Zero Punctuation: Homefront The Revolution

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CyanCat47_v1legacy

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Steve the Pocket said:
Hmm. This game was announced by THQ shortly before they went under and then got bought up by Deep Silver. Given the QA issues, I wonder if they handed it over to the same team that made Ride to Hell Retribution 1%.

...Wikipedia says it wasn't. Disappointing.

Also, points to the developers for apparently retconning away the original backstory in favor of an even more ludicrous one. So is this a sequel or a reboot?
Its kind of like Airport simulator. first there was airport simulator 2014 which was awful and one of the lowest scoring games on steam. then there was airport simulator 2015 which was a slightly more tolerable kind awful, but made by a different dev under a different publisher. i'm guessing that the IP was picked up by somone else after THQ collapsed and then they just rewrote it so that people wouldn't have to play homefront 1 first since they would make no money off it and but they could still rake in some cash from the people who remembered the first one. it's all speculation though. a lot of game companies nowadays have execs with no experience in game design who were just hired because they made money selling something else
 

FPLOON

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I wonder if those two guys that cornered you remembered when you were inadvertently humping one of you comrades in combat...

Other than that, you're not kidding about the sound...
 

bificommander

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If they want a North Korean villain, how about making a shooter in the fucking Korean War? Go at it, Call of Duty. There doesn't seem to be much love for your sci-fi settings anymore, so how about a period that feels like the WW2 setting that made you, but is just different enough to score some originality points.
 

Kyle Davis

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I think the problem with using China as villains is that even if they do have the resources to do it they don't really (at lease as far as I can see) have a real reason to invade and/or destroy America. They don't have a real beef with us other then the Boxer Rebellion that they got over a long time ago.
 

Transdude1996

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bificommander said:
If they want a North Korean villain, how about making a shooter in the fucking Korean War? Go at it, Call of Duty. There doesn't seem to be much love for your sci-fi settings anymore, so how about a period that feels like the WW2 setting that made you, but is just different enough to score some originality points.
I could see Treyarch being the ones behind something like that since it could be placed as a midqual to World at War and the original Black Ops (Yes the latter is a sequel to the former).
 

Hawki

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So, after watching this, I only have one, very important question...

...who's up for fighting zargons on Mars in the next Call of Duty game? It's already gone into space, might as well have aliens in it.
 

beleester

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bificommander said:
If they want a North Korean villain, how about making a shooter in the fucking Korean War? Go at it, Call of Duty. There doesn't seem to be much love for your sci-fi settings anymore, so how about a period that feels like the WW2 setting that made you, but is just different enough to score some originality points.
Korean War actually sounds like a great time to hold a shooter. Modern enough that it has jet fighters, but not so modern that you have fancy toys like drones. The Cold War means that you have a peer opponent in the USSR/China, and there's room for intrigue and twisty plots in the setting, like the USSR's "No, really, those are North Koreans flying those Migs" pretext. And of course, the threat of nuclear annihilation looming overhead to raise the stakes.
 

gyrobot_v1legacy

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Steve the Pocket said:
Hmm. This game was announced by THQ shortly before they went under and then got bought up by Deep Silver. Given the QA issues, I wonder if they handed it over to the same team that made Ride to Hell Retribution 1%.

...Wikipedia says it wasn't. Disappointing.

Also, points to the developers for apparently retconning away the original backstory in favor of an even more ludicrous one. So is this a sequel or a reboot?
To be fair this was an extremely bland and interchangeable enemy. Replace Plutocracy Korea with any hyper-capitalist state and can still be Homefront: The Revolution.


The original Homefront on the other hand gave us a frighteningly real desperate resistance against an enemy who knows no fear, mercy and a threat we can relate to. Norks in the original Homefront was utterly merciless and the "resistance" felt like a real life resistance, there is no hope for victory, only delaying the ineveitable as retribution from the Norks is way worse than what they give.
 

