-player, and it is... sort of, worth about half the price. I mean, I beat the MW campaigns, probably explored a fraction of the game's content, and still feel like I owe the developer $20.Bretty said:
But then I realize that games like Crysis had a campaign that took me 30 hours to beat (ok, I'm a bit OCD in large environments), plus a multiplayer. And it looked better. I don't know, what's the excuse exactly?
So... just wondering here... if the story was supposed to be about civilians fighting back the invasion... how come you're a helicopter pilot? I suppose it could've been a civilian pilot (no clue, haven't played the game, don't intend to), but how come you're familiar with the assault heli that you take later on? And how come you know instantly how to use a gun as well as (or probably better than) any soldier? Feeling like they did a major ball-dropping here with the story by not getting the player into a position where they can become immersed in their role, but maybe I'm just missing something
Hilarious. I'd have put money on this being the outcome. I expected exactly the same type of mediocrity we got from the Medal of Honour remake. Not to mention the popular consensus is that realistic, miltary shooters are ironically 'dead', or at the very least, grossly unpopular. Just look at the many comments about how rubbish the COD franchise supposedly is (and yet, sales figures continue to counter these statements. What does that tell you? Well, it tells me it's "cool" to rip on something regardless of whether or not it's objectively good or you even enjoyed it)
Regardless, there's nothing really stand-out about Homefront. As i said before, it's extremely narrow marketing. What if "your home" was invaded? Oh, yeah, sorry. I'm living in Britain. It ain't my home, so that's out the window. As is the case for everybody living in Europe and probably moreso for those living in Japan / Asia.
Regardless, there's nothing really stand-out about Homefront. As i said before, it's extremely narrow marketing. What if "your home" was invaded? Oh, yeah, sorry. I'm living in Britain. It ain't my home, so that's out the window. As is the case for everybody living in Europe and probably moreso for those living in Japan / Asia.
Well if singleplayer is what you're into, I getcha. But the fact is, most people buy FPSs for the multiplayer. With Battlefield: Bad Company 2, I bought that game for the multiplayer and multiplayer alone. I've seen and played through the singleplayer elsewhere and I know it was utter shite (goddamn pretty shite, but shite nonetheless).Bretty said:
But I wanted to play an online FPS and as I'm partial to the Battlefield franchise, I went ahead and gotten it. As for the hours, I've slammed *checks* some 146 or so hours into it. I'd say that's pretty good value for my 25 euros or so (thank you Amazon UK!) and I still play it
Am I the only one worried that Metacritic scores can actually drive a company's share price down?
That's too much power in the hands of a bunch of game journos who can't even get their facts straight most of the time. Picture those guys from IGN, Destructoid, G4 or Game Informer knowing that they can spell such doom with their scores. It's freaking scary.
Then again, it's the industry's own fault. They accepted it, even welcomed it. Now they should live with it.
That's too much power in the hands of a bunch of game journos who can't even get their facts straight most of the time. Picture those guys from IGN, Destructoid, G4 or Game Informer knowing that they can spell such doom with their scores. It's freaking scary.
Then again, it's the industry's own fault. They accepted it, even welcomed it. Now they should live with it.
I've been seeing lots of disparaging tweets all over Twitter about it. Things like "will never live up to Battlefield" or "trying to be Battlefield but failing" or "More annoying people running around like idiots than COD." That last one would annoy the crap out of me if it's true.
Well, this is bad news for THQ/Kaos, but maybe good news for me if the game gets a big price drop soon I might actually buy it.
Well, this is bad news for THQ/Kaos, but maybe good news for me if the game gets a big price drop soon I might actually buy it.
Not a big FPS fan, but I'm not surprised.
