At the last couple of E3 conventions, we've been increasingly impressed by a new first-person shooter property from THQ, currently in development at Manhattan-based Kaos Studios. I'm talking of course about Homefront, a story-driven shooter set in a "what if?" future scenario that sees a united Korea annex the rest of Asia then in 2025, invade and occupy parts of the USA.

What we'd seen up to this point had been very promising and a seemingly big step forward from Kaos' last effort Frontlines: Fuel of War, which although far from terrible failed to really stand out in the incredibly competitive military FPS genre. So having now had sections of the game's single-player narrative demoed to us a couple of times, we were very intrigued when THQ sent word that they would be revealing the game's multiplayer component for the very first time at the 2010 Tokyo Games Show and not just a controlled demo, actual hands-on time.




Now as I mentioned, there's no shortage of killer top-shelf titles in this genre and the crowd isn't thinning any time soon. Call of Duty doesn't look to be going anywhere, Battlefield is still kicking strong and even Medal of Honor is attempting a comeback, so for it's planned February 2011 launch on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Homefront has a lot to prove if it wants the attention of military shooter fans. So I'm very happy to report that we once again walked away from a THQ Homefront presentation thoroughly impressed. In fact, we walked away then came back the following day and squeezed ourselves into the Japanese media's preview session so we could have another crack.

The multiplayer component of Homefront is set a little earlier than the single-player narrative. Where the single-player section focuses on a small group of soldiers fighting through a heavily occupied USA, multiplayer takes place just after the EMP (seen in this trailer) is detonated and blacks out the country; when the US military is still largely operational but their communication has been heavily disrupted.

The overall feel of the multiplayer matches we played is probably most bluntly described as a mixture between the Modern Warfare games and perhaps Battlefield 2 -- in terms of the solid, tactile feeling of MW's infantry combat combined with the scale that BF's vehicles and higher player counts add. However, it's also arguably faster paced than both.

The presentation kicked off with a quick briefing from THQ's Core Games VP Danny Bilson, who opened with an acknowledgment of their rival shooters: "There are very unique ways to play Homefront that separate us from our most-excellent competition, who we are consistently competing with every day." he explained. "As they keep raising the bar, we keep raising ours and I keep torturing the studio with quality standards". The primary "unique way" they would be revealing to us here is what they call the "Battle Points" system.

The rounds we played were your basic capture and defend the point scenarios (think Battlefield's "Conquest" and Modern Warfare's "Domination" modes), but this Battle Points mechanic makes for a pretty different experience. BP is the in-game currency and is certain to become Homefront's most significant multiplayer element. In Battle Points rounds, you're awarded points for performing various objectives during the match, like say 30 points for fragging an enemy infantry with 10 additional points for a headshot; 100 points for destroying an enemy tank etc. Points are also awarded by accomplishing team objectives -- the example we were shown was capturing (or assisting with the capture of) a command point.




As soon as you bank enough of these points, you can spend them straight away on basic deploys by mashing a hotkey. As we were demoing the Xbox 360 version, these were mapped to the D-Pad buttons, left, right and down and the choices available are things like a rocket-launcher, instant ammo re-supply, airstrikes and remote controlled drones. The three deploys available to us varied with the selected class: Assault, Sniper, Recon etc which also dictates your weapon load-out and appearance. These classes were all preset for the purposes of the demo, but we were informed that custom-classes would be creatable in the final game.

For example, the assault class might have an assault rifle, sidearm, grenades and the deploys RPG, ammo re-supply and heli-drone while a recon class might have a shotgun, machine-pistol, flash grenades with ammo re-supply, air-strikes and a ground-drone and so on. Selecting a starting config isn't a difficult choice as you can switch between classes every time you respawn and pick a load-out appropriate to what you want to be doing at any given point in the match.

The insta-deploys are at the cheaper end of the scale, so if you see an enemy chopper you can purchase an RPG or Stinger and bam, instant surface-to-air capability, or you can purchase a more expensive recon-drone and remotely drive the little armoured-bot around painting enemy targets for your teammates (who can then see those targets through solid walls as they move around -- remember we're talking a bit of 2025 future-tech here). But it's not always that easy a choice, because if you want the real heavy machinery, you can't be spending paycheck-to-paycheck -- you have to save up for that shit.

I'm talking of course, about vehicles, which start at a few hundred for a basic hummer and run well into the thousands for an attack helicopter. Unlike the instant deploys, these can only be purchased from the deployment screen in-between respawns, but the best part is, you spawn right into it. No more of that walking for miles to your base's vehicle depot and waiting for a chopper to respawn, you materialise on the map right in the hot-seat and there's also the option there to spawn directly into your teammates' purchased vehicles if they have a spare passenger/gunner seat.