Aeshi

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Bob_McMillan said:
Damn, I forgot this game even existed. I wonder if Yahtzee will bother with Battleborn or Overwatch.
He said in his latest Let's Drown out video that he'll probably do a ZP of Overwatch alongside another game, which could be Battleborn I suppose. He actually seemed almost fond of Overwatch, aside from a slight grumble about the lack of content.

For anyone who's curious, he also said his favourite hero is Soldier 76.
 

Pinky's Brain

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ravenshrike said:
Not to mention China is only not scary if you're not paying attention to the goings on in the South China Sea or the fact that by 2020 their military spending will equal the US's because they've been adding 10% year after year to it since the early 90's.
After Iraq, Libya and Syria combined with the games the US wants to play in Russia's backyard (with the EU/NATO following along like good puppy dogs) I just can't be bothered being scared of China.
 

Sheo_Dagana

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Aeshi said:
Bob_McMillan said:
Damn, I forgot this game even existed. I wonder if Yahtzee will bother with Battleborn or Overwatch.
He said in his latest Let's Drown out video that he'll probably do a ZP of Overwatch alongside another game, which could be Battleborn I suppose. He actually seemed almost fond of Overwatch, aside from a slight grumble about the lack of content.

For anyone who's curious, he also said his favourite hero is Soldier 76.
He actually already briefly mentioned Battleborn in his review for Paper Mario 1000 Year Door, since he didn't have a lot to say about it since it was so heavily focused on multiplayer. What bugs me is that he's going to do a ZP for Overwatch, when really, Overwatch is pretty much the same game. He already made the analogy of Coke/Pepsi and if you ask me, both taste the same, just like Battleborn/Overwatch; both are just class-based FPS games with MOBA-like elements, both trying to be the new Team Fortress 2.

OT: Ah yes, I was hoping Yahtzee would review this one. The worse a game is, the funnier his reviews tend to be.
 

Goliath100

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Darth_Payn said:
Do the FarCry games count? Particularly 3 and 4?.
No, they don't.
ZigzagPX4 said:
Have you never played any of the Far Cry games?
I have played 3.
.... though I think they all portray guerilla warfare quite well,...
Only on a superficial level.

....what part of [Far Cry 3] didn't feel enough like guerilla warfare to you?
Guerrilla Warfare is about resources managing. It's all about chipping away the enemy's resources, while increasing your own. So game about guerrilla warfare has to have resource management as sentral mechanic. I.e. there has to be real survival mechanics. Vehicles has to need fuel, gun and ammo can't be bought. The thing is: This have to be the rules for everyone. NPCs need to be able to die from hunger, thirst and lack of sleep.

And than there's my personal hang ups: No missions, no map (that tell you where you are), no easy information.
 

ZigzagPX4

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Goliath100 said:
Darth_Payn said:
Do the FarCry games count? Particularly 3 and 4?.
No, they don't.
ZigzagPX4 said:
Have you never played any of the Far Cry games?
I have played 3.
.... though I think they all portray guerilla warfare quite well,...
Only on a superficial level.

....what part of [Far Cry 3] didn't feel enough like guerilla warfare to you?
Guerrilla Warfare is about resources managing. It's all about chipping away the enemy's resources, while increasing your own. So game about guerrilla warfare has to have resource management as sentral mechanic. I.e. there has to be real survival mechanics. Vehicles has to need fuel, gun and ammo can't be bought. The thing is: This have to be the rules for everyone. NPCs need to be able to die from hunger, thirst and lack of sleep.

And than there's my personal hang ups: No missions, no map (that tell you where you are), no easy information.
You would have better luck just asking around for a survival game set in a war-torn hellhole than directly asking for a guerrilla warfare game, as typically when someone asks for the latter, what personally comes to mind is the warfare part of guerrilla warfare in that it's an action game where you utilise the tactics of guerrilla fighters. Not what is essentially a simulation of being a guerrilla fighter, though that actually sounds pretty interesting even if somewhat niche.

