THQ confirms Homefront 2 plans

Here's how they can make it better - stop Bilson from talking about it.

Plan A: sack all the developers. Talk about using a sledge hammer to crack a nut.

"Looking to learn from original's failings"

What would they be then? The 4-hour campaign or the lack of enjoyment felt when playing said 4-hour campaign.

Keep the multiplayer, ditch Bilson and you're off to a good start at least.

If the multiplayer is as much fun i'll be there for sure. Also, please let folk use the battle commander from the start, not once you hit a certain level later. It was the best mode and lots probably didn't try it.

Although there is a lot of work needed to make it competitve more competition is s good thing especially on a stagnant genre,battlefield 3 aside coz that looks like its pushing the boundaries but every thing else is trying to replicate what's already been.

Homefront had a great SP I thought. Yes, it was annoyingly short and its graphics overall were terrible, but it conveyed emotion well and had a great story.

The MP was excellent... I never get tired of nuking a camper(s). Its balanced and runs well. The maps are a good size.

For Homefront 2, if they can get it running with up-to-date graphics, give the campaign a good length (no more 'follow Connor' every 10 secs, if he's even in it would be nice too), show emotion well, and make it a full blown warzone (now that Europe's going to join the war and help liberate America, we could see for some full blown battles indeed) then they could make a great SP campaign. If, for the MP, they followed the same template as the original (battle points to spend as you please) and kept the maps large (medium for team deathmatch, large for ground control again, please), all the while running on dedicated servers, then that would be awesome.

Yeah, there's potential in this series. Hope the new devs can make a top game.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and give Jacobs a voice this time round. That is all.

Hopefully one of the things they have learned it how to sort out proper servers.
Both of Kaos studios' games have been an absolute mess serverwise when they have come out and havent been sorted for ages, I didnt buy homefront simply because I knew the same would probably happen as it did to frontlines, and it did.

@BiffTanner

The MP runs properly now though. Has leaderboard issues, but that's it. The rest runs like a dream.

have you ever heard the term " you can't polish a turd?"

I'd ditch the Homefront name. Can only do you damage now.

Call it Red Dawn.

At least Bilson is fairly honest.

@jaxon 58 Here's how they can make it better - stop Bilson from talking about it.

Maybe get his daughter to promote the game instead??

@Hypertails, good to know but I would hope so this far after release.
The problem is that while they will eventually sort it, if its like frontlines where the servers were pretty much unplayable for the first month it means alot of people will just trade it in after a few weeks and move on which is a shame, especially if the core gameplay is good and worth playing as not many people will get to enjoy it fully and keep the community alive.

Dunno about you guys, but it's been out for three months and I'm still resonating with emotion. My neighbour is still banging on the wall telling me to be quiet.

'a tremendous learning experience' !!!!

you arrogant prick. i bought this unfinished travesty of a game at launch and it was completely unplayable online for over a month due to it not being remotely ready. we were treated like beta testers and we had to pay for the honour. THQ clearly rushed the release and KAOS have taken the fall for it.

Your mum?

Wasn't my favourite fps but it's good to hear developers aiming to address issues in order to make a better product

Here's an idea.

Dump this disgusting, godawful, pandering, racist trash-pile of a franchise before it does any more damage to the company and recognise you aren't going to have the next CoD or Battlefield.

Also give Volition more money and release You Don't Know Jack in Europe.

Lesson learned probably equates to:

Double marketing budget + half dev effort with semi-butchered dev team = Sequel revenue win!

(Given the multiplayer teething issues and miniscule campaign with the first title I'd expect a lot of more wary consumers who are less enthusiastic to pre-order/buy this day one irrespective of the big shiny adverts!)

Homefront was terrible... Inferior graphics, somewhat laggy online, copycat multiplayer (the ad even stated "Call of Duty beating multiplayer" WTF?!? Also they somewhat copied Battlefields vehicular warfare), many glitches and bugs... Also didnt the THQ CEO state some months ago that Metacritic and reviews alike doesn't really concern him? ... Now they want a really good Review score? ... They need to make up their minds.

After the total fuck up of the first one THQ can piss off.

Single player was stolen ideas from other game and online didn't work for the 2 painful weeks I kept the crap.
Homefront 2 will never be near my console!

Stop it with the fucking 'resonating brands' already.

Sheesh.

*fix* the multiplayer so that it works on release.. Dedicated servers are great! But when it connects to a server half way around the world instead of one right on your doorstep, it kind of defeats the point..

Oh, and update the gfx engine, it looked a little first wave of 'next gen'.

I demand more brown shooters!

@nuanimal. +1 to you sir

"We sold through a million units in a week." And 999,999 were traded in the next - awesome!

What do Homefront & Brink have in common?........

Personally the story line is great. If you truly follow world politics, this is all so close to possible, it is what made it a great story line. Being from the states, anyone here knows how divided the country is on opinion as to who's fault the economical problems are and they very easily could have alienated groups of people by politicizing it but they stayed neutral in that field. I have not seen the remake/new version of Red Dawn, but the original from the 80's (as bad as the acting was) was very real for what could have gone on in that day and age.

