Zero Punctuation: Homefront The Revolution

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.
 

Mullahgrrl

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Goliath100 said:
One day I will get a great guerilla warfare game, but that day is not today.
I SO agree with you.

I had such hopes for this one but they never get it right do they?
I guess the closest we have got is The Saboteur but even that one is kind of crumbs.

anyway; Hurdy Gurdy!

https://youtu.be/EAfS-XgQjc4
 

Goliath100

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Mullahgrrl said:
I guess the closest we have got is The Saboteur but even that one is kind of crumbs.
I'll say Just cause 2 is the closest, but even that is half asked (as guerilla warfare game).
ZigzagPX4 said:
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.
The outsider idea is for management of one character and just one character. If you want more than one character, you make it a rookie cell that's not really in the guerilla yet.
A Far Cry game IS the closest you get to guerrilla warfare ...
I say the Metro series is the closest moment to moment gameplay wise. You're not dying by one shot (unless it's a shotgun to your face), but you're weak enough to make it necessary to play strategically.
fisheries said:
Far Cry isn't a guerilla game...
Agreed!

And now that both of you will get a notice for this comment, let me design this thing:
It's easier to explain the mechanics goals within a narrative, so a possible one would be:
The Player Character is a newly orphaned, local youth, living on a tropical island (which only less than 1000 lives on), who has been taken over by Not Boko Haram, because the island is important for weapon shipments for the mainland. The PC, not liking NBH and their occupation, joins 4-5 of his/her (I wouldn't state the gender at all) friends to start a guerrilla cell, with the goal of destroying NBH's heavily defended strongholds and force them to leave.

NBH would have 500 soldiers, spread over their main stronghold, 3 docks, and 6 outpost, plus new soldiers, equipment and resource coming in weekly. All the bases are to strong for the PC to take on directly, and only outposts can be stealthed through. So what can the PC do? Well, all characters(including civilians) has bars representing their need for Food, Water, Sleep and Moral, all with their own debuffs and eventual Death (low enough Moral and soldairs will defect) if not met. And guns and vehicles has a limited number, with limited ammo and fuel.

So the PC has to use their own limited resources to reduce (or steal)NBH's resources/manpower until the bases can be taken on, directly, or stealthily.

The PC should have a low damage threshold (like everyone else), forcing strategic play. The PC should consume Food and water, and need Sleep. Have small Inventory, 2 guns and 1-2 smaller, all with their own weight, plus weight Food, Water, Ammo and everything else they have to carry. The more weight the PC carry the faster they get tired.

The last thing, but most important is NO EASY INFORMATION OR GEAR. No NPS will ever just give you a gun or some useful intel. Ammo have to be stolen, weapons too. The PC have to get their own Intel. So espionage is a huge part of the gameplay.

So a typical "event" (there's no scripted missions, everything is organic)will go like this:
The PC pays a bartender for information: A convoy, consisting of 2 cars with a truck in between, delivering ammo will leave the eastern dock 9pm every Thursday. It will take the shortest route to the Northern Outpost. The player, wanting to ambush the convoy, goes to a mine field to pick up some mines (or you can find a guy that's makes landmines,and give him the materials he needs). Than set the mines on the road next to a strategic hill, where the player (with or without the cell) will wait. The first car of the convoy blows up, stopping the rest. The Player shoots down the soldiars, and takes the truck.

But here's the cool part: There's no script triggers. The convoy will leave the dock regardless of the player knows about it. The mines goes off even if the players isn't there. And then the game will respond to this action by increasing the number of escorts.

Any questions:
Q: Why are you using "they" when referring to the player character?
A: Because "player charater" is both the player and the in-game character.
Any others?
 

Mullahgrrl

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Goliath100 said:
Mullahgrrl said:
I guess the closest we have got is The Saboteur but even that one is kind of crumbs.
I'll say Just cause 2 is the closest, but even that is half asked (as guerilla warfare game)[...]
Jagged Allience does it a bit, but not quite enough.

What I would really want is something like the opposite of Vietnam '65.

The COIN series of board games does it well enough(Andean Abyss, Cuba Libre, Distant Plane and the Vietnam one) I would love to see a TV-Computergame like them.
 

Neurotic Void Melody

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Did i just see N. Korea riding a bicycle while being pumped up the arse by Yahtzee?

...

It cannot be unseen. I am now a changed sentient protein mound.
More jokes in this episode, was getting worried the series may have been running out of steam/ideas. Am happy to see there is still much funs to be clinically extracted for my photosynthesis to continue.
 

shrekfan246

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canadamus_prime said:
I want to know what Canada was doing while N. Korea was taking over the US.
Presumably shrugging/laughing and pointing out that we're better off under them than Trump.
 

mrdude2010

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I forget which game it was, but there was a game where your AI companions would block you and then say "You make a better door than a window, sir." Shit was so annoying.