[multi] Homefront,dedicated server on consoles hooray

When is it coming out ?

 

I really hope they learned some things with Frontlines. Loved the game, but had too many technical issues that killed it right at release.

Also wondering why they went down from 50 player in Frontlines to 32 in Homefront.

 

I have an eye on this one since the first announcement...seems interesting

 

Game could be good, though the story and idea of both Koreas invading us as a united force really is a load of bull. They have no real power projection (and would have to work really hard to get that) and what would be the point? God I hate stupid plots. At least Red Dawn was nice and campy and World in Conflict was a kick ass game. Homefront will have to prove itself though I honestly think it'll be another modern shooter clone in a world littered with them already.

 

I hope this works. Kaos deserves a hit. I liked Frontlines. It did "Battlefield-style" gameplay better than Battlefield IMO, at least on consoles (until BC2 came along). Not sure why it wasn't well-received.

 

Well North Korea pours a higher percentage of capital into it's military than any other country in the world. But just looking at population statistics, the NK's population of ~30 million + SK's population of ~40 million. That's less than a quarter of the United States total population of ~300 million. The US has an incredibly huge draft population that could probably be trained quickly if a threat is ever suspected. Canada would surely partake in such a issue too, and maybe Mexico if it isn't destroyed yet by the drug cartels creating havoc along the border.

I could go on an on about this, but I won't, the story just doesn't make sense. The developers of course wanted to create a game that took place on US soil, so they picked a random "enemy of the United States" and built some ludicrous plot around it. A better plot would be China, India, the EU or Russian CIS vs the US or North America or some other combination. Hell I think a Pakistan (+ China and maybe some Arab countries?) vs India (+ Russia?) conflict would make a very sensible and plausible war setting. If Flight Sims were still popular I'm sure we would've gotten one based on that possible conflict by now.

 

I really liked Frontlines as well, and agree that it was better than Battlefield on the consoles at launch (IIRC Kaos team originally made the Desert Storm mod for BF1 before joining DICE, no?). I did my best to convince all of my friends to buy it knowing they would love it and most of them did.

However on the console the game was broken for far too long with horrible connection issues on the dedicated servers. It's weird because I played the demo/beta before release and it connected fine, but when the game launched it was nearly impossible to join a dedicated server. When you were finally able to join a game, it was hardly populated due to so many people having issues connecting. On top of that, the game lacked certain features and balance tweaks that were later added.

Sad the early issues basically killed any chance of long term success for the game since I really liked a lot of the ideas they had in place, especially the leveling up system. The destruction system and scope were also impressive for the UE3 back then IMO.

 

If a story has the US being invaded, it must be a credible threat or I'll just laugh at it. F***ng Koreans are you kidding me? If they invade the US, who's going to buy their cars, phones and LCDs?

Games that do it right either choose aliens or a proper superpower. H.A.W.X failed in that aspect as well. You're trying to use mercenary ex-USAF pilots to attack America? LOL

 

It doesnt make any sense because, for example, how would Korea invade? Well, it would have to be by sea...well, rest assured it would take 100 years for Koreas Navy to approach USA's...literally. USA has something like 9 supercarrier battle groups sailing the seas unchallanged, no other country has one.

In every area of conventional force you could think of, USA is probably 100X korea. Not too mention the whole nuclear issue, of which we have a few thousand ICBM's laying around and they have what, a few bombs if they are lucky? A rickety missile or two?

Yeah, that's a problem with this game, but I suppose, there's no other way to explore the story of "what if USA was occupied", which is an interesting one, if not realistic. Russia would be a more realistic option though imo (though not realistic either). But I guess that's the problem if you're the modern day equivalent of Roman Empire or so.

For me the ludicrousness of the plot does kind of spoil the game, even though all games are ludicrous I guess if you think about it.

 

And how does rising gas prices and declining US and Chinese economy not affect Korea? Do they discover untapped oil reserves on their homeland or something? How do they make money to pay for this military that can outpower the US military? Where do they find the money for GPS research that's more advanced than everyone else?

Seriously, story is way too ridiculous to be taken seriously, either make a plausible scenario or use fake countries. Resistance has a proper "if the US was occupied" story for example, and even the Russian invasion of DC, out of all places is pretty ridiculous in MW2.

 

This game has the stupidest idea/plot someone has done in a while.

 

From what I can tell the only thing that could potentially outstupid this is a game about Iran and Israel allying to take over the Earth from a secret military installation on the Moon.

 

Seems like they're just riffing on the equally implausible USA homeland invasion ideas presented in Modern Warfare 2. Going for the old "enemy troops in American suburbs" or Red Dawn shock value.

That said while the story is stupid, and would detract from my enjoyment, I imagine I could put it aside and try to enjoy the game for what it is.

I'm surprised how much hype this is getting on an overall basis. In Gamestop tonight the clerk tried to push a preorder of it on me, talking about how great it looked or whatever. In some ways it seems to be outhyping my baby Crysis 2, which is terrible considering the difference in production values, although, sales remain to be seen for both titles.

I did see a recent MP trailer that actually showcased decent graphics for once. Most of what I've seen out of this game the graphics scream pedestrian. I also didn't know until a recent cliffyb tweet that it's a UE3 title, which also implies better than average graphics.

 

Even though I think the premise of the game is stupid (US wouldnt just say well koreas are unified we're going now), South Korea is either 1 or 2 in shipbuilding and I believe has the largest most advanced shipbuilding yard in the world. It wouldnt take a unified Korea 100 years to build an advanced Navy.