Studios need to get their projects out to as many customers as possible to gain revenue, doing so by supporting multiple headsets as well as appearing on numerous sales platforms. Location-based entertainment (LBE) is another avenue has proved fruitful for a number of virtual reality (VR) studios. Today, Vive Studios has announced a partnership with Synthesis VR to distribute its content VR management and licensing platform.
Synthesis VR is a dedicated LBE VR platform designed to help VR arcades with online and offline booking, customer retention via customer management features, gift card and membership functionalities; cater to multiple experiences and also capture and stream real-time gameplay.
With Vive Studios now onboard, titles such as Front Defense and Front Defense: Heroes (developed by Fantahorn Studio) will now be made available to any entertainment venue using the Synthesis VR system. Both of these titles will have their different use cases in a VR arcade. Front Defense is a WWII-era first-person shooter (FPS) with a single-player campaign. Originally released in 2017 for HTC Vive, Front Defenseputs you in the role of an Allied Forces hero defending a fictional European town against an entire Axis armoured division.
Front Defense: Heroes, on the other hand, is a multiplayer experience offering 5 vs 5 multiplayer, with multiple maps to fight on and the option to play as the Allies or the Axis powers. Game modes include Capture the Flag, Death Match and Defense Mission. VRFocus reviewed the title in 2017, giving it three stars, noting: “In comparison to Front Defense, Front Defense: Heroes is certainly a step up, offering a far more dynamic experience than its single-player sibling, it’s just not quite the standout experience it could’ve been.”
Vive Studios has helped to publish several other titles including Jam Studio VR, Super Puzzle Galaxy, Arcade Saga, Operation Apex and Knockout League. All of which could come to LBE venues thanks to the collaboration.
Synthesis VR has also revealed a studio partnership with Dutajaya Media, offering a pay per play (PPP) licensing option to LBVR operators through the platform. Two videogames will be available, Dimensions 13, a 2-4 player co-op, and Verxus, a 4-6 player PvP experience. For further LBE VR updates, keep reading VRFocus.
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).
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:
Tomorrow is the HTC Vive’s second birthday. Yes, it’s really been two years since the SteamVR headset started transporting us to other worlds. Hard to believe, isn’t it? To celebrate, the company is giving away some free games from today.
From 12:01am PDT on 4/4/18 through 11:59pm on 4/8/18, every Vive owner will be able to claim some free games over on Viveport. Specifically, you can get World War II-era wave shooter, Front Defense, and its multiplayer sequel, Front Defense Heroes, at no charge. We weren’t blown away by either game, but you can’t really argue with free, can you?
Also available in the promotion is the likable Super Puzzle Galaxy Lite and one of the first Vive Studios-published games, Arcade Saga (which was also free last Vive Day).
That’s not all, though. During the same period of time all Viveport Subscribers will be getting a free copy of Solfar Studios’ Everest VR. Not only that but you can grab a three-month subscription for half the price, allowing you to play up to five VR experiences a month, choosing from a library of more than 400 titles.
Of course, tomorrow is also the launch of HTC’s enhanced headset, the Vive Pro, along with a new SteamVR 1.0 tracking bundle. So if you’re jumping into the world of Vive for the first time tomorrow, this is a good place to start.
Front Defense: Heroes (2017), Fantahorn’s next installment of its WWII-themed shooter, is available in Early Access today for HTC Vive, now serving up multiplayer action in classic 5v5 shooter fashion. We don’t score reviews in Early Access, which is probably a good thing, because several game-breaking bugs are simply too prominent to make this anything other than a quick diversion at the moment.
Developer: Fantahorn Studios Publisher: Vive Studios Available On: HTC Vive Early Access Release Date: December 8th, 2017
Note: This game is in Early Access which means the developers have deemed it incomplete and likely to see changes over time. This review is an assessment of the game only at its current Early Access state and will not receive a numerical score.
Gameplay
Set near the grizzly end of the World War 2, you can choose between Allied (only Americans currently) and Nazis, fighting it out across 5 typical maps; a French village, a church, city streets at night, an abandoned factory, and a train depot with an armored train. For now, only the train map presents anything other than a classic deathmatch by allowing a Counter Strike-style bomb planting mode.
Maps are very rough at this stage. I constantly had trouble walking through door frames, and got stuck several times in the maps’ geometry, although I was warned the pre-release version would have these sorts of bugs. During the match, the studio suggested dropping your gun to reset your position, but that never fixed the problem for me personally, leaving me to wait for the 5-minute round to be over before I was spawned back in at my team’s starting point. To its credit, the maps are both varied and interesting enough to keep you playing for a while.
