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Kaos On The Homefront

E3 impressions of THQ's big, cinematic shooter set on occupied American soil.

This aggression will not stand.
This aggression will not stand.
THQ-owned developer Kaos Studios has left behind the big multiplayer battlefields of its last game, Frontlines, to explore cinematic single-player action in its new shooter, Homefront. The game takes place 20 years from now in a time when North Korea has successfully invaded the United States--and you, of course, will play a part in the resistance against the occupation. THQ seems to be pushing the American setting as a major marketing point, which I'm guessing will push nationalistic buttons for a good number of players.

At any rate, the game is looking quite good, as these sorts of explosive action-movie shooters go. The demo consisted of some freedom fighters walking around a base camp somewhere in Colorado, talking about their plans before having to fight off a sudden attack by the Korean military. There were several moments of massive level destruction--parts of buildings getting blown apart and such--but Kaos reps were candid about the fact that these are scripted into the levels in specific places, not the result of a generalized destructible geometry system.

Homefront does have one interesting piece of tech that ought to be transparent to the average player, if it does its job correctly. Kaos calls it a "drama engine," and it's a system designed to keep the big set-piece action moments in the player's face at all times. The example they pointed out during the demo consisted of firing a rocket launcher at an incoming jeep, launching it into the air and making it skid by just feet from the player. The reps on hand commented that the drama engine would make sure things like that skidding jeep always missed the player by a narrow margin, to keep the tension high and the action exciting.

Actually, Homefront has one more claim to fame: it's story is being handled by John Milius, the guy who wrote and directed the Cold War-era homeland-invasion classic Red Dawn. That's surely a feather in Homefront's cap; if Milius can't pull off a good story about America being invaded by foreign powers, I doubt anyone can.
Brad Shoemaker on Google+