And another thing – visually portraying a weapon’s character is only half the story. Animators must stimulate that most nebulous of concepts too: game feel. How does the player feel holding the weapon? Of course, there’re additional aspects at play: the weapon’s appearance, its fire rate and sound design, for instance. These aspects exist in harmony with weapon reload animations creating a tactile sensation for the player. If a firearm’s reload animation doesn’t match the rest of its design elements, then game feel is lost, and player satisfaction gone.

So, without further ado, here are fifteen totally awesome reload animations, ranging from rapid in-and-outs for breakneck gunplay, to stately, tactical, detailed reloads, with unnecessarily inefficient but visually epic flamboyance stuffed in-between.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

Wearing its retro-future 80s action clichés firmly on its sleeve is Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. Playing as Cyber Commando Sergeant Rex Colt, himself a tongue-in-cheek homage to Terminator-esque half-man half-machines, gave animators plenty of wiggle room for flashiness. There’re excessive exaggerations in Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon’s reload animation; movements are wide and freewheeling, shotguns unnecessarily spin mid-air before cartridges are coin flipped down the barrel in carefree volition, providing both visual ostentation and information for players of Sergeant Colt’s robotic strength and precision. In short, they’re totally unrealistic, eye-popping attention-grabbers.

CYBERPUNK 2077

We’ll start with what’s become the poster child of rushed releases that could have benefitted massively from a delay- or another delay, in this case, because Cyberpunk 2077 was, of course, delayed more than a few times in the lead-up to its launch. The state the game released in was, frankly, unacceptable, not only in terms of the baffling lack of polish, but also the core gameplay itself feeling decidedly half-baked. With a couple more years in the oven, who knows? Maybe things could have turned out differently.

Two Worlds

The timing of Two Worlds’ release, coming up after The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, might seem like it created lots of unfair expectations. Unfortunately, this wasn’t helped by developer Zuxxez proclaiming it to be “a more focused, grittier experience” than Oblivion with “much more complex” magic, a “more complex society” and more depth to the horse riding. The final result was a mess with graphical issues, a cliched story wrought with awful voice-acting, repetitive combat and bugs galore. Some of the environments looked nice and the world was appropriately large. But that “deep” horse riding was a nightmare to control, souring the experience all the more. Overall, Two Worlds is looked back upon as a meme and an albatross that it’s successor had to bear.

Remember Dead Island 2? THQ Nordic promised that it was still “in the works”, though whether that meant it would be coming any time soon or not remained a mystery. Until now, that is – the publisher has announced in its Q1 FY2019 report that Dambuster Studios, which made Homefront: The Revolution, is now in charge of development.

To say that Dead Island 2 has seen some delays would be an understatement. The title was originally in development at YAGER before being shuffled off to Sumo Digital. Ever since it’s announcement in 2014, there have been constant reassurances – in 2016, 2017 and 2018 along with this year – that the title is still coming.

The real question is whether Dead Island 2 will possibly look at releasing for next-gen consoles as well as current-gen. We know that there will be exclusive content for PS4 (including 30 day beta access) but we’ll have to see about the rest later. In the meantime, check out our thoughts on Dambuster’s rather underwhelming Homefront: The Revolution.

FINAL FANTASY 15

Final Fantasy 15’s larger narrative is a bit of a mess, while the game often also receives criticism for how it sheds its open world approach and forces player down linear corridors in its final chapters. Not to mention the fact that after over a decade of anticipation, there were many who felt that the final product just wasn’t worth the wait. But while Final Fantasy 15 is not a perfect game, it is still a damn good one. Great combat, an open world begging to be explored, some excellent boss fights, and a memorable ensemble cast of four excellently developed characters make it a true diamond in the rough.

Among the many games that will be getting enhancements for the Xbox One X will be last year’s Homefront: The Revolution, the sequel to THQ’s divisive multiplayer shooter that launched in 2011, and which failed to make many waves, either.

That said, like many games, it maintains a loyal fan base- and if you are among them, then you will be happy at Deep Silver and Dambuster Studios’ commitment to the title. They have confirmed that the Xbox One X enhancements for the title will include 1800p resolution, as well as HDR support. All HUD and UI elements for the game, meanwhile, will be rendered in native 4K- so that’s cool.

