After an extremely impressive year for standard FPS experiences in 2015 (CoD, Halo, Rainbow Six, et cetera), 2016 is looking to take the genre to another plateau. On the horizon for the first half of the calendar and beyond, the two leading consoles of this eighth generation are going to see an influx of releases that create open world experiences in earnest. Sprawling playable areas that will offer hundreds of hours of single, cooperative, and adversarial challenges, buttressed by post releases batches of DLC. Many will point to Destiny as the official flash point for the movement, but with the current long development cycles of major titles, it’s taken some time for studios to get on board and dive head first into the wave of the shooter future. For the past few days, I’ve had the opportunity to play something of such ilk. Developed by Dambuster Studios with Deep Silver acting as publisher, Homefront: The Revolution is the anticipated sequel to the series debut in 2011. While many obstacles were in this second installment’s way (studio closures, bankruptcies, and the like), the franchise seems to be in reliably stable hands and is on track for a full release in mid spring. In the meantime, select members of the Xbox One community at large got a chance to preview some of the newest additions for the brand and get a feel for the basics of progression and gameplay.
The first step of the closed beta was creating a Freedom Fighter, your playable character for the proceeding insurrections. Male or Female is the first decision, followed by some limited face and skin options that are hopefully just a mark of early beta dearth. Next it’s on to your weapons with the usual primary and secondary setup. The former is broken down into four categories: Shotguns, Marksmans, Crossbows, and Rifles. Nothing too out of the ordinary here as the choices in each feel and act as you would expect. One note worthy idiom is the distinction between Marksman and Rifles. Essentially, Rifles include short-medium to close range arms like assaults and SMGs. Marksman class house long-medium to long range selections. Personally, I like this slight tweak to the usual system of separating each into their own biome. It helps with the create-a-class “bleed over” problem of some rifles actually having more practical attributes of another group than the one it’s slotted. With these more broad definitions, it should cut down on the instances of mislabeling. Secondaries, at least in the beta, are pretty basic pistols and “snub” SMGs that should serve the purpose of self preservation in the event of running out of primary juice. The last customization grouping is Skills, perks/abilities section of The Revolution. You’ll find four umbrellas here as well. Brains are inclined to increase crafting like improved build time of special items and quicker revive of fallen comrades. Brawn offers physical buffs of improved vaulting, increased HP, longer sprint, and such. For upped punishment, look at Fighter for damage boosts. And Survivor has ways to make the most of your opportunities to stay hidden and well armed with better stealth movement and scavenger qualities. Each of these have tiers of better unlocks that become available as you play.
While I’m sure the full release will have a substantial PvP component, this closed beta only offered a PvE mode called Resistance. A four player cooperative experience in which you and the rest of the fireteam will engage the Korean People’s Army, or KPA, in different combat scenarios. This past weekend, there were three missions available. In Infiltration, intel has discovered the location of two armored vehicles that could play a pivotal offensive role in future assaults. It’s up to your squad to retrieve the trucks and escort them safely to evac. Enemy at the Gates features a spearheaded effort towards KPA Special Forces in which the control of two satellite installations allows other Resistance fighters to discover their exact location and crush the particular gatherings in question. Sometimes subtlety is the best method of action, such the case with A las Barricadas. The KPA are sending out scout teams to locate tunnels and safe houses that are critical to the long term success and stability of the overthrow. In response, counter surveillance measures have been chosen to pick up on their patterns and movements in the hope of staying one or two steps ahead of their process. Silence and restraint is key to accomplishing this mission. These three offer a good mix of the types of activities that The Revolution will probably have in abundance come release time. Speaking of release, there is some work to be done before this title can be considered complete.
The weapons and abilities progression seems to work just fine, as participation and/or completion of missions nets a pretty good sum of credits that can be used to unlock and open Crates that include new weapons and various items. All seems well on the upgrading front at this point. From what I can gather, The Revolution is being billed as an “open world” game. Based on the beta, that’s a misnomer. Each Resistance selection has plenty of playable square footage and a plethora of scale-able objects and buildings. But going from point of interest to point of interest feels more linear than a true sandbox game would employ. The action is constantly directing you down a decisive path while allowing you strategic positioning options at certain points. Again, it works just fine from a design standpoint, but doesn’t emit a deluge of freedom. To stay on the gameplay tract, the mechanics and principles were quite basic. Movement and shooting felt choppy. It lacked the smoothness we’ve come accustomed to from FPSers of the last six to seven years. The left stick seemed to not be as tactfully responsive as it could have been and vaulting/climbing were attached to lengthy animations that added an unnecessary measure of delay. The simple act of ADSing was pretty standard, but the actual trigger pull to shot relationship was chintzy. Using a long range Marksman type didn’t feel radically different from dumping shotgun shells in close. And a pistol with iron sights was deadly from way far away, which further detracts from verisimilitude. The enemy AI worked well overall, but it was honestly a deal of strength in numbers. When the KPA were grouped en masse, they could be formidable, particularly when they had turret laden armored trucks in tow. In limited or one-on-one scenarios, their threat diminished considerably while movement and positioning stayed static. On higher difficulties, they seemed to be more reliable shots, but didn’t improve their attack strategies.
Homefront: The Revolution is built on the CryEngine. The same set of tools that have given us very rich offerings like the Crysis games, but also some really bad exhibitions like Warface. Right now, this game is somewhere between those two examples. I can’t say I didn’t have fun at times. Blasting through oppressive forces bullet by bullet is all well and good, but it’s also the same feeling I can get from any number of shooters in greater abundance. Graphically, things aren’t much better, but I understand final renderings can change radically in the last stint of coding. Because of this, I’ll spare my criticisms of that aspect. But what worries me are the aforementioned gameplay constructs. From what I played, The Revolution has a long, long way to go before we’ll have something that most people in this gaming age will want to play and stay with for several months. Fortunately for those at Dambuster, they still have a few months to take inventory on this beta’s feedback and come up with some much needed improvements. Look for the full release on May 17th in North America.