Weapons classes aren’t limited to whichever team you pick, meaning an Allied player can decide to load-out with a typically Axis weapon like an MP-40 or Gewehr 43, which I found to be a big missed opportunity. Part of the fun in sneaking around in WW2 multiplayer games is indefinitely robbed when you roll up on a team full of Nazis and all you can hear is the noise of M1-carbines and Tommy guns.
The shooting experience wasn’t the most refined I’ve ever tried. Reloading is simple and clear, which is a big plus, making it so you’re never faffing around for your next magazine. Guns have appropriate recoil which is suppressed somewhat when you go two-handed. Much to my dismay, there’s an omnipresent crosshairs projected wherever you point, meaning you’ll never have to aim down the sites to get a clear shot.
Several times I grabbed a grenade and pulled the pin when trying to reload a magazine for my rifle, although in the pre-launch matches I played there was no friendly fire—annoying, but not penalizing.
Immersion
Unfortunately for a game that boasts realism, the rifles felt slightly smaller than they should be, although it’s much less noticeable in the game’s pistols: the Colt 1911 and the Pistole Parabellum 1908 (aka Nazi Luger). I’ve had a chance to fire an original full-stock M1 carbine and a modern-day replica of a Colt 1911, so I can speak from experience. The difference isn’t extreme, but still noticeable to anyone who’s handled firearms.
Unless you have a peripheral like a gun stock, shooting rifles in VR never quite feels right either. It’s never weighty enough, and dual-grips never give you the sense that you’re actually holding a solid weapon in your hands. That’s more of an issue with VR as a whole and not the game itself, so it’s hard to knock Front Defense: Heroes for being ineffectual in that respect.
Avatars leave much to the imagination at the moment immersion-wise. When engaged in automatic running (discussed in the ‘Comfort’ section), players are well-animated, replete with normal strides and normal postures. When you snap into normal room-scale locomotion though, the difference becomes immediately apparent. Several of my brothers and sisters in arms were set at incorrect heights, leaving some to walk on their tippy toes and others to float in the air at some points.
I mentioned before that I clipped several time through geometry. I want to revise that. About half the time I was playing, some combination of reloading, throwing grenades and walking had me fall through the world, or into buildings that aren’t normally accessible, which either left me completely immobile or with a newfound wall-hacking shooting advantage over other players. I was assured by the studio that this was an important issue they’re working on and will endeavor to fix some point before its release.
Comfort
Smooth locomotion is locked to your head, and not to your hand like VR shooter Onward (2017). Personally I find head-locked smooth motion much more comfortable than the former, but that comes down to player choice.
A big plus is the inclusion of third-person locomotion, like that seen in From Other Suns (2017), letting you ‘drive’ a remote-controlled version of yourself and instantly teleport to where you’ve stopped. The studio calls their version ‘V-move’. In the context of shooters, this level of physical continuity is important so you aren’t zooming around and dodging bullets, or popping out of view whenever you please, as you’re always vulnerable to enemy fire.
Guns are easily accessible once they’re on your person, but I would like to see more ‘force grabbing’ ability, as you have to physically bend down and pick up guns from the floor.
We partnered with AVA Direct to create the Exemplar 2 Ultimate, our high-end VR hardware reference point against which we perform our tests and reviews. Exemplar 2 is designed to push virtual reality experiences above and beyond what’s possible with systems built to lesser recommended VR specifications.
Summary
For under $10, it’s hard not to take a chance on some WW2 deathmatch action. As it is now though, Front Defense: Heroes needs some serious TLC to become a trusted VR shooter that people will come back to. The core premise of the game is valid—essentially Day of Defeat in VR—but whether Fantahorn is able to put in the hours to make this rusty wheel eventually spin before its true consumer release… well … we’re hoping for the best.
Note: This game is in Early Access which means the developers have deemed it incomplete and likely to see changes over time. This review is an assessment of the game’s current state, and will not receive a numerical score.
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.
During this past summer, Fantahorn Studio and Vive Studio released WW2 first-person shooter (FPS) Front Defense, a stationary experience that utilised HTC Vive’s roomscale technology so you could hide behind sandbags whilst reloading or prepping grenades as the German army descended on your position. The single-player experience received a lukewarm response, so now the developers are looking to improve upon that first outing with a new multiplayer only title called Front Defense: Heroes.
