Homefront: The Revolution’s development cycle has been nothing but a roller coaster ride. After the somewhat mixed reception to the original, THQ decided to green-lit a sequel. However the original developer, Kaos Studios shut down and development duties were handed over to Crytke’s UK branch. THQ, unfortunately, closed down in 2013 and sold off the IP to Crytek who ensured that development continued smoothly in co-ordination with DeepSilver. But in 2014 Crytek sold off the IP to Koch Media who is actually DeepSilver’s parent company. Dambuster Studios were formed the from the remains of Crytek UK and development has continued to roll on ever since. The game got delayed from a 2015 release target date and will be hitting current gen consoles and PC this May. In short, the game’s development cycle has went through a lot of different hands but DeepSilver believes that the team can “turn it into a best selling title.”
We recently got our hands on the beta version of Homefront and from the technical side of things, we have mixed feelings about how this title is shaping up. But before we jump into it, it should be noted that this is the beta version and things can always change in the final version. It must also be noted that the parameters we noted may or may not apply to the game’s single player campaign portion as these two components tend to vary just like they do in Uncharted 4: A Theif’s End. So keep that in mind!
The very first thing we wanted to talk about is the match making issues. It took us ages to get into a match…the wait was literally depressingly difficult at times. We are hopeful that Dambuster Studios will fix this issue at launch, because it could be a game breaking issue for many.
Homefront: The Revolution is running on CryEngine and as you can expect, the game looks pretty decent at times. You can expect a good mix of destruction, volumetric and physics effects, combined with an effective anisotropic filtering solution and lighting. This is the CryEngine after all, so we are not really surprised at all with how good the game looks at times.
However it seems that CryEngine will be rendering the game at 900p on the Xbox One, a trend we have seen on previous games on the console using the engine. Does this mean that the PS4 version will run at 1080p? Most likely but we won’t know for sure until the game launches. It’s also possible that the game may finally run at 1080p on Xbox One at launch but with only a couple of months to go for release, we think this is quite unlikely, although we hope we are proven wrong in this regard. Performance wise, the game surprisingly runs quite well. The game seems to be running well above 30fps for most of the gameplay but a capped fps will help make the experience smoother. Dambuster Studios can learn a thing or two from Sucker Punch who provided players the option to run inFamous: Second Son at a locked 30fps.
Homefront The Revolution seems to be a pretty ambitious game. Its open ended approach along with dynamic gameplay could make this game one to keep an eye out for. If Dambuster Studios are able to fix the match making and performance issues, we may have a technically solid first person shooter on our hands.
We will follow up with our final analysis across all three platforms when the game launches in May.
Share Your Thoughts Below (Always follow our comments policy!)