Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Homefront was hyped up for a long time. I fed into the hype and got way excited that it may actually deliver an amazing story and have gameplay that ups the Call of Duty ante. Rarely do I buy games on release day and unfortunately I've been reminded why. Homefront is a game with excellent ideas, but just fails to fully realize those ideas.
Here's the campaign in a nutshell: A quick montage showing Korean unifying, US deteriorating, Korea taking over the world and occupying the US. Things are bad, very bad, Cut to you (a faceless person that has hardly any back story and barely talks) getting arrested by the Korean regime, you're shown horrifying scenes as you're taken away, members of the Resistance (who somehow know more about you than you know about yourself) free you, barely introduce themselves, throw you a gun, and tell you to just start shooting. All of this happens repeatedly with small scenes interspersed to try and make you feel emotion and hate the Koreans. It fails miserably because you're never given much back story on anyone you're fighting for, so when they die you have zero emotional attachment to them and you're just left waiting for the next shootout. Cut to maybe 4 hours later (not the 5-10 hours they promised), a very abrupt ending occurs that leaves you confused because you expect more.
The game starts off decently strong, but as it progresses and weakly tells a story you start to lose interest. Towards the end I didn't care any more. I found myself trying to shoot my one teammate, Connor Morgan, who just swears constantly and yells at you. You have no real clue who he is, but he hates Koreans and loves mindless profanity. I think the biggest disappointment for the campaign is the possibility the game had. I often found myself wandering off, completely ignoring what my teammates said because I didn't care at all, and trying to find the newspaper clippings because they had more story to them and informed you more.
It's supposedly written by John Milius who wrote Red Dawn and co-wrote Apocalypse Now. Either he just came up with basic plot ideas and not full dialogue or he was just completely uninspired. If he did write a full story I have trouble believing Kaos used it all considering how much this pales in comparison to the classics he is known for. The game had the perfect setting to build a great gut wrenching story, but it just doesn't deliver. It's like ordering a pizza and getting uncooked dough, sauce, and cheese. You have all the right ingredients, but not the finished product you paid for.
With the multiplayer you fight for either the US military or the Korean army. The Resistance is not a part of this. The play is very familiar as in it's setup pretty much just like Call of Duty. The gameplay is seemingly smoother than the campaign. The battle points currency is the coolest part of it which allows you to spend them in game and buy weapons. With my limited time spent on the multiplayer it seems like Call of Duty and Battlefield Bad Company 2 had a baby. That's not necessarily a bad thing at all, but other than the battle points it doesn't bring much new to the table. That doesn't mean it can't be enjoyable though.
All in all the game just comes across as average and a letdown considering what they could have done. It's certainly not worth $60. If I didn't preorder at Best Buy and get the free Turtle Beach headset with it I would be a whole lot more upset. If I look at it as I paid $30 for the headset I only paid $30 for the game and I think I can get $30 worth of enjoyment from it. It's still hard to shake how much promise this game had.
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Homefront Homefront is a first-person shooter that challenges players to survive and impact a fictional future scenario in which America has been economically devastated and occupied by a foreign power. In the face of overwhelming oppression, you must choose whether to submit to military forces, take the fight to the enemy or even throw your lot in with the invaders. Additional features include: a single player campaign written by Hollywood screenwriter John Milius, online multiplayer support for up to 32 players, ground and vehicular combat, and more.
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