The Homefront The Revolution beta test is live on Xbox One (you can still get codes from our giveaway if you're interested!), and the first user impressions have been published in various forums and Reddit since there's no NDA in place.
So far, they've been very negative about the game. Here's a random selection of comments about it taken from the Homefront subreddit (though the same opinions have been reported in a thread on the main Xbox One subreddit):
This is probably the worst game I have ever seen on the Xbox one. I don't know what the devs were thinking, but this game is absolute trash. The graphics look straight out of 2006, there is screen tearing literally everywhere, shadows are s*itty, animations too, the enemy's spawn literally in the middle of your field of view, when they die they spin around and flail like physics from 1995 tomb raider. These things can not be improved, while also increasing performance.Yeah...it seems to run at under 30 FPS, the controls are VERY clunky, and everything in motion stutters around. Even for a BETA this is despicable.I thought I was alone in this opinion, but I also thought "There's absolutely no way that it's even relatively possible that I'm the only one who finds this to be a complete and utter disappointment". Glad to know I'm not crazy, but very sad that the game is actually THAT bad for everyone else, too. People I played with in the beta were like "Wow this game is great" and I'm sitting there confused as hell. This "beta" literally 100% feels like a pre-alpha build of a low-budget FPS.Everything is wrong, from sound design to weapon proportion (marksman rifle looks like an anti tank rifle) Graphics. Wow. Don't need to comment on that. You all know. AI ? Complete trash, they're confused like they were just born 10 minutes ago. No situational awareness and just run around guns blazing like morons. I mean, someone shoots a weapon next to me, sounds like he's 200 feet away. The enemy barely cares about cover.After finally getting into a game, it was quickly realised why not al ot of people are playing. The gameplay is bad and simplistic and just overall I don't see this game being played much after release.Quite honestly, I tried the game very briefly at Paris Games Week (when I also had the chance to interview a developer) and didn't have such a bad impression at all, though I played the campaign mode on PC.
The developer already addressed this, stating that the Homefront The Revolution beta is actually an old build.
Graphics:
The Closed Beta is a slice of Resistance Mode taken from the game before last Christmas, and was then tested and configured to serve as a first chance to get people to play the mode while we can test as much as possible. That means it’s not representative of the final game, and in fact some things like graphics and animations are already greatly improved in the current state of development for all platforms. Visual polish comes in rather late when the primary focus is on polishing gameplay, and that level of visual polish is not in this Closed Beta.
This is very much a technical beta more so than a demo using a finished game.
We’ve seen some unexpected graphics bugs during the first Stress Test, though. Sometimes textures don’t load in properly, which can make textures look very bland and low resolution.
We are making some improvements to fix this bug, but if you encounter textures that look a lot worse than they normally do, it would help us a lot if you can leave your Xbox Gamertag and the time you saw the issue with your feedback in the Feedback forums so we can find out more details on what causes this in our beta tracking systems.
Difficulty:
Resistance Mode is meant to be hard. It’s harder than most games these days, which is by design. We want you to learn from mistakes and have a sense of achievement when completing Missions.
But maybe it is a bit too hard on the Easy difficulty. We want to challenge players, but not frustrate them. To that end we’re adjusting Easy difficulty slightly to make it a bit more accessible for first-time players who have never played Homefront: The Revolution before.
We would always recommend passing the Missions in the Closed Beta on Easy at first, and then attempt Normal and later Hard.
Controls:
We are making tweaks to gamepad controls to make them a bit tighter and offer more precision. We aim to strike a balance between feeling like someone who just joined the Resistance and is sent out on his/her first mission, and feeling powerful over time as you get more skilled.
Matchmaking:
We spotted some issues with matchmaking last Friday. If it took you a while to get a full group, this is most likely due to the amount of available players at the same time. Some matchmaking issues can also be related to the firewall or NAT settings of people hosting or joining a lobby.
While that can often be dependent on how you have configured your network access, we are adding some additional tracking systems to see if there is something unique to our game that we can address or resolve.
If you get a “Strict NAT” error on Xbox One, there is also a support page available to help you troubleshoot this in your home network.
@kentkestner1 They already are in current development. Graphics and animations in this beta are non-final.
— Homefront (@HomefrontGame) February 11, 2016
The frame rate will also be improved in the final version, by the way.
@jordangraham114 The fps are very "beta" in this beta, but we're targeting a much better frame rate in the final game of course!
— Homefront (@HomefrontGame) February 12, 2016
Have you been playing this Homefront The Revolution beta and if so, what do you think of it? Let us know in the comments; we'll have our own hands-on preview up soon.