Far closer to the Bethesda Fallout or STALKER games, but set in a war-torn nation as opposed to a post-apocalyptic wasteland or a devastated exclusion zone. Hell, all of the DayZ clones out there on Steam fills pretty much all of your requirements already, apart from the setting, and I assume you would prefer it to be singleplayer with AI factions along with a proper plot.

So yes, your statement was a little vague, so obviously those were the answers you were going to get. After all, if someone comes up and asks me for a recommended military shooter, the ARMA series are not the first thing that's going to come to my mind.

Also, do you mean that in addition to all the survival elements described, you would also have to manage the entire faction and their resources along with your character? Because if so, now we have the extremely niche market of survival simulators set in a war with an attached war simulation and management element. Good luck ever finding a game that specifically tailored outside of, say, Kickstarter pitches.
 

ZigzagPX4

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Michael Prymula said:
Sheo_Dagana said:
Aeshi said:
Bob_McMillan said:
Damn, I forgot this game even existed. I wonder if Yahtzee will bother with Battleborn or Overwatch.
He said in his latest Let's Drown out video that he'll probably do a ZP of Overwatch alongside another game, which could be Battleborn I suppose. He actually seemed almost fond of Overwatch, aside from a slight grumble about the lack of content.

For anyone who's curious, he also said his favourite hero is Soldier 76.
He actually already briefly mentioned Battleborn in his review for Paper Mario 1000 Year Door, since he didn't have a lot to say about it since it was so heavily focused on multiplayer. What bugs me is that he's going to do a ZP for Overwatch, when really, Overwatch is pretty much the same game. He already made the analogy of Coke/Pepsi and if you ask me, both taste the same, just like Battleborn/Overwatch; both are just class-based FPS games with MOBA-like elements, both trying to be the new Team Fortress 2.

OT: Ah yes, I was hoping Yahtzee would review this one. The worse a game is, the funnier his reviews tend to be.
No Overwatch and Battleborn are NOT "the same game" at all, it drives me nuts when people say that, this video shows how different they are:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAMGrDUSGJU
Unfortunately, thanks to their vague marketing, Gearbox themselves are to blame for people considering them to be similar and competitors with one another. I'm sorry, but that's really the case here, and there's nothing you can do about it. From having played both betas, I can confidently say that they are quite different, but the majority of gamers are just going to see both of them in a "CoD vs Battlefield" or "GTA vs Saints Row" similar competitors sort of way, and nothing is going to change that short of a miracle.

Everyone IS going to say that Battleborn and Overwatch are exactly the same, because they APPEAR exactly the same, and the marketing of Battleborn has done nothing to highlight the differences. Since Blizzard clearly has the upper hand in their advertising campaign, Battleborn is likely to remain low-profile and less popular than Overwatch while considered ultimately inferior, even as it isn't.

So yes, this will continue to drive you nuts forever, because once the status quo is set it will mostly likely never be altered. Battleborn will be remembered as a failed Overwatch clone by all except its fans. Unfortunate, since it had quite the potential, but at least it did see the light of day and still has a cult following, if nothing else.

(I apologise in advance if this is considered off-topic.)
 

Goliath100

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ZigzagPX4 said:
....do you mean that in addition to all the survival elements described, you would also have to manage the entire faction and their resources along with your character?
No, even if I didn't make the player character an outsider, I'll just make it one cell.
fisheries said:
Please use "Snip", it really shorten your comments.
 

Ambient_Malice

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I have some criticisms.

Why is it surprising that CRYTEK, of all people, would make a game about fighting Koreans? Homefront: The Revolution is in a lot of ways the spiritual successor to Crysis.

In this alternate universe, Koreans invented the personal computer. All modern tech is Korean. The game explains this both ingame and in the history timeline stuff. North Korea calls the shots, but they're unified with South Korea. This Homefront has zero story connection to the first game.

