Homefront: The Revolution Could Be The Dark Horse For 2015

THQ initially made a play at big-budget gaming by going after the likes of Call of Duty and Crysis when they released Homefront on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.  The results were very mixed as the game was cinematic and carried a cool setting but felt a bit aimless in identifying itself within a crowded shooter genre.  The game fizzled a bit and didn’t carry well with its online component after its first month or so in stores.  THQ eventually sold off their intellectual property as the studio was being dismantled and other developers and publishers were bidding on the potential money-makers that sat under THQ.  Homefront made a new home with Crytek, who is now in development of a second title, called Homefront: The Revolution.

Crytek is responsible for the likes of Crysis and Ryse: Son of Rome and are bringing those franchises high-quality visual standards along with The Revolution.  The second game will be based around a small militia using guerrilla tactics in an occupied US which is being occupied by the KPA (Korean Peoples army) and suppressing the American people.  This new Homefront game will feature interesting environments and objectives that will allow players to customize their approach in order to get any task completed.  Technology can be used to stealthily infiltrate enemy positions or players can straight up assault an encampment and hope to come out victorious once the shots have been fired.  This non-linear approach will give The Revolution a slightly different flavor of experience than you would expect from giants like CoD or Battlefield – a cookie cutter campaign that feels too scripted to feel like you’re actually playing your way and relies too heavily on good writing (otherwise they just fall flat – see CoD Ghosts’ or Battlefield 4’s campaigns for reference).

The landscape for shooters is getting a pretty sizable shift right now.  Games like Titanfall completely ignore the formulaic approach for shooters and offer interesting new ways to traverse landscapes, making everything seem fresh when really it’s just small augmentations that give the game a much different experience from your typical shooter.  Homefront: The Revolution carries little expectation in terms of impressing, which is why it should be considered a dark horse for 2015.  Crytek is a good studio that has experience with successful shooters and translating that experience into a different setting could bode very well for Homefront.  There’s a small gameplay trailer from E3 that’s being included at the end here.  Check it out and see for yourself why this game peaks our interest, especially since it’s still in an alpha stage.

Access All Your Media Content Remotely From Your Xbox One With Upcoming “Plex”

Earlier in the week we touched on some topics covered during Microsoft’s BUILD conference, one of them being the Xbox One platform’s Windows core and how Microsoft intend to make the Windows Store and Xbox One app marketplace more unified for greater app sharing.  While that crossover will still take some time and app tuning on the Xbox One before we see the app marketplace grow exponentially, Microsoft have confirmed a new app on the way: Plex.

Plex is a media streaming application that has you install a server-side application on your PC/Mac that gives other mobile or desktop devices the ability to connect and see your hosted content wherever you are as long as you have an internet connection.  You’ll be able to host ALL of your movies, TV shows, music, etc. with the app.  Plex can even see your playlists on iTunes.  In the next couple months we can expect Plex to launch on the Xbox One which will be an important moment as there currently is no Windows Media Center application available and Plex is multiplatform, allowing those of you with multiple platforms under one roof to continue using Plex instead of being forced to Windows Media Center and the PC platforms.  No official release date has been set, but the word from the Plex group is that they’re starting their first round of testing.  It could be a few weeks or a few months depending on how quickly they get a functioning app ready to roll out.