Seemingly taking a leaf out of Ready at Dawn’s development book with Lone Echo and Echo Arena, Front Defense: Heroes takes the WW2 theme and focuses purely on a five vs five multiplayer, set across a range of maps.
If you’ve played Front Defense then you’ll instantly be familiar with the layout of guns, how they reload, how to use grenades and so forth. As such Front Defense: Heroes retains its siblings less than smooth reloading mechanic where changing a clip involves a couple of button presses – the trigger to grip, then then touchpad to release the clip – which can feel very long winded when under fire. This is partially due to realism Fantahorn Studio is going for, and it’s certainly commendable – and immersive – when popping another missile in the bazooka for example.
As with any multiplayer focused experience, especially VR FPS ones movement is crucial. Weirdly there’s no teleportation system in sight, yeah that’s right, no hopping about point to point. Instead the developer has created what it calls ‘V-Move’, a locomotion system very similar to the one found in Gunfire Games’ From Other Suns, that involves your 3D character running out in front of you. Once stopped you then appear in its place – ok, so it’s a form of teleporting. With this system you can run round corners, or if you’re really good and know the map intimately, sprint round the entire map. Obviously the downside to this is wandering straight into an enemy and getting your head blown off. There’s certainly a fine art to running up to a corner of a building just so, so you peer round cautiously.
Looking round corners, hiding behind low cover and generally using roomscale to its utmost has been heavily implemented by Fantahorn, but you’ll need plenty of space to get the most out of it. Front Defense: Heroes states that it needs a minimum area of 4m x 3m – which is quite significant for players in countries with smaller homes – but the title is still playable in smaller rooms, as this review was played in an area of 2.5m x 2m. You just have to be careful you don’t get too carried away.
Don’t worry if you prefer smooth locomotion. While that’s not yet available, Fantahorn will be adding this movement feature in a future update – it’s a shame it’s not available at launch.
Matches revolve around selecting which server location you’d like to play in – or which areas of the world are most awake – then selecting a match of starting one of your own. You’ll then find yourself in a battlefield lobby, being able to see your team and your opponents. From here you can switch between Allies and Axis, choose your loadout weapon – a selection of WW2 era rifles and machine guns – then head into battle.
Due to issues like reloading and jumpy nature of V-Move, battles tend to have an inconsistent, fliting nature to them. Maybe after many, many hours of gameplay you’ll find a sweet spot but you may not be so patient. In comparison to Front Defense, Front Defense: Heroes is certainly a step up, offering a far more dynamic experience than its single-player sibling, it’s just not quite the standout experience it could’ve been.
Earlier this year, developer Fantahorn Studio worked with HTC Vive’s home-grown studio to produce Front Defense, and now the two have partnered again to work on a sequel, titled Front Defense: Heroes. New screenshots show further details of what players can expect.
The first Front Defense was, at its core, a wave shooter that featured authentic historical weaponry as well as some impressive graphics and a heavy focus on realism as players take on the role of a soldier in the Allied forces fighting against the Nazi war machine. While movement was possible, moving from cover to cover, picking up weapons and ammo in order to take advantage of the offered room-scale experience.
Front Defense: Heroes aims to build on the experience by creating a more expansive multiplayer videogame. As before, the experience will be room-scale, offering 5 vs 5 multiplayer, with multiple maps to play on and the option to play as the Allies or the Axis powers. There will be multiple game modes available, including Capture the Flag, Death Match and Defense Mission mode.
Responding to recent discussions regarding locomotion in VR, Fantahorn Studios have created a new locomotion system called V-Move, though full details of exaclty how this will work have not yet been revealed.
Front Defense: Heroes is expected to be released on Steam and Viveport in early December, with a launch price of $4.99 (USD).
The screenshots are are available to view below.
VRFocus will bring you further news on Front Defense: Heroes as it becomes available.
HTC’s internal development and publishing arm Vive Studios has announced two new games coming to Vive in early December. Physics puzzler Super Puzzle Galaxy from 2 Bears Studio and multiplayer WWII shooter Front Defense: Heroes from Fantahorn Studio will both launch with promotional pricing.
As detailed in a recent entry on the official Vive blog, both games are second entries from Vive Studios development partners 2 Bears Studio and Fantahorn Studio, creators of Arcade Saga (2016) and Front Defense (2017) respectively. Although Arcade Saga was updated with Oculus Touch support, both games were originally designed to take advantage of the Vive’s room-scale VR capabilities, and the new games Super Puzzle Galaxy and Front Defense: Heroes have also been described as ‘room-scale’ experiences.
