Homefront: The Revolution, suffering quite a blow from its original developers THQ becoming bankrupt and being moved over to Crytek and finally Dambuster Studios to complete the work originally put into it. Shifting focus, gameplay style as well as development studios caused quite a lot of time to be lost developing this game, originally talked about back in 2011 this game saw quite a few pushbacks till it’s final release. This has happened in the past with other games and their quality was arguable, did Homefront still rise above it all?
Story
In an alternate future North Korea has claimed complete control over the United States, infesting the world with its technology from tablets to weapons of war, switching them all off when it suited them best. Putting the US under their thumb we find ourselves within one of their controlled zones, Philadelphia as Ethan Brady. Starting off the game we are given a gun and the mission to get Walker out of the zone to safety, being the spokesperson for the Resistance. Walker is quickly carted off by the KPA/Norks who are the North Korean forces that hold the country.
Half of the game from this point on is building up the resistance to fight back and rescue Walker, shifting focus a bit towards the second half to completely taking out the KPA and returning the city to the US citizens. Travelling between several different zones, from the Red Zones where all-out war is taking place between the KPA and Resistance, the Yellow Zones that house many civilians needing to be persuaded to fight back and the Green Zones that house giant structures that need to be infiltrated.
The main story can last between 8 and 10 hours depending on how long you spend taking control of the districts. You can easily double that playtime by completely taking back the zones, but you only need 2-3 parts of each zone to progress on with the story. There are collectables to be found in all maps, from turning radios onto your frequencies, supply drops to gather for materials and more.
There is also a Co-op mode called Resistance that contains several maps with objectives for you and up to 3 other players online can participate in. You character online will level up, gain skills and weapons similar to the coop mode back in Far Cry 3.
Gameplay
Trying to fit into the shoes of Far Cry, Homefront follows a straightforward FPS approach with open-world aspects to its gameplay. You have a side arm which is mostly stuck to your pistol, a secondary weapon ranging from machine guns to crossbows and a final slot for an RPG launcher. You can also create 4 differing tools, for hacking, Molotov’s, grenades or distractions that are all used like grenades or modified to be proximity bombs, RC cars or detonated remotely. You also carry around First Aid kits to heal yourself when you’ve taken a beating, with a small over-time healing factor in the background.
All of your weapons can have attachments put onto them, from silencers to scopes, as well as conversion kits for completely changing the type of weapon they are. You can change your pistol into an SMG or your assault rifle into a Light Machine Gun. This is probably the most interesting aspect of the gameplay as it really opens up a lot of areas for combat, as you can always have a sniper rifle at hand, you just need to convert your battle rifle into it.
The main focus of the game seems to be taking back the city, sticking to the name of Revolution. In a terribly similar manner to Far Cry you will take out the people inhabiting the areas and claiming them for your own, though some require you to do some parkour to find stations to hack. After you claim a zone there will be a short cutscene of time passing, people moving into the structure and unlocking a gun locker for you to access. As you continue into the game these structures will get harder as well as more intricately designed, near the end you will have to travel across 3 separate buildings to get to the point of access.
As you complete objectives and claim parts of the city you will get both Money and Revolution points what you can use to purchase new guns and conversion kits. Besides weapons you can also pay for armour, ammo pouches and the like for improvements to Brady himself. These come rather slowly in the beginning parts of the game, but around the halfway mark you will be getting upwards of $2000 per mission and become rich enough to purchase all weapons and their upgrades.
Overall Thoughts and Feelings
The music in the game is very fitting to the themes of resistance, though it can fall flat in the sneaking parts of the game. The music can also bug out at some points, playing fighting music for too long after the fighting has ended, or not playing another at all. The sound design is top notch, from gun shots to explosions, although this can also bug out by either playing too late or not at all.
The story flow of the game is broken up too much, the action continues to rise to a climax that never happens. You will be under attack with the main characters saying you are being wiped out with no chance of survival, for only a few minutes alter showing everyone sitting around as if they are fine. After those scenes they go back to building up their forces and seemingly no longer under attack, which really breaks the immersion, which isn’t too hard to do when Ethan never says a word portraying a blank sheet of blandness as characters continuously talk to him and ask him questions.
Besides the story being rather boring, cliché and broken up the characters tick most of those boxes as well. They are mostly one-dimensional with little to no growth, bordering on annoying for a majority of their screen time. They will do complete 180 turns within cutscenes, having a knife to your throat one moment to putting forward a “good idea” the next, carried on into the in-game scenes with horrible voice acting over Radio. The radio is also bugged it seems, with over 3 people talking at once to you, jumbling words together and becoming rather annoying and loud in your ear.
The world itself isn’t new, almost stealing ideas from InFamous and Far Cry and blending them into their city design and characters. It is boring to look at as it feels too similar to other games on the market, a lot of the buildings and districts can often seem copy and pasted as well. While entering Yellow Zones are a nice change of pace from the other zones, having to build up a resistance before truly fighting back, it doesn’t do enough to save the game.
While it isn’t a pressing matter, due to people having different systems, the optimization of the game can be brought into question. With a system above the recommended I had to put the settings to Low and below to even get a stable 23fps for the game, dropping to 11 within some zones. I can appreciate some of the beauty within the game but even so I didn’t get to see a lot of it myself due to the lag forcing me to downgrade the graphics.
Overall Homefront: The Revolution gets a 6/10, it had so much potential and looks like a very enjoyable game but looking under the hood you start to notice all its flaws. It’s hard to like the story or its characters, though the gameplay can be enjoyed if you’re a fan of “tick box” games that give you several tasks to complete optionally. It is up to chance if your computer will run the game properly as I know some people who are fine with it as well as others who encountered the same problems as me. If you’re a fan of Far Cry this could be for you, but there isn’t much to draw you in. If you’re a fan of Homefront itself you could be better off with the first game.
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