THQ and Kaos Studios recently came forth on March 15th to release Homefront. If you’re not aware this first person shooter pits gamers against a North Korean invasion of the United States. Of course, seeing how the premise is a bit of a sensitive one, controversy has been brought to the from but the general consensus is that the game is pretty good. If you’re one who is looking to get down on the game but dont’ want to spend  the full $60 – you’re in luck.

It was made known today that both Amazon.com and Walmart will be offering the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of THQ’s Homefront for just $42. We’re not exactly sure how long they will be offering the game at this price for so if you’re looking to get down on it you better do so fast.

Check out the Amazon listings here and the Walmart listings here.

DICE and EA have released a brand new Battlefield 3 trailer, which showcases some more single player gameplay. A group of marines find themselves on the rooftop of building and start taking sniper fire, which they must counter. DICE says that episode 3 of the trailer will be released two weeks from now, March 30. We’re still eagerly awaiting some multiplayer footage of the game, which, to be honest, is the only reason we’ll be getting Battlefield 3 when it comes out this Fall.

Well, honestly, this didn’t catch us off guard: THQ’s stock dropped 25% after Homefront was received with somewhat mediocre reviews (our own review gave it a 5/10), which resulted in THQ share taking a bit hit — it dropped a massive 25 percent. Despite Homefront being the most pre-ordered game in THQ’s history, it’s unlikely to recoup its costs now.

Considering that THQ spend a lot of resources and money making everyone — including their shareholders — believe that Homefront would be unique and a hit, and then failing to deliver on the promise, well, we’re not surprised that the shareholders are disappointed. So are we, the gamers. Homefront offers nothing new in terms of gameplay and its interesting story and setting isn’t taken advantage of with an extremely short, 4 hour single player campaign. Sorry THQ and Kaos Studios, but that just doesn’t cut it.

According to Crytek’s Anvi Yerli, the company is considering offering a stripped down, smaller version of its CryEngine 2 to modders and small developers, in an effort to get the community involved with the engine. Kind of like Epic does with its Unreal Engine 3 UDK, which it recently changed so that developers can sell their games made by the free version of Unreal Engine 3 until they reach $50,000 USD in sales, after that, Epic takes a 25% cut of sales. Anvi Yerli says that Crytek has a business model in mind, and the CryEngine 2 UDK will most likely be free. So far, what we’ve seen of CryEngine 2 kinda disappointed us, judging by the Crysis 2 demo we played. While it looked great, it didn’t look that better than Crysis 1, and on the PS3, the game doesn’t even run in HD.

THQ did a great job of marketing Homefront over the past few weeks leading up to the launch Kaos Studio’s new FPS. We were promised something great, a new vision, a new kind of FPS, and judging by the trailers, it looked to be just that. Sadly, the real thing is quite different, and we must say that it’s a classical case of overhyping, as Homefront fails on many levels, while succeeding on only few.

We’ll start with the good parts: the story and setting in Homefront is great. No doubt about it, the vision of an America that’s been invaded by a unified Korea is grim, dark, and authentic. There are horrid scenes of what would happen (like executions of prisoners, mass graves etc.), and the game does a great job and showing off its own world. In the singleplayer campaign, you play as a resistance member, and your journey starts with a great intro sequence when you’re on a bus ride witnessing the world. It’s a wonderful and cinematic piece. However, once you get down to it, the action and gameplay doesn’t offer anything new in terms of FPS, in fact, it’s so generic that it could have been any other B-grade shooter released over the past few years. Despite a great setting and backstory, the missions are very linear and feel uninspired. But the worst part is that the campaign ends abruptly — it can be completed in around 4 hours, which is quite a shame, because we wanted more from the world that the game inhabits.

Multiplayer wise, the game also falls short and feel generic, almost like a Call of Duty title with a different graphics engine. You can even unlock weapons and perks in a match (like drones), which isn’t something we expected with Homefront: being another Call of Duty rip off. However, the multiplayer, while generic, still feels solid and the matches are nice and balanced. But it doesn’t feel like we’re getting anything new here, and if you’ve played Frontlines Fuel of War, the predecessor to this game, well, Homefront features the same kind of action, and same kind of near-futuristic setting (even though we prefer Homefront’s setting)

Visually, the game looks somewhat dated and resembles Frontlines a lot, both in terms of visual style, textures and audio as well. Speaking of audio, we were kind of disappointed — most of the guns sound and feel weak, to the point of feeling like peashooters. The soundtrack can best be described as generic, but all of the technical issues and setbacks are made up for by a great setting and atmosphere. Too bad the campaign is only 4 hours and the multiplayer isn’t interesting enough to keep us coming.