The very concept of the game was kind of ridiculous, as a possible future scenario it's hard to take seriously. While a lot of people didn't like my points about the likely reception to a North Korean space program (along with the idea of most similar nations getting as involved in space like this concept requires) it remains true. Then there are of course questions as to how they would be able to just waltz accross the entire world that quickly and establish the supply lines needed to maintain conventional forces on US soil, and of course why even with an EMP device we wouldn't have been waiting for them as a lot of our military is already protected against exactly this kind of thing due to the long-standing possibility of a nuclear exchange. That's why there are all those jokes about the goverment hiding missles and hardware under cornfields and such, the idea was to protect them from a massive country wide bombardment and fulfill our end of MAD if we faced a sudden, overwhelming attack. Not to mention how things like NORAD aren't going to be penetrated by something like this, and all of the military forces we have that aren't in the US (we don't keep all our eggs in one basket). Our submarine fleet alone would ruin their day, stealth is one of their big things, and one of the reasons we have them all over the world is because of exactly this kind of potential situation (albiet with a much more likely source). The US gets flattened, we've still got a whole crapload of WMD and other weapons under the ocean, and almost impossible to detect if it wants to sail right up to someone's coast line (or the closest one) and cut loose. There have been "Techno Thrillers" written about the possibility of US Subs losing all contact with the US mainland due to an unlikely string of events, and then assuming it was destroyed and acting under orders for a "World War III" scenario.
The point isn't the specifics, but simply that a game like this relies on suspension of disbelief to work. With "Red Dawn" this was possible because the USSR was another super power and believed to be as powerful as the USA (our opposite number). Everyone knew The Cold War was a massive conflict we could potentially lose. North Korea isn't that kind of a super power, and likely would not become one in 20 years, and has been so off it's rocker-crazy that nobody is going to trust them to do anything on that level. I mean these guys periodically fire missles at Hawaii to try and prove they can reach it so they can freak
out the US, nobody is stupid enough to let them just develop and launch a "peaceful" satellite.
On top of all of this, it's really apparently a sub-par game. Like it or not the standards are set by the best games out there. This is why so many MMOs failed to compete with WoW, even if they launched with more than WoW had when it first appeared, they weren't competing with WoW then, but WoW now. Right now "Call Of Duty" and "Battlefield" are setting the standards for modern shooters. For more fantastic shooters you have things like "Killzone", "Halo", and numerous others. If you can't produce at that level you shouldn't be expecting to be massively successful.
Ridiculous premise that has little going for it other than being contreversial, attached to a game far short of the current standards overall. It's easy to see what happened.
Honestly THQ's big problem was trying to jump in for a piece of the FPS pie, as that is the usual "cash in" game genere for some quick bucks, but like MMOs that's kind of dried up due to a few franchises rising to finally dominate it. THQ probably should have taken the time to focus on their Warhammer liscences. "Retribution" is okay, but really they could do with another full out "conquer the system" game like "Dark Crusade" or "Soulstorm" to be honest. Not to mention that the liscence DOES have potential for things other than RTS games and MMOs. A single player RPG game in the spirit of say "Dragon Age" or "Mass Effect" is quite doable. There is even a crutch of sorts given that there is a PnP RPG that they can use for the stat portions nowadays.
A game where you say play a Rogue Trader who recruits a crew for his ship and head out looking for some legendary cache of Archaotech would work quite well. Loot in the form of Archaotech, Xeno-tech, and other things is obvious rewards along the way, things like Hive Cities and Space Hulks are pefect for dungeon crawls, you've got spire habitats for towns, and entire planets that can covered with ruins and monsters. Enemies can include the Inquisition (their relationship with treasure hunting Rogue Traders is... interesting), Orks, Aliens, Chaos, and whatever else, there is a huge possible bestiary.
They already have the 40k liscence and just need to work with the RPG guys to use the mechanics, and it's as ready made as D&D ever was.
I mean, with possibilities like that, and given how well they Warhammer 40k franchise seems to have done by them (even if Dawn Of War II is a bit lacking in some areas, I still maintain that Soulstorm is probably the high point of their development there), I'm surprised someone thought "Let's do a Red Dawn game, but with Koreans" was a good idea especially with the FPS genere so heavily camped out by titans right now. With companies like Bioware going increasingly casual for the moment (and we see how that's going with the sloppily made "Dragon Age II" and associated rage) there is a decent market of serious RPG gamers waiting to be exploited and while not as big a market as many other ones potentially are, it IS reliable and has been a backbone market for the industry virtually since there has been a PC gaming industry.
