Did anyone else buy it? I played Frontlines: Fuel of War and really liked it. Homefront is made by the same studio so I figured it would be cool, too. I played though the first couple of levels so far and it's fun. The graphics are pretty and the weapons are varied. They have the whole "aim down the sight" thing from Call of Duty (I don't remember that from Frontlines). The story so far is rad, too, I love Red Dawn type scenarios.

I enjoyed the demo of Fuel of War, I have heard mixed things but I definitely want to try it out. Play the MP yet Brian?

It's only getting average reviews, it's another war FPS, and it has little that makes me want to abandon TF2. No thanks.

Yeah, unless I can beat somebody to death with a dead fish what's the point? Games have moved on.

Nope, I probably won't play the MP at all. Another war FPS is right, but it's in a cool setting and I'm not tired of war FPSs except stupid call of duty because it sucks. (for the record, I LOVED call of duty 1 & 2, but after that they're just lame. Way too many scripted sequences and "folllow this specific path and do this exactly like this" and instant deaths if you deviate, ugh)

I might rent it to try out the singleplayer, but the multiplayer seems to me to be so similar to BFBC2 that I don't feel the need to ever play it...I already love battlefield.

Hide in the pile of corpses beside the Tiger Direct.com store!
this game is everything wrong with video games

Tibby, wtf? Are you objecting to the in-game "real life" locations like Best Buy and such?

Tigerdirect.com doesn't have brick and mortar stores.
I object to hamfisted and distractingly stupid product placement, and hamfisted anti-war messages in a game about killing people.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Tigerdirect.com

Bet you feel stupid now, eh?

Fair enough, it's still dumb product placement.

I really can't think of a more appropriate way to insert product placement ads -- literally best buy is BLOWN THE **** UP. Maybe they set the game in "modern" times just to do ad placement, but it's not like it's showing ads on loading screens or interrupting game play. It's not like the game is set in year 2100 with advertisements for last-gen ipods.

It sounds to me like it's there to make it feel familiar.

The game's fairly fun... For about 4 hours until you beat it. Seriously, it's painfully short. If you're like me and enjoy a good SP campaign, you'll feel pretty ripped off when you finish it.

The timeline of the game looks utterly stupid

North Korea and South Korea are reunified in a year? What the ****, since when are they eager for that?

Er, I got the impression that "reunified" meant "taken over" but maybe I misunderstood.

The timeline said he won the nobel peace prize for it, so I doubt it was an invasion

Yeah, the timeline's kind of dumb.

Well it is from the guy who co-wrote Red Dawn, so the plot being far fetched is kind of expected.

I disagree, I think it helps add realism.
Like the GTA mods that replaced all the fake stores and ads with real world ones.

oh gosh that one is right by my house

I object to your use of the word "hamfisted". It would also be interesting to hear your reaction to many, if not most, war movies.

"Stoopid hamfisted anti-war war movies!"

I have to agree that, if a studio needs to subsidize their costs with in-game advertisements, the absolute best way to do this is subtly and with care to immersion. I can actually envision a situation where a company's support for a game that I really enjoyed would encourage me to have more brand loyalty.

Most war movies has a clear message, and not simply a thrown in "Oh wait, yeah war is bad" scene thrown in amongst hours of mindlessly shooting people.

Okay every positive thing about this game I take it back. This game is really lame. Every single mission so far has been "FOLLOW CONNOR!" It's essentially a shooter-on-rails, there's never any other way to do anything, you have to do exactly what they say in the order they say it and according to their timeline. I literally have not been able to open even one door or go one place new where I wasn't following them. The game blocks all paths forward and only opens them when you wait for your stupid companions to show up and open the door or move a box out of the way or whatever.

Games like Quake 4 are essentially linear but they have wide open areas and multiple branching paths (that eventually dead end or lead back to the main path anyway) but the games just feel more open and free. You have people that follow you around; you are not forced to follow some stupid ai around.