Image courtesy 2 Bears Studio
Super Puzzle Galaxy will be available in early December on Steam with 75% off the standard $9.99 price at launch “for a limited time”. This physics-based puzzler involves terrain and object manipulation and will contain 48 levels and an in-game editor to create more.
“Super Puzzle Galaxy was born out of a passion for creating compelling and engaging VR content for the whole family that challenges the player’s problem solving and creative abilities,” said David Sapienza, Executive Producer of 2 Bears Studio. “Adding user-generated content was a core tenet of creating something that empowers the community, and Super Puzzle Galaxy delivers a unique room-scale VR experience. We’re excited to see the levels and Rube Goldberg contraptions the community is able to come up with.”
Image courtesy Fantahorn
Front Defense: Heroes aims to build on the strengths of the first Front Defense title, but with a focus on multiplayer – a feature missing from the original. Launching on Steam and Viveport in early December at a promotional price of $4.99, the new game will feature multiple maps, offering 5v5 multiplayer across capture the flag, deathmatch, and defense mission modes. As described in our Front Defense review, its room-scale game design was the highlight, as you could only physically move around a predetermined space (no artificial locomotion was possible), taking cover behind your virtual defenses. Front Defense: Heroes appears to be expanding on this concept, introducing a new locomotion system called ‘V-Move’, described as “unique” and “innovative” on the Vive blog.
“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, producer at Fantahorn. “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.”
Die Vive Studios kündigen die VR-Spiele Front Defense: Heroes und Super Puzzle Galaxy für HTC Vive an. Beide sollen bereits im nächsten Monat auf SteamVR erscheinen. Der Multiplayer-Shooter Front Defense: Heroes ist die Weiterentwicklung der Zweiten-Weltkriegs-Simulation Front Defense, während Super Puzzle Galaxy als familienfreundliches VR-Rätselspiel mit der Möglichkeit zur freien Levelgestaltung überzeugen möchte.
Front Defense: Heroes – Multiplayer-Shooter mit eSports-Potenzial
Der Roomscale-Multiplayer-Shooter Front Defense: Heroes von Fantahorn Studios ist ebenso wie der Vorgängertitel Front Defense im Zweiten Weltkrieg angesetzt. Doch statt euch eine Singleplayer-Kampagne vorzusetzen, liegt der Fokus des Spiels auf Fünf-gegen-Fünf Multiplayergefechten in unterschiedlichen Spielmodi. Im Death-Match-, Capture-the-Flag- und Defense-Mission-Modus dürft ihr mit einer Auswahl diverser Waffen auf verschiedenen Karten gegeneinander antreten. Zusätzlich kündigen die Verantwortlichen eine neue einzigartige Fortbewegungsmethode namens V-Move an, die sich besonders für Multiplayer-Spiele eignen soll.
Die Entwickler nutzten ihre Erfahrungen, die sie mit Front Defense sammeln konnten, um sie in ihrem neuen Projekt umzusetzen und dem Shooter ein fesselndes Gameplay zu verpassen. Zudem soll der VR-Titel dank seiner verschiedenen Spieloptionen sich gut für kompetitive eSports-Matches eignen.
Front Defense: Heroes soll Anfang Dezember auf Steam und Viveport zum Aktionspreis von 4,99 Euro erscheinen.
Super Puzzle Galaxy – familienfreundlicher Rätselspaß
Das zweite Projekt Super Puzzle Galaxy geht hingegen einen völlig anderen Weg. Innerhalb des VR-Rätselspiels wird der Spieler auf einem intergalaktischen Planeten ausgesetzt, um dort durch die Veränderung der Spielwelt insgesamt 48 unterschiedliche Rätsel zu lösen. Dabei sind der Kreativität kaum Grenzen gesetzt, denn durch das Drücken und Ziehen allerlei Objekte müsst ihr Wege und Durchgänge freilegen, um neue Fähigkeiten freizuschalten.
Neben den vorhandenen Rätseln ist es außerdem möglich, per Editor eigene Karten zu erstellen und diese mit anderen Spielern zu teilen. Damit möchten die Entwickler eine lebhafte Community zum VR-Titel schaffen, die miteinander interagieren und sich austauschen kann.
Super Puzzle Galaxy von 2 Bears Studio soll Mitte Dezember auf Steam für 9,99 Euro zum reduzierten Preis erhältlich sein.
Wir werden euch über die genauen Veröffentlichungsdaten der beiden VR-Titel auf dem Laufenden halten.