The very concept of the game was kind of ridiculous, as a possible future scenario it's hard to take seriously. While a lot of people didn't like my points about the likely reception to a North Korean space program (along with the idea of most similar nations getting as involved in space like this concept requires) it remains true. Then there are of course questions as to how they would be able to just waltz accross the entire world that quickly and establish the supply lines needed to maintain conventional forces on US soil, and of course why even with an EMP device we wouldn't have been waiting for them as a lot of our military is already protected against exactly this kind of thing due to the long-standing possibility of a nuclear exchange. That's why there are all those jokes about the goverment hiding missles and hardware under cornfields and such, the idea was to protect them from a massive country wide bombardment and fulfill our end of MAD if we faced a sudden, overwhelming attack. Not to mention how things like NORAD aren't going to be penetrated by something like this, and all of the military forces we have that aren't in the US (we don't keep all our eggs in one basket). Our submarine fleet alone would ruin their day, stealth is one of their big things, and one of the reasons we have them all over the world is because of exactly this kind of potential situation (albiet with a much more likely source). The US gets flattened, we've still got a whole crapload of WMD and other weapons under the ocean, and almost impossible to detect if it wants to sail right up to someone's coast line (or the closest one) and cut loose. There have been "Techno Thrillers" written about the possibility of US Subs losing all contact with the US mainland due to an unlikely string of events, and then assuming it was destroyed and acting under orders for a "World War III" scenario.
The point isn't the specifics, but simply that a game like this relies on suspension of disbelief to work. With "Red Dawn" this was possible because the USSR was another super power and believed to be as powerful as the USA (our opposite number). Everyone knew The Cold War was a massive conflict we could potentially lose. North Korea isn't that kind of a super power, and likely would not become one in 20 years, and has been so off it's rocker-crazy that nobody is going to trust them to do anything on that level. I mean these guys periodically fire missles at Hawaii to try and prove they can reach it so they can freak
out the US, nobody is stupid enough to let them just develop and launch a "peaceful" satellite.
On top of all of this, it's really apparently a sub-par game. Like it or not the standards are set by the best games out there. This is why so many MMOs failed to compete with WoW, even if they launched with more than WoW had when it first appeared, they weren't competing with WoW then, but WoW now. Right now "Call Of Duty" and "Battlefield" are setting the standards for modern shooters. For more fantastic shooters you have things like "Killzone", "Halo", and numerous others. If you can't produce at that level you shouldn't be expecting to be massively successful.
Ridiculous premise that has little going for it other than being contreversial, attached to a game far short of the current standards overall. It's easy to see what happened.
Honestly THQ's big problem was trying to jump in for a piece of the FPS pie, as that is the usual "cash in" game genere for some quick bucks, but like MMOs that's kind of dried up due to a few franchises rising to finally dominate it. THQ probably should have taken the time to focus on their Warhammer liscences. "Retribution" is okay, but really they could do with another full out "conquer the system" game like "Dark Crusade" or "Soulstorm" to be honest. Not to mention that the liscence DOES have potential for things other than RTS games and MMOs. A single player RPG game in the spirit of say "Dragon Age" or "Mass Effect" is quite doable. There is even a crutch of sorts given that there is a PnP RPG that they can use for the stat portions nowadays.
A game where you say play a Rogue Trader who recruits a crew for his ship and head out looking for some legendary cache of Archaotech would work quite well. Loot in the form of Archaotech, Xeno-tech, and other things is obvious rewards along the way, things like Hive Cities and Space Hulks are pefect for dungeon crawls, you've got spire habitats for towns, and entire planets that can covered with ruins and monsters. Enemies can include the Inquisition (their relationship with treasure hunting Rogue Traders is... interesting), Orks, Aliens, Chaos, and whatever else, there is a huge possible bestiary.
They already have the 40k liscence and just need to work with the RPG guys to use the mechanics, and it's as ready made as D&D ever was.
I mean, with possibilities like that, and given how well they Warhammer 40k franchise seems to have done by them (even if Dawn Of War II is a bit lacking in some areas, I still maintain that Soulstorm is probably the high point of their development there), I'm surprised someone thought "Let's do a Red Dawn game, but with Koreans" was a good idea especially with the FPS genere so heavily camped out by titans right now. With companies like Bioware going increasingly casual for the moment (and we see how that's going with the sloppily made "Dragon Age II" and associated rage) there is a decent market of serious RPG gamers waiting to be exploited and while not as big a market as many other ones potentially are, it IS reliable and has been a backbone market for the industry virtually since there has been a PC gaming industry.
Hahahaha.... No.Lolworthy analyst said:
This does show how much control the "reviewers" ahve over the well being of the industry though and ends up with devs being forced to make games taht will review well but may not necissarily be what people want ie DA2