Front Defense: Heroes is a first-party multiplayer shooter from Vive Studios, developed by Taipei-based Fantahorn Studio. HTC today announced that the WWII-themed shooter is heading out of Early Access today with a few updates in tow.
What’s more, HTC is giving Front Defense: Heroes away for free (to keep forever) to Viveport users if you download the title between May 23rd – 30th via Viveport. Front Defense: Heroes is compatible with the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows VR headsets.
We went hands-on with Front Defense: Heroes in our Early Access review, and while its WWII deathmatches recalled some of the fun of Battlefield or Day of Defeat in VR, it was missing a level of polish and precision that would keep us from coming back for more.
Over its year and half stint in Early Access, the game has received multiple updates in response to player feedback however, including new locomotion methods, combat modes, bots, maps, and weapons.
In today’s update, Front Defense: Heroes now includes five new avatar skins, five new weapons, four new maps and a firing range for training. The biggest change however is in the new earnable points which you can gain in battle and redeem for new weapons, weapon skins, and avatars.
HTC says players will be able to increase their amount of points by 50% by participating in what they call ‘multiplier sessions’. The cap on points is said to reset at 12:00AM PT every night.
HTC says that All Viveport users, not just Viveport Infinity members, can download the title free starting today and ending on May 30th at 12AM PT (local time here).
The biggest question surrounding HTC Vive’s hardware plans right now is the western release of the Vive Focus. The standalone mobile virtual reality (VR) platform has been reportedly performing well in China, and the access to development kits for studios in western territories has been available for some time. A North American and European launch has always been on the cards; is this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) the place to make such an announcement?
Sadly, at this time it’s looking unlikely. HTC Vive has yet to reveal any plans concerning an E3 showcase of any kind, and while the hardware manufacturer will most definitely be at the show in some capacity, it’s more likely to follow last year’s appearance of demonstrating new videogames from third-party developers opposed to anything new from the company itself.
New VR Games
As stated above, HTC Vive is likely to showcase a number of new titles coming to the Vive platform. However, what will be on show has not yet been confirmed. Could we see more from the internal development studio, Fantahorn? The studio’s debut release, Front Defense, received a multiplayer rendition, Front Defense: Heroes, in December last year, but since then we’ve not heard anything about what the studio might be working on.
In addition to this, there’s likely to be many third-party titles available on the show floor at this year’s E3. Indeed, last year saw a HTC Vive hidden in every nook-and-cranny, with practically every third booth offering some hands-on time with anything from a VR viewer to a fully-fledged VR videogame experience. As time continues and VR matures, the hope is that we’ll see more of the latter.
There’s also 2 Bears Studio to consider, from which the debut VR title, Super Puzzle Galaxy, was published by Vive Studios late last year. Could we see a second title coming from the Californian team?
Vive Focus Coming to the US and Europe
As stated above, it’s unlikely we’ll get a release date announcement at E3 2018, but one can hope, right? What is more likely is that we’ll receive word from developers with knowledge of the situation which have teams working on content. While they may not be in a playable form, we should expect word on what studios are developing projects in anticipation of a western launch for the Vive Focus.
Yearning for an old-school Call of Duty 2-era WWII-focused first-person shooter (FPS) in VR? Does the modern, Counter-Strike style setting of Onward and Pavlov not do it for you? Then Front Defense: Heroes could be just what you’re looking for. And luckily this weekend (starting today and running through 1PM PT on Monday, 4/29, anyone can jump in to play for free on Steam.
For what it’s worth, Steam’s got it listed as only featuring Vive support.
While we didn’t love Front Defense: Heroes at launch, it had a solid foundation and has received a few key updates since release. Most notably, they finally added full, smooth locomotion so you no longer are forced to use the awkward mixture of first and third-person movement.
Here’s some footage of the new smooth locomotion:
The game features a handful of maps, a few core game mods like Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag, with up to 5v5 matches. Its gone the makings of a solid VR shooter and this weekend’s influx of players — plus a whopping 50% discount if you want to buy it and keep playing after the weekend – bodes well for the health of the player-base ideally.
If you decide to take the plunge and check it out over the next few days, you can join the game’s Discord channel for updates and to find people to play with.
Here is some gameplay from the launch version of the game:
I’ve played a lot of WWII shooters in my lifetime. They’re not as popular now as they used to be, replaced mostly by zombies and an obsession with the post-apocalypse, but I must have killed millions of digital Nazis over the years. But what I haven’t done much of yet, surprisingly, is visit that era from inside a VR headset — a topic the Front Defense series aims to rectify.
Most of the VR shooters we’ve seen so far focus on either zombies or try to take a futuristic sci-fi spin on things, but that’s not the case with Front Defense: Heroes. Instead, it’s a throwback of sorts to the days of Axis vs. Allies and MP40s. After spending some time with Front Defense: Heroes we don’t think it will have much trouble finding a market for itself despite some glaring flaws.