Homefront: The Revolution launched last year, after a long and fractured development cycle. The game, which focused on a single player campaign over multiplayer, failed to be resonant with too many players. It is available right now on PS4, Xbox One, an PC. You can check the full detailed information on Xbox One X enhancements for it below.

• The game is rendered in 3200 x 1800 which is a four times increase over the standard Xbox One version.  This resolution will provide superior image quality on 4k TVs and a crisper, super-sampled image on 1080p TVs.
• All HUD and UI elements are rendered in native 4K for the highest quality image.
• The Time Splitters 2 arcade machine content is now rendered in native 4K.
• The game takes advantage of Xbox One X’s increased memory which will support more high quality textures on screen at any given time.
• Frame rate performance is further improved.
• HDR support has been added to both the Xbox One X and Xbox One S hardware.

Ever since Homefront: The Revolution launched, there has been quite a bit of talk about how the game has looked and performed. Unfortunately for the developers, the game was a critical failure. However the game had potential and for some reason developer Dambusters have continued to work on the game since then.

Since the game launched, the developers have been trying to get the game into a state where players can potentially enjoy it. To that end, Dambusters is about to release a new update and this one is apparently going to be rather substantial.

On the game’s official website, the company announced the next patch is going to include support for the PS4 Pro. The company says that those who are playing Homefront: The Revolution on the PS4 Pro are going to see a resolution and performance boost. There will even be some HDR enhancements.

Thoughts? Let us know in the comments section below.

Even with numerous delays, studio changes and so on, Homefront: The Revolution wasn’t exactly a roaring success. If anything, the game seemed to have launched too early and as such, the reception was less than stellar.

In conversation with MCV, Deep Silver global brand and marketing director Paul Nicholls discussed the problems behind the launch’s timing and how it was “less of a success” than what had been planned.

“You can see in the market at the moment, quality is absolutely king and some big IPs have struggling figures at the moment. We learned a lot of lessons about what to do going forward. Not just the quality of the product, but when we launch as well…

“The team at [developer] Dambuster did a fantastic job. With what the team there has done, getting the product patched and so on, the sentiment with consumers has really turned around. We’re getting a lot of positive feedback compared to when we launched, so timing was probably the biggest lesson we have learned there.”

What are your thoughts on Homefront: The Revolution? Has it actually improved? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Homefront: The Revolution launched in May this year, after years and years of protracted development (including it being carted off to different publishers at different points in time). The game received middling reviews, and while it was ambitious, it was promptly forgotten by everybody, marking a sad ending to an already difficult saga of game development.

But the game’s negative reception does not seem to have affected Dambuster Studios at all, who are proceeding with their plans for post launch support for the game unfettered. Today, they launched the first bit of single player DLC for the game, The Voice of the People. The Voice of the People features a new storyline starring Benjamin Walker, who is the most wanted man in America, and who is trying to liberate Philadelphia and fight back against the occupying KPA forces. It also introduces a new faction, the 90s Gang, which controls Philadelphia’s subway system.

Homefront: The Revolution is available now on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. You can check out screenshots for the DLC below.

If you have nothing better to do this weekend – like, literally nothing – then you’ll be somewhat responsive to the fact that Dambuster’s Homefront: The Revolution is free on Steam this weekend. That’s pretty much the entire game, ripe for the taking from September 8th, 10 AM PST to September 11th, 1 PM PST.

As noted by Deep Silver, “The entire game will be unlocked and available to sample, including the vast 30-hour single player campaign and full access to Resistance Mode, Homefront’s online co-operative experience, together with the new Missions released since launch.”

Of course, there are other reasons for this free trial of sorts – Deep Silver wants to showcase the game’s improvements courtesy of a new patch. “The ‘Performance Patch’ launched earlier this month on console and PC, providing a significant boost to frame rates and overall performance thanks to a focus on GPU, lighting and particle optimisations, and checkpoint save and enemy spawning optimisations, and two new free Resistance Mode missions.”

Will you be checking out Homefront: The Revolution? Let us know in the comments.