Frontlines: Fuel of War was completely different. There huge wide-open maps with multiple disparate goals that you could accomplish in any order. It was tons of fun and this one, after the first level or two, is not.

If anyone bought this game based on my posts prior to this, I apologize.

The RPS review told me everything I needed to know about this, I think.

Welcome to almost every modern shooter. It's rare these days that you run into an FPS where you can actually get lost or stuck because you wandered off somewhere and can't figure out what to do next. The trend now is to make everything incredibly linear and hold your hand the whole way through so that there's never any question about what to do next.

I think level design in general is significantly lacking in some of today's shooters. I can't help feeling that this is the result of companies having such a huge staff of people that they all try to manage working on different parts of different segments of those levels, and then ultimately sandwiching everything together at the end. I mean, a lot of today's level design comes off as an elaborate, linear showcase of different teams' work (i.e. cinematic scene -> path -> cinematic scene -> path and so forth).

I beat the single player campaign in 3.4 hrs. I was not impressed. I did enjoy piloting the chopper and operating the ucav(sp?) at the end. Uninstalled it without giving multiplayer a chance.

I actually really enjoyed this game and wished it was longer. The single player campaign was awesome but as was forementioned the game was incredibly short. The vision of a destroyed and broken US was quite erie. The thought of that happening is chilling... I enjoyed the game mainly because it was original. Originality is just rare these days so on that note I was quite happy. I beat the game in 3 hours and that I was not impressed with.

I'm probably going to sound corny and naive, but I always felt that level design is this fundamental language that inherently speaks with the player. A means of dialog that frames the player's interface with the game. It seems like in SP games (not all, mind you) such as the new Call of Duty's, there is this "distrust" of the user. A distrust of the player in knowing what he is doing. A distrust of player not finding that expensively-rendered cutscene or cinematic action set-up that's around the corner. A distrust of the player in finding the "fun" of the game.

The thing is, no matter the graphic potential of the engine or all those special effects or modeling and animation work, good level design doesn't seem like something that can be generated easily on the computer. I always envisioned it being a pen-and-pencil affair, a deconstructive exercise in where people actually meet face to face to figure what the hell is going on "here" and "there."

I could be wrong though, probably am; never was part of the industry. But I remember back, especially in the Quake days and the era 2004 prior, there were interviews with mappers and level designers on certain maps and game levels. Actual people, not some public relations person, proxy or that guy in charge of the art direction. In these interviews, they could share their thoughts on what established the reasoning for this part of the map and that segment and how the whole package came together. The best part was when these level designers discussed a coherent logic to final product of their work and their regard to connecting with the player.

Architecture School

Echo you're beating at a lot of the same stuff as in the article I mentioned above: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/19/wot-i-think-homefront-single-player/

I've got to say, I owned CoD:BO for about a month now, and I just tried the SP and it's awful. I had it on the hardest mode, which just made sure that if I wasn't in the exact location I'm supposed to be, that I died. So I turned it way down, and got confused when I'd rush ahead, not be able to go through a door, then need to turn around and poke my friendly AI to keep up and open the door for me. I got 20 minutes in and went back to multiplayer, which is one of the buggiest, laggiest experiences I've ever had. Now that the new map pack is out I get kicked out of wager map rotations.

I have to agree that the giant teams are not good for gaming.

Most games are built for idiots not for the intelligent minority. Why do you think COD sells so well. Bad Company 2 is a far superior game. If you ever get the chance to pick that up do so. Crysis 2 has one of the best single player experiences ever.

Yeah BFBC2 is where it's at as far as MP FPS goes

Hmm, anyone else play crysis 2? On pc does it have crappy drm that makes you sign up for ea's site and be logged in all the time?

I wonder why they even bother making single-player campaigns for these games that are obviously intended to me online shooters.

I never got into BC2, but I have been playing alot of BC2:Vietnam lately. I'm guessing the gameplay is similar, vehicle combat is pretty cool.

Good question. Games like call of duty and battlefield I never played the SP campaigns.

Game play is identical, it's just an expansion.