Homefront

Introduction

In the year 2027, the United States of America is faced with an invasive threat. The Greater Korean Republic and its armed forces have taken control of the once productive country, after some years of hardship due to economic downturn. Major cities have fallen to the occupying forces, with no hope in sight other than small bands of civilian resistance fighters: yourself included. There’s a chance to make a difference if you’re up to the task. Fight for your country and hopefully it’ll return to its former glory. Best of all; you have the chance to be free!

The Game Itself: Our Reviewer's Take

Such is the premise of Homefront – a first-person shooter from developer Kaos Studios and publisher THQ. A game that brings the bullet-ridden battlegrounds to American soil, with tons of shock value and grisly imagery included. Its plot is written by Apocalypse Now and Red Dawn writer, John Milius, who isn’t afraid of creating fear with the use of oppression and violence. Thinking about the game’s events occurring in real life is hard to imagine, evoking feelings of fear and worry.

Gamers play the role of a former pilot named Jacobs, who is one of the lucky ones. Shortly after being kidnapped from his crummy apartment in Montrose, Colorado, he’s transported to a concentration camp via a school bus. The world around him is coming to its knees, as a new regime is in control with no sympathy, empathy or moral fiber. It’s looking like he’ll join the ranks of doomed and destitute American civilians who have possibly lived through the last free day of their lives. That is until a few survivors strategically crash into his transport bus in an attempt at a daring rescue.

Upon surviving the crash, Jacobs is quickly enlisted into the resistance’s ranks, tasked with aiding in their attempt at restoring America The Free. The first step being what the game’s campaign objective is focused on: helping his new allies capture and safely transport a convoy of fuel trucks. They’re needed in San Francisco, where they could be the difference in an attempted movement to re-take the city and its valuable Golden Gate Bridge.

Despite featuring a scary and interesting premise full of shock value, Homefront is a pretty generic shooter. It’s complex enough to entertain those who love the genre, but happens to be nothing new or unique in terms of game mechanics, elements or structure. Not to mention the fact that it’s brutally brief, lasting only three to four hours on lower difficulties. Playing on hard adds quite a bit of time to the experience, however, as its can be quite challenging.

The aforementioned campaign is spread out over seven separate missions, which include traditional gunplay, sneaking around and some helicopter piloting (the main reason why Jacobs was rescued in the first place). There is a good amount of variety within, but none of the levels, objectives or set pieces happens to be particularly memorable or exceptional. Homefront never really steps outside of its comfort zone and ends up playing a lot like all of its competitors. You run, shoot, use cover to heal and then shoot some more. Or, you fly a helicopter and rain explosions and bullets down from above.

In addition to being brief and generic, Homefront is also quite frustrating – especially on its toughest difficulty level. For some unknown reason, some enemies can shoot you through cover and, with every single one of them blessed with near-perfect aim. While playing on a difficulty, which is curt on its health allotment and damage allowance, that issue makes things very difficult. Plus, there are a lot of other glitches that unfortunately mar the experience. Most of the problems were exclusive to the cheap guerilla difficulty option and did not present themselves on easy.

Expanding its storyline are quite a few hidden newspapers, which tell a story dating back quite a few years. They’re spread all over the game world and can be challenging to find. It’s great that the development team decided to expand their fiction in this route, but it’s confusing as to why they chose to randomize them. Current and older newspaper clippings are discoverable in a fashion that is less than coherent, making it hard to follow the backstory when the papers aren’t in chronological order.

The one thing that will annoy some gamers more than anything is the fact that Jacobs is always lead through environments, told what he should be doing and where he should be located. It’s fine to give the player some hints to aid them, but there’s no need for constant complaining from allies who rush ahead and wait. The collectibles are included for a reason and it’s no fun looking for them when you’re constantly being bickered at to hurry up and move through a gate or doorway into the map’s next area.

Those considering a purchase of Homefront should not do so for its campaign. Your money would be better spent elsewhere. The only reason to consider spending your hard earned cash to add this title to your collection is its multiplayer. This competitive and global component is actually pretty decent, allowing for some interesting and relatively addicting large-scale warfare. Though there are obvious elements that were borrowed from other titles, such as Battlefield and Kaos’ past outing, Frontlines: Fuel of War – an underappreciated title.

Battles take place on large-scale maps, which allow for safe and properly calculated respawn points. To prevent yourself from having to revisit the reanimation department, it’s important to be smart about what you do and where you go. It’s possible to play Homefront like a run and gun shooter, but it’s more than that, employing a lot of strategy. A lot of that ties into its battle points system, which allows each individual team member to spend their experience points on new weapons, vehicles or armor as a reward.

In addition to a typical team deathmatch mode, Homefront also contains a second multiplayer game type known as ground commander. This mode is very similar to the location capturing mechanics that the Battlefield series is well known for. Teams battle it out to be the ones who earn the most points, gained for time spent holding two of the three random objective points. It’s fun and engaging, despite being formulaic, and sticks out for the fact that there are no loading screens between its three rounds.