The game has severe technical issues on consoles, and the auto-saves do take several seconds on consoles, but the PC version runs very well assuming it doesn't hate your PC, and the auto-saves are roughly 0.5 to 1 second long. CryEngine game runs badly on consoles. CryEngine game also hates certain hardware configurations just like when Far Cry shat itself on every GPU not manufactured by Nvidia. News at 11.

In my opinion, Homefront: The Revolution is a pretty good game. The graphics are superb (weather, lighting, and character models are standouts), and in terms of gameplay, it's certainly better than Ubisoft's Far Cry games. Just the other night I was playing Far Cry 4, and the vehicle I was riding in with an NPC exploded out of the blue for no reason. This was after loading a save left me stranded in a void. Oh, and this was on top of the game breaking bug they introduced, and then fixed, where your character was unable to climb ropes. The game has a lot of bugs, but they're being patched quite diligently by the developers, who have taken an apologetic tone about things. Doom 4 crashes to desktop constantly for thousands of people, and iD Software's respose has been to grunt and add some loggin features. Doom 4 runs like a one legged dog on decent hardware for some people -- it runs significantly worse than Homefront's Medium settings on Low on my PC with frame drops into the single digits in some bad sections, and iD Software have made zero attempt to look into that because their game is "so well optimised" that it's basically immune to technical criticism.
 

ZigzagPX4

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fisheries said:
Shooters not involving one man armies are typically not looked upon as very marketable ideas, that's why I said you would only find something along the lines of an actual guerrilla warfare game in Kickstarter pitches. Far Cry 3 involves stealthy tactics, and you're fighting alongside a guerrilla fighter group. No, it doesn't simulate actual guerrilla warfare, but short of reading minds I'm not going to know that's what is being asked for.

What you're describing now, is the inclusion of every aspect of a guerrilla war simulated in a game, and like I said, if someone asks me for a military shooter, ARMA games won't be the first thing that comes to my mind. If you ask me for a game where you play as the police, I bring up Battlefield: Hardline even though it does not involve actual police work. Sorry, but when it comes to genres, you'll have to go far more in-depth with semantics if you want a better recommendation.

A Far Cry game IS the closest you get to guerrilla warfare even if you're still a typical FPS protagonist who can carry an entire squad's worth of armaments on you, and if you're not doing it on your own - how else? Since we're on the subject of shooters - which we are, as we're staying on-topic and not discussing anything other than shooters - I cannot imagine any FPS where you don't do most of the work.

I just said that the best way to find games among the lines of what Goliath100 described, you ask for a survival game set in a war with strategy elements as opposed to a "guerrilla warfare game". A shooter game, where you primarily control one individual, is not the best type of game to simulate all aspects of a stealthy war of attrition. Even with guerrilla tactics, it's a shooter so you will still have to do most actions on your own. It's not like in ARMA you control the entire military force, so resource management in this theoretical guerrilla game would change the genre entirely.

Goliath100 said:
No, even if I didn't make the player character an outsider, I'll just make it one cell.
That sounds far more manageable and actually pretty interesting. But if the player character was an outsider, how would you simulate the control of a guerrilla force if you're just one character? Sounds odd that all the resource management for even just one cell would be handled by someone new, untrusted, and low-ranking.

Michael Prymula said:
I don't think they are solely to blame, I blame people that are too damn lazy to do some goddamn research. Personally i'm extremely happy I don't give a flying fuck about Overwatch(mainly cause of those stupid fucking loot boxes, which I REALLY hope Yahtzee tears to shreds in his ZP of the game)
They are not solely to blame, correct - their marketing was always going to be overshadowed by a bigger company's advertising. But Battleborn is still going to be remembered as a failed Overwatch clone. It will be, that's the way it just is. They're also competitors, so the Coke to Pepsi analogy used by Yahtzee still stands, because honestly, GTA and Saints Row have diverged greatly from each other in gameplay, but you can't convince me they aren't trying to compete with each other, so they CAN be compared with one another. Same goes for Dark Souls and Elder Scrolls.