Check out a bunch of gameplay footage here:
What Front Defense: Heroes lacks in terms of original content it makes up for in its mechanics. Aiming down the sights of a rifle or the scope of a sniper feels great, as does ejecting and reloading a magazine in the heat of battle. Once you’ve got the rhythm down and you can effortlessly snag a new clip from your belt without even needing to look down, you’ll know the sense of presence is strong.
And then that’s when the awkward movement system that no one asked for, known as V-Move, rears its ugly head. I understand that a lot of people do still experience motion sickness when trying to use smooth movement in VR, but for a game such as Front Defense: Heroes, anything other than full, smooth locomotion cripples the entire experience.
The V-Move system works by having you press a direction on the left trackpad and then you watch as your character moves in third-person. When you let go of the trackpad you resume control in the first-person view again. It’s just like the comfort setting in From Other Suns. The result is a quite literally stop-and-go experience that throttles the action and forces you to master an obtuse mechanic before you can actually enjoy the game.
To be clear: the developers have told me that a full, smooth locomotion system will be added, but as of the time of this writing that has not happened, multiple weeks after launch. It gets the job done for what it is in its current state, but it’s far from a real solution for a game like this. In Front Defense: Heroes I want to move and shoot at the same time such as I would in Call of Duty, Battlefield, or even Onward. With V-Move that’s impossible.
Looking beyond the strange movement system decision, the rest of the game has promise. It’s a bare bones multiplayer affair for the most part and feels like an early 2000s multiplayer shooter got VR support, but given the nature of the technology it doesn’t feel out of place.
I got to play both Team Deathmatch and an Attack vs. Defend game mode. The latter game mode tasked my team, the Defenders, with preventing the Attacking team from laying explosive down on tanks. If we prevented them from blowing up all three before the time ran out then we won. Fantahorn and Vive Studios have also mentioned there should be a Capture the Flag mode at launch too.
Games support up to 5v5 but we only ever were able to do 3v3 for the testing session. Between pistols, automatic rifles, single shot rifles, rocket launchers, snipers, grenades, and more there was plenty to do in each match. The game is very likely going to open up dramatically once we get the chance to try it with smooth locomotion.
Perhaps most impressively of all though is the way in which HTC is planning to distribute this title. Like the lackluster, stationary wave shooter before it, Front Defense, this new title, Front Defense: Heroes, is a Vive Studios game, which means it has support from HTC behind it.
The game launched at a discounted price of only $4.99 and will be given away for free to anyone that already owns Front Defense. Plus, you can buy both games in a bundle right now for $9.99 and Front Defense: Heroes will be added to the Viveport Subscription service. The powers that be really want everyone with a Vive to play this game.
Final Score:6/10 – Decent
Front Defense: Heroes is certainly much better than its poorly conceived wave shooter sibling, Front Defense, but it still feels a bit unfinished. It’s a shame it still doesn’t have smooth locomotion, but even in its current form it scratches a bit of an itch for VR shooter fans by delivering something a bit more casual and arcadey in design than its competitors.
You can find Front Defense: Heroes on both Viveport and Steam for HTC Vive with a special launch price of only $4.95. You can read our Game Review Guidelines for more information on how we arrive at our review scores.
[Editor’s Note] – This was originally a review in progress on December 8th, 2017, but has since been updated with additional context throughout the article and with a final score on December 22nd, 2017.
When Front Defense released earlier this year it packed a lot of promise into a less-than-impressive package. The shooting and cover mechanics felt great, but it just needed a bit more time in the oven to really shine. Now just mere months after its release the developers at Fantahorn Studios and publishers at Vive Studios are back again with a follow-up titled Front Defense: Heroes. However, instead of being a stationary wave shooter like its predecessor, this is a fast-paced, online, 5v5, multiplayer shooter.
I’m not the only one that thinks that’s a pretty big shift, right?
The popularity of military shooters is no new thing, even for the young VR industry. Onward is one of the most popular VR games to date, with similar titles such as Pavlov springing up in its wake, and other entries such as Bravo Team due to release early next year. According to the official press release, Front Defense: Heroes will include not only deathmatch, but also capture the flag and defense-based game modes. The release also mentions a unique locomotion system called “V-Move” but there aren’t any details on what that means exactly.
“With Front Defense: Heroes we’ve built upon our experience with Front Defense to engage the community and offer new challenges with every match,” said River Ho, Front Defense producer in a prepared statement. “As a dynamic multiplayer shooter, Front Defense: Heroes lends itself perfectly to the competitive ethos of VR e-sports, an important feature as VR gaming matures.”
Vive Studios is also announcing a new game from developer 2 Bears Studio today (Arcade Saga) titled Super Puzzle Galaxy, which is a physics-based puzzle game. Both games are expected to be available in early December.
Perhaps most surprisingly of the news about Front Defense: Heroes is that during its launch window it will be available at a price point of only $4.99. Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