The result of this mechanic is that battles really escalate and intensify as the round progresses. Starting out as just infantry on infantry and ending up with a diverse vehicular battlefield. It's not an entirely new concept, and I suppose in terms of military shooters it's probably most easily derived from the popular Counter-strike mod for Half-Life, which allowed players to purchase more powerful guns as they tallied kills; but the only more accurate example I can think of is the lesser-known indie fantasy game Savage: The Battle of Newerth, where players started out as simple nomads and as the battle progressed could purchase giant beasts and medieval war-machines.




So the general battle Points concept isn't as entirely original as they might have us think, but there's no doubt that it's been executed very well here. Even in this purported pre-alpha state, the units and class configurations actually seemed incredibly well-balanced. You're not completely screwed as soon as one of your opponents can afford a helicopter, because there's a multitude of other ways you can still take them out -- you just need to decide if you want to risk the spend or keep saving for a chopper of your own.

Of course this is just one new element that they're bringing to the table with Homefront, and the Kaos Studios members we spoke to made mention of at least one other big unique feature and obviously, more foundation game-modes to be revealed at a later date. We also squeezed out of them that an "abilities" system similar to Call of Duty's "perks" would be included but they remained tight-lipped on whether that would include persistent unlock elements.

It's testament to the rest of this game's multiplayer component then, that everything else about the experience barely even needs mention here. In areas such as graphics, animations and level design -- as you can probably see for yourself from the in-engine trailers and screenshots -- what we've been exposed to so far gives little inclination that the final product won't at the very least hit parity with its rival shooters. On the two maps we saw: Cul-de-sac (infantry only) and Farm (vehicles enabled), there was a good mixture of indoor and wide-open environments with lots of ins and outs for all different kinds of combat.

The controls were mapped incredibly intuitively and it's nice to see that they haven't deviated too much from the standards set by their competitors simply just to be different. Iron sights, jump, reload, sprint, melee were all where I expected them to be. Piloting the vehicles also didn't take long too get the hang of as they've opted for Halo-style driving, where you both steer and accelerate with the analogue sticks, adding in the bumper triggers to control altitude in the rotor airccraft.

As opposed to the more realistic military sims, Homefront is very much that fast-paced arcade-style of shooter. The base movement speed is already quite rapid and is further augmented with unrestricted sprint and you can also crouch, prone and get back on your feet with little delay. One thing we did forget to ask was whether there would be lean functionality for peering around corners, though there wasn't any more unmapped buttons on the control pad though so we doubt it (perhaps for PC?).




We're also not sure if that pace leaves the game open to annoying glitch-tactics like "dolphin diving" as we didn't really have enough time to look into it, but one issue we did encounter was getting hung up on minor obstacles like fences and window sills while trying to jump over them -- Homefront seems to lack the context-sensitive vaulting that other shooters have somewhat standardised. We did quiz Kaos on this one though and were assured it was something they are indeed still tweaking and were again reminded that this was a pre-alpha demo of the game.

Lastly and probably most importantly for many online multiplayer stalwarts, it was confirmed that Homefront on all platforms would utilise dedicated servers -- and just as well, as the console versions support up to 32 player games (16v16 and potentially more for PC - we'll hopefully know more about that soon). Further, THQ confirmed to us that they would be supplying servers for the console versions and that there would be some locally hosted in an Australian data-centre to offer the kind of low-latency, low-loss matches that Aussie console gamers aren't often afforded.

Specifics for PC, however, were less forthcoming and we're yet to learn whether third parties like Australian ISPs BigPond, iiNet and Internode will be able to run PC servers for their subscribers as they can with many other shooters, or whether they might be plotting an exclusive deal like Activision have for Call of Duty: Black Ops or just keeping PC servers in-house too. We're told that they'll have an official announcement soon, but whatever the result there, it's at least comforting to know that the connectivity situation shouldn't be as dire as Modern Warfare 2's unnerving precedent with it's IWNet service.

Kaos missed the mark on this aspect with Frontlines: Fuel of War and it wasn't until well after launch that we had local servers worth connecting to for that one -- by which time, many of us fickle gamers had lost interest. So fingers-crossed that they get this one right because by all accounts, Homefront is shaping up to be a worthy potential competitor in the shooter market. With the right amount of polish and promotion leading up to next Febuary, this could very well be the next-big-thing in modern military first-person shooters.