As for game play, sure the short SP play was annoying, and especially when you figure I just finished playing the Battlefield Bad Company (the original) which HAS to be the longest in total SP game play of the FPS's out there as well as the open virtually unlimited maps that made for game play seeming much more real.

Take this from a personal hobbiest game developer (although not in the FPS but more in the PC racing games....just needed time away from them after 15+ years). Listen to the players, but for the players, remember.... this is not COD which has had many years and multiple platforms to develop and learn from. This is really their first shot and even though you have limitations, the storyline is what sold the game. It was not just another FPS where you are part of the military nor some post apocalyptic or zombie game. I think there are a lot of avenues they could take with a Home Front 2. To start with, I am still waiting for a FPS to be as open as the original Bad Company where you had more freedom to complete objectives in different ways. I am also waiting for any good shooter/military type game to give you the "choose your own adventure" kind of feel where you can have multiple outcomes not just from level to level but in how the game ends. With todays console systems and harddrives, this could even be implemented in how the next game would start for you. This is the type of game that really could do that, have that take off and watch the others become the followers.

Now, just for my opinion on ideas for the sequel. The above would be a start. But there could also be a three sided war going on. With the fall of the US government and us putting the NK's on the run there would be a power vacuum. This could also mean you choose who you fight for. Do you want to fight for the US controlled military? Do you want to fight for a reisitance that wants to see change in the how things are going. Almost like a modern civil war mixed with the rooting out of the NK's. There are just so many ways they could go and make it a big success. What I did like about this in the story line vs that of Front Line Fuel of War (since they are basically taking place at the same time) was that they didn't over futurize the military equipment. In reality, if this did happen, it would be very similar to what we see in this game. The US has been the big developer of new tech for generations, especially since the end of the cold war. I liked that they had used the idea of N and S Korea merging and that is where a lot of the military equipment you are seeing had come from (and seeing current or future versions of current weapon systems).

But to complete my short book, I say give the developers a break. Sure they messed up with the servers off the bat. But, I will say that I have developed and released over thirty major add-ons or upgrades using a team of developers that I built and trained over the years. We had a website with a huge following and being that we were doing PC add-ons that we could only offer for free made it a bit different. At the same time we were in competition with other developers/websites and if our release didn't get the best reviews we took it in stride and we would win back those that turned from us by taking their advice. It is unfortunate but without going to either really make something futuristic like the HALO games, the FPS genre is stagnant because they are running out of things to create. They've done the WWII stuff to the point they cant do anymore (except they could have done a lot more of the Pacific theater in my opinion). This only leaves us with WWI, the Civil War, The Revolutionary War, or the two small hot wars (Korea and Nam). I dont want to march in lines loading muskets, so that leaves anything pre WWI out. The only exception to this is Fall of Liberty which had a creative story line but some of the worst graphics on the current generation of systems. They could have put that on the Game Cube graphically. I just say give them a chance to redeem themselves, there is TREMENDOUS potential with the current story and how the game ended. Somewhere along the line even a prequel would be a good fit.

Sorry for the long previous post but it just annoys me to see people immediately say how bad something is and they will have nothing to do with the next edition when they have little to no idea what it takes to develop these games. 3d graphic design alone for one of these is hundreds of man hours worth of work. Then you have a graphic arts team to skin the 3d models. Thats just the basics. You have a separate group that does the sound, then working with the 3d modeling team are the animators. Then you have a team doing the AI. AI in its self is a challenge to overcome because you could have an enemy that is always in the same places or you could have them more reactive to the environment and to you. Here they did a pretty good job because unlike some of the FPS's the enemy will be more likely to move in and try to pin you down, something I noticed right away and then tried to compare it to other more popular FPS's where the enemy didn't. They were aggressive but with few examples they didn't use any real strategy. Anyway, all of these peices of the puzzle are all built around a storyline that is controlled by a different team. More than likely, the story is more in depth but it falls back on the other teams as to what can and cant be implemented.

The other thing MANY people dont realize is that so many of these games are built around a common code or a game engine. This is licensed by the developers in many cases and depending on the engine they use will determine many of the limitations. Like I said I worked mostly on racing games on PC's I worked using the DE2 engine from Ratbag games (now since Atari bought out Infogrames they were more or less disbanded and many went on to form the company Big Ant) that was used in games like Powerslide, Dirt Track Racing, Dirt Track Racing II and if I am not mistaken Big Ant is still using an upgraded version of this in World of Outlaws game. Over time a game engine does become antiquated and that is where I think that the biggest technical problem lies in this game. I can say this with a lot of confidence because I also worked using the gMotor-engine2 from ISI. Here was a gaming engine that in comparison was virtually limitless in the physics control of the car.

As I said, it is a shame to hear such bad comments from people that only know how to hold the controller, they are clueless about what goes into the other side of it. Do yourself a favor, actually watch the credits at the end. On that note, just about the topic of KAOs being closed, things like that happen in the gaming world all the time, usually it is more of a merger and those guys wont be without jobs.