Game Rant’s Andrew Dyce reviews Homefront
The past few years have been kind to fans of modern military shooters, with Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops and the upcoming Battlefield 3. But with so many studios trying to occupy the same space, repetition and similarities have become commonplace, and the challenge of making a new title stand out from the competition is getting harder and harder.
With Homefront, developer Kaos Studios decided to take a different route from many of its contemporaries, and base their game around a story written by John Milius, the mind behind the films Apocalypse Now and Red Dawn. Set in a fictional future where America has been invaded and occupied by unified Korea, Homefront puts players into the shoes of an everyday citizen fighting for their own freedom. At least, that’s what the team has set out to do. Whether or not they succeed is a separate issue entirely.
Homefront certainly gets off on the right foot, with the startling and disturbing opening cinematic portraying the downfall and invasion of the United States. From there the game introduces the player into the horrifying realities of the occupation, and although the now-infamous opening bus-ride is little more than a minute in length, it’s likely to upset to many gamers more than they’d like.
From that point on, the player is thrust headlong into the American Resistance as Robert Jacobs, taking on the Korean People’s Army in a former suburban neighborhood amidst terrified civilians and screaming babies. The juxtaposition of human suffering and combat is as groundbreaking as it is disturbing, and the game quickly seems to deliver on its promise of a previously-unseen shooter experience.
Upon being recruited into the Resistance, Jacobs is allowed to enter the hidden settlement known as ‘Oasis’ that the fighters of Montrose, Colorado call home. The slow and open-ended freedom to interact with the residents automatically explains what the developers meant when they said that Half-Life had been their greatest influence. But sadly, the NPC’s responses are limited to simple sentence replies, and the team soon gathers to plan their next mission.
After two more missions that continue to mix high-paced squad combat with truly jarring images of war, Homefront trades in serious emotional weight for pedal-to-the-metal gunfighting. So while the gripping story is delivered well within the first 2 hours, players hoping for a seriously gut-wrenching experience won’t be too thrilled with the rest of the game’s campaign.
After putting serious time into creating its own style and mood, Homefront cashes in all its chips to mimic Call of Duty: Black Ops in nearly every way possible. There’s no rule saying that a shooter can’t admire constantly-frantic gunfights in interesting locales, but it’s the fact that Homefront fails to pull off the feat as well as Treyarch did that will leave a bad taste in players’ mouths.
The guns don’t feel as satisfying or varied as Black Ops, and the squad AI is nowhere near as intelligent. Homefront has chosen to go with a white uppercase font for the ‘follow’ prompt hovering over Jacobs’ commanding officer’s head for approximately 95% of the game, so no one can accuse them of theft. Seriously, if someone can explain why a developer thinks that having a player look at the word ‘follow’ instead of their surroundings is a good decision, please speak up.
While the one or two AI partners aid the player fairly well in the early stages of the game, the larger squad AI is completely thrown out the window during large-scale firefights, becoming more of a liability than an advantage.
For example, Jacobs’ adopted squad of Hopper, Connor and Rianna are uniquely gifted with not only invincibility, but an absolutely fearless need to encourage the player to advance before all enemy characters have been dealt with. With a story so unfamiliar and politically charged, the lack of refinement in basic squad functions sticks out like a sore thumb.
This is the true fault of the game: halfway through, Homefront changes from a strong, story-based game with technical faults that are easily overlooked to a mindless orgy of shooting, giving the player no more than a basic understanding of what needs to be accomplished, but rarely the reasoning behind it. At no point is Jacobs given a specific character trait that would explain his actions. He simply ‘follows.’
If the game had maintained its focus on interesting and unexpectedly raw depictions of war, then the screen-tearing, character-ghosting, ridiculous AI animations and hovering objects might have been overlooked. But by emulating an action-first game like Black Ops as faithfully as possible, the lack of any such faults in their competition just makes Homefront seem broken or unfinished.
Continue to page 2 for our final thoughts on Homefront and its multiplayer!
Our Rating:
2.5 out of 5
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Coolest character was the Goliath!
In all seriousness, this felt like the first chapter of a 3-act game. It did feel incomplete to me.
There are some serious issues with the pacing of the story. It’s like they wanted so badly to trim off all the fat, that all they left was the skeleton for a great game. There could have been so much more to it, especially with all the backstory they threw into the advertising. That stuff should’ve played a more prominent role in the game. I thought I was going to be exploring an irradiated mississippi at some point, but it never came.
Awesome review, Dyce.
I’m enjoying the story so far, but it’s the graphics that just ruin the experience for me though. They just can’t compete with a Call of Duty or Battlefield game. The voice acting is kind of sub-par too.
I hope the game does well enough to warrant a sequel, because I think the concept is great. They just need to spend more time creating an experience that feels more like a next generation FPS.
the graphics to me look better then black ops, without a doubt.
I had some graphical glitches that kept rearing their ugly head. Overall I didn’t mind the graphics, but they didn’t stand out as being particularly exceptional. At times the animations were downright horrible, and I can’t believe how many times they used the “pushing fridge/shelf/whatever over” animation. It’s like they loved it so much they felt it should be in almost every level.
