KAOS Studios announced their new game today, Homefront, a first-person shooter for the Big Three platforms: Windows PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. Everyone hoping for Frontlines 2 is saddened, myself included, but having a brand-new IP also keeps them from being a one-trick pony.
Homefront is set in near-future America where players fight a North Korean occupation of America following the collapse of the US economy. Sort of an eerie blend of our current times with some Cold War thrown in for flavor. Indeed, the story behind Homefront was penned by John Milius,who wrote the original Red Dawn movie in the 80’s as well as the in-production remake, wrote the screenplay for Apocalypse Now and many other films, and the story for Medal of Honor: European Invasion.
I suspect the single-player campaign will be one-sided much like Frontlines: Fuel of War was. In that game, players could only play through the story from the Western Coalition perspective, ultimately fighting their way to the Red Star base in Moscow. The multi-player game obviously allowed players to choose a faction. (Red Star for the win! Capitalist pigs die!) The wording of today’s announcement leads me to believe Homefront will play out the same with a one-sided campaign then open multi-player battles.
I’ll most likely check out the game if it will be another sandbox shooter and if it continues KAOS’ little innovations.
My hopes for Homefront, and KAOS’ future games, are that they launch with dedicated servers for PC first and foremost. I still to this day feel that was the major nail in the game’s coffin from the PC side of things. But also give dedicated servers for the consoles – we love having those available on the 360! Second, I hope they’ve either gotten a grip on the Unreal Engine. Frontlines was their first time using the Unreal tech and… it showed, performance is still an issue. I’m not much of a fan of the Unreal Engine anyway but if KAOS is stuck with it from licensing it for Frontlines or just deciding to use it again now that they do have experience (I have no idea how the licensing works but I suspect it’s on a per-game basis anyway) they need to put everything they can into giving the best performance possible. Third, audio. I remember the audio engineer saying they used a stock sound library for Frontlines for budget reasons. It was your first game, so fine. But now, spend a few bucks, get out there and record your own high-quality sounds. Look at DICE… when it comes to the audio quality and immersion, it’s hard to beat a Battlefield game. But try, please.
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