{"id":86219,"date":"2016-02-15T14:00:26","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=86219"},"modified":"2016-02-15T14:23:18","modified_gmt":"2016-02-15T12:23:18","slug":"homefront-the-revolution-has-potential-but-the-beta-was-a-buggy-mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/features\/86219-homefront-the-revolution-has-potential-but-the-beta-was-a-buggy-mess","title":{"rendered":"Homefront: The Revolution has potential, but the beta was a buggy mess"},"content":{"rendered":"

Homefront: The Revolution<\/em> is the first title in the series since Deep Silver’s purchase of the license from the now defunct THQ.<\/p>\n

Under development at Dambuster Studios, the game is set in 2029, two years after the events of Homefront<\/em> and four years into the invasion of the United States by the Greater Korean Republic (GKR).<\/p>\n

Philadelphia has become the GKR\u2019s central base of command, and is heavily policed and oppressed as a result.<\/p>\n

It’s there, then, that the rebellion must demonstrate its resilience and strength of will.<\/p>\n

With resistance leader Dana at the helm, it’ll be your job to see the liberation of the US through.<\/p>\n

\"Homefront:<\/a><\/p>\n

The beta we got our hands on was a cooperative one, introducing players to the overarching plot as well as some of the scenarios and enemies we’ll eventually face, but keeping the finer points of the story decidedly hidden.<\/p>\n

Homefront: The Revolution<\/em> places the player and his compatriots in an open world, offering up any number of points of interest as a way of incentivising further exploration.<\/p>\n

When taking on missions, out of the convenience the game will drop players nearer to your target, but there’s a lot to do besides.<\/p>\n

The ultimate goal of Homefront: The Revolution <\/em>is to have you and three friends working together to complete the mission ahead, using each player\u2019s selected skills and preferred weapons.<\/p>\n

During one mission, for example, we had to escort an armoured vehicle through a set of roadblocks, having just\u00a0 snuck into a GKR base to commandeer it.<\/p>\n

On another, we found ourselves hacking satellite terminals and sneaking in and out of buildings silently, picking enemies off one by one.<\/p>\n

The game does have a habit of confining you to a predetermined area during a mission, but that’s hardly unique or off-putting. It also never seemed to compromise the variety of approaches we could have taken during each.<\/p>\n

\"Homefront:<\/a><\/p>\n

On the other hand, the overall difficulty of Homefront: The Revolution<\/em> got a little obnoxious at times.<\/p>\n

To be clear, we set the game to its easiest difficulty, and still, we struggled to clear a number of the missions. Granted, some of it was down to some pretty hefty lag, but it was also a fairly brutal experience.<\/p>\n

Too often we found ourselves instantly killed by a single tank shell, having spent all of our ammo trying to subdue the darn thing. All it took was one slip up, and we were done for.<\/p>\n

Asymmetrical warfare is certainly appealing, casting the player as a guerrilla war fighter, the odds stacked against us. But it needs to work for the formula to… well work.<\/p>\n

The game does allow for a stealthier approach, thereby circumnavigating a lot of the deadlier foes, but the beta was buggy enough to prevent that any time we tried.<\/p>\n

Spawn-in glitches were the biggest offender, but the lag certainly didn’t help, and let me be clear that there were a range of glitches beyond the ones mentioned above.<\/p>\n

It’s not the smoothest or most polished experience, a buggy mess as many are calling it.<\/p>\n

\"Homefront:<\/a><\/p>\n

Matchmaking was a headache during the beta, forcing us to play with friends because the game refused to find any available games or free players.<\/p>\n

That meant that if you didn’t have friends in the beta, you were likely playing solo. Even then, we were kicked out of our games more often than not.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the clearest indicator of the problems Homefront: The Revolution’s<\/em> beta faced was the fact that it took four hours to completely a single mission, courtesy of connection issues, a large array of glitches and lag.<\/p>\n

It may be a beta, but it’s not promising when the game is but a few months from release, a sentiment you’ll see plastered all over the front page of the game’s Reddit thread<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Homefront:<\/a><\/p>\n

Should you successfully complete a mission, you’ll be rewarded with a bronze, silver or gold medals, the scoring of which comes down fulfilling mission parameters, like additional mission objectives (or challenges), and your overall kill count.<\/p>\n

Some of the challenges included a set number of stealth kills, scavenging a number of items or scoring a set number of headshots, etc.<\/p>\n

As you fight the GKR and complete missions, you will earn the cash and XP required to purchase new skills and equipment boxes.<\/p>\n

Skills unlock new ways to tackle equipment and gear; you gather petroleum and lighters during the mission, but need the prerequisite skill before you’re able to turn that into a bomb, for example.<\/p>\n

Other skills allow you to carry more Molotov cocktails or let you revive downed teammates faster.<\/p>\n

\"Homefront:<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Homefront:<\/a><\/p>\n

When it comes to equipment, you need to purchase weapon boxes which range by order of price, each with more gear than the last.<\/p>\n

Opening a gear box will reward you with random weapons and attachments, and at times a vanity (cosmetic) item to use on your character.<\/p>\n

It’s a Deep Silver game, so you know there are going to be microtransactions, and indeed there are. The good news is that Homefront: The Revolution<\/em> will have at least a year of free, post-release DLC.<\/p>\n

\"Homefront:<\/a><\/p>\n

One thing that I did enjoy is that the game has a great co-op experience going for it, when it works.<\/p>\n

And once you have levelled up, having chosen a skill path to follow, I’m sure it will be an even better experience.<\/p>\n

For now, the beta felt like a bug test, and Dambuster Studios have some major work to do if this build is indicative of what’s to come.<\/p>\n

Homefront: The Revolution<\/em> is set for release for the PS4, Xbox One and PC on 20 May, 2016.<\/p>\n

\n

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It’s in Philadelphia that the rebellion must demonstrate its strength of will. Homefront: The Revolution, on the other hand, isn’t all that resilient.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":213,"featured_media":86223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_enabled":true,"_sma_x_custom_text":"","_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[17073,2553,2211,12531,15397,1239,2044,1853,10065],"class_list":["post-86219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-dambuster-studios","tag-deep-silver","tag-hands-on","tag-homefront-the-revolution","tag-pc","tag-playstation-4","tag-preview","tag-playstation4","tag-xbox-one"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86239,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86219\/revisions\/86239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}