Oh the animations were downright brutal at the time. I assume when you’re instructed to follow someone, they’ll at least make an effort to stay ahead of the squad, not keep you walking, crouching for no reason, running, taking cover (which you can’t do yourself), pointing their gun at a concrete wall, pausing to make sure it’s just concrete, reading out a line, staying glued to the wall, then triggering the fridge animation. C’mon, it’s 2011.
Absolutely on the money. I sold my copy back to Gamestop after a day, glad I could get 22 bucks for the game I paid full price for, and walked away. Wont be pre-ordering another game any time soon, and never from Kaos.
As someone who still loves Freedom Fighters, I’m kinda sad this game wasn’t all I’d hoped it would be. I’ll probably rent it for a day and plow through that campaign
Rent absolutely, but a day might be too long. Seriously, started palying it at 530, had dinner at 6, finished it just after 9. I have absolutely no idea how it could possibly take someone all day like Kaos said, unless they were absolutely horrible.
And Freedom Fighters was awesome. I still don’t know how they managed to get your squad working as intelligently as they did in that game.
it would have been good if you went into more detail about MP. people say the MP is a mix between call of duties ‘run and gun’ with battlefield ‘co-op and strategy’ so i might check it out if i can get it cheap. what i love most about the game is that it has dedicated servers meaning no lag or disconnections, that’s always a win in my books
i see this game as a compliment for battlefield 3 and the other big FPS titles coming out this yr.
As fun as the multiplayer was, it’s hard to find something different, or a new experience in FPS online these days. Some of the technical problems from the game that Riley mentioned did rear their ugly heads in online play, but with THQ hopping on the multiplayer train, those could get fixed soon.
If there’s one thing I can agree with whole-heartedly, its that Korea might as well have been anyone in the game. There’s nothing to give this army any personality beyond them acting like nazis. And quite frankly I just think of nazis instead. It was like fighting an army of red nazis.
Yeah. I actually went back and watched all of the developer diaries for my review, and it seriously started to make me angry how passionately they spoke about the plot, the story, and the emotional drive of the game.
Cool ideas, but so many half-explored and just left unfinished ideas that I don’t know how they could talk about the Korean threat as having any particular meaning for the game’s narrative.
Sadly I agree with you. The game was nothing but a bunch of hype. The story is definetly great but I got it for the multiplayer and the battle commander mode. They had a great idea with the battle points for in-game purchasing of different guns. They even have an awsome “perks” or abilities section based on points which increase as u level up. The concept is great the delivery however is very disapointing. Also, having to earn all attachments like MW2 is wack. Oh, and before I forget, I have been expiriencing some sort of bug on the multiplayer. First my battle code to unlock the shotgun does not work and at the end of the match my level fluctuates between 20-21 and whatever my real level is. Very weird. It doesn’t affect any of my stuf in the game but its bullsh*t. And no way are the graphics better then black ops, no way.
I Don’t understand why so many people are on call of duty’s dick all of the hackers ruined black ops and the graphics aren’t even special yea homefronts campaign is short but its good and for the graphics when I play homefront feels like its real and the guns look real unlike black ops were the guns look kinda fake and atleast when you play MP for homefront the guns are accurate and good response and it don’t take a full fucking clip just to kill someone unlike black ops and the graphics are better for homefront maybe y’all need to go and spend alittle money on a good flat screen and stop hating
Get owned alot in black ops do you?
Great review and good comments!
I don’t know whay everyone is talking about though. MP hasn’t worked right since day one. The “dedicated servers” are glitchy as hell. Have not been able to play with friends online on PS3 once without getting dropped from the lobby or multiple failed attempts to join them. Total fail again last night, couldn’t connect with my online friends. Switched to BF2 and had no problems at all.
Very disappointed in HF for MP experience. Campaign isn’t too bad, I like the storyline, but haven’t progressed through all the way to the point where the story falls apart as Dyce noted.
So far, HF gets a 3 of 5 from me. If they ever fix MP issues, might bump it to a 3.5 or 4.
I really enjoyed this game. I disagree with the people saying the visuals in this game aren’t good, especially those comparing them to Black Ops. I look at the game and see CoD quality graphics, coupled with a great environment design that really feels believable. Outside of that, the gameplay is solid, the story is interesting, gund feel realistic to me, and the multiplayer is a blast. Feels like a more deliberately paced CoD with a sense of purpose, though there are some minor balancing issues. Overall the game would be a 4/5 for me. The only thing holding this game back is a bit too short singleplay(though it is a modern day shooter, a few wonky animations, and it relies a bit too much on scripted events when moving through the game. Still a very enjoyable.
I agree, the campaign was disappointing, but the online play kind of made up for that. I actually feel like I’m in a real war zone and not a cowboy shootout. Max of 16 players per team makes a better firefight. Unlike COD (which I like) doesn’t lack decent sniper spots. COD you have to keep running around a small map. If Battlefield 3 is better than Homefront then I need Battlefield 3.