Homefront is probably one of the most marketed games of last-generation. The advertising had simulated a declaration of war on mainstream websites which caused some confusion outside of the gaming world. This all of course began right in time with the ROKS Cheonan sinking, and the North Korean artillery strike on Yeonpyeong Island, with then-developer THQ denying that the game was leeching off of the national coverage. Coming in from publisher Deep Silver, only after they acquired the rights from the now dysfunct THQ, is an FPS title that's centered around revolution.
The entire plot is your typical, universal tale of revolution. It's the year 2027, and two years ago the Korean-American War began. Robert Jacobs, the character that you will be playing as, is awakened in his apartment in Colorado and ordered by Korean troops to get on a bus, where he will enter a re-education camp of sorts in Alaska. He is eventually rescued by resistance fighters Connor, Rianna, and Boone, and taken to their hidden resistance camp. The remainder of the game is spent fighting the Korean troops and their overall police state, with very little in the way of plot. When it comes down to it, none of the missions really line up with each other, and there's no true sense of what the ultimate goal of the game is.
Man oh man, where to start with Homefront. It's another one of those first-person shooters that's difficult to write about, purely due to the fact that it's so generic. If you've ever played any other shooter, you'll know what to expect going in to this one. It functions in similarity to the later Call of Duty games, where you have regenerating health and must constantly follow and appease your AI friendlies. In fact, you are in complete servitude to your AI crew, primarily bull-headed Connor, who demands that you follow him and stick close by almost constantly. He orders you around like you're a piece of trash, and even tells you how you should be firing some guns. To make matters worse, the AI in this game is horrendous, especially when it comes to your team and the people you're required by in-game law to follow; often they will get stuck on walls, or fail to progress at certain points, leaving you sitting to wait it out for minutes that seem like hours.
Speaking of characters, the entire cast seem to be cardboard cutouts of generalized emotions; Connor is nothing but an angry, yet otherwise emotionless, controlling jerk, Rianna is your typical "I'm over-emotional but I'm trying to hide it since I'm a hardened bad girl but it comes out every once in a while" chick, and then you have Hopper who is the stereotypical quiet nerd. The guy that you play as, Jacobs, is a mute pilot with no personality whatsoever, as is typical for many FPS titles. There's no supreme bad guy, no arch-villain, no total monarch that needs to be taken down, just an onslaught of bad guys that need to be shot over, and over, and over for 7 levels that equal about 4 hours.
One redeeming quality about Homefront is its graphics. They aren't jaw dropping by any means, but the game looks good even some six years later. The character models are a little less impressive than the environments, especially given that most of the enemies look exactly the same, but at least you'll have something nice to look at while you're being bored to death. The soundtrack isn't half bad either, though it's also nothing to jump up and down and write home about. These two things are minor compensations for an entire game that's filled with terrible AI, a yawn-summoning plot, dull dialogue, and some of the most generic characters to ever exist in a video game. The true question here is, why would you play Homefront when there are so many better titles out there?
Rating: 1.5/5.0 - It's bad.The Horror Network
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