The Good:
Great back story and chilling setting
Competent, but uninspiring multiplayer

The Bad:
We completed the campaign in less than 4 hours
Gameplay is generic and offers nothing new
Multiplayer is forgettable
Dated visuals

Overall score: 5/10

LittleBigPlanet is one of the harder hitting exclusives on the PS3 and is developed by Media Molecule. While the game’s traditional platformer gameplay is quite nice itself the level editor is where the game really shines with innovative gamers creating full fledged virtual computers utilizing nothing more than the level editor – pretty incredible.

Media Molecule is looking to take this level editor innovation one step further with the Teacher Pack for LBP2. This pack will include various levels that are made to be used as actual educational demonstration tools. According to reports, teachers will boot up the pack and allow students to play through the levels with the PlayStation Move while learning a whole bunch of stuff.

We’re not sure exactly what teachers will teach with this new map pack but it certainly sounds interesting. We’ll keep you posted.

While dedicated portable consoles like the Nintendo DS and PSP do quite well for themselve, many believe that smartphone platforms like Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android will eventually fade these consoles out. Of course, this is probably a stretch for the near future but games like Dead Space on iOS will definitely help things along.

As you’re sure to know Apple recently released the iPad 2 tablet which features a dual-core processor, front/rear facing cameras and a new thin design. However, the only thing us gamers care about is that super fast dual-core processor. EA is keeping on top of things announcing today that an update has been released for the iOS version of Dead Space that will otpimize the game for iPad 2 gamers giving them the treat of increased graphics and more.

Expect additional game developers to follow suit looking to take control of the iPad 2′s beefed up hardware.

Sony offers several different PS3 SKUs with varying prices and varying storage capacities. Of the current generation, the PS3 with the largest amount of built-in storage is 320GB. If this just isn’t enough for you, you’ll be happy to hear that GameStop has recently listed a a PS3 SuperCharged SKU on their website. Of course, this isn’t an official SKU but instead a refurbished PS3 with a built-in 500GB Western Digital hard drive. Also included in the pack is a special Supercharged console skin, 1 year warranty, a media hub with remote, a charging station for 2 PS3 controllers and an HDMI port.

Sounds pretty awesome and, at $399.99, it isn’t a deal you’ll want to miss. Check out the listing here.

The Nintendo 3DS‘ March 22nd North American launch is just over the corner with gamers everywhere highly anticipating the glasses-free 3D display touting handheld. While previous console launches have skimped on launch titles, Nintendo is pulling out all the stops with the 3DS. One of the biggest launch titles for the 3DS is none other than Capcom’s Street Fighter IV 3D. If you couldn’t tell by the title, this game is a port of the SF4 we’ve all come to know and love with built-in 3D functionality.

While we don’t ahve any new information to tell you about the game tha twe havne’t already told you, Nintendo has released a commercial for the game today which you can check out above. This commercial does a nice job showing off classic Street Fighter gameplay while putting an emphasis on the 3D capabilities of the 3DS.

Check it out and tell us what you think about SF43D and the Nintendo 3DS.

On the Xbox 360 one of the biggest exclusives is the Halo franchise from Bungie. The Halo series has seen 4 different titles starting on the original Xbox with Halo: Combat Evolved and reaching to the Xbox 360 with the most currently release Halo: Reach. While Halo: Reach is Bungie’s last Halo title they have developed a series of DLC packs for the game before shipping off duties to 343 Industries.

One of these DLC packs it the Defiant Map Pack which just so happened to recently hit Xbox Live. If you’re not familiar with the map pack, this features three brand new multiplayer maps along with new achievements worth a collective sum of 150 Gamerscore points priced at 800 Microsoft Points.

For those of you that have already downloaded the map pack, how are you liking it?