Welcome back, today we’re talking about Homefront: The Revolution, a game which follows on from Homefront, but isn’t a sequel, rather is instead a reimagining of the premise – that being that North Korea have managed to invade and take over the United States of America. Is it any good?
Well, it’s better than the original, I’ll say that much. I remembered having fairly positive feelings towards the game, but having played through as much of it as I have in the last few days, I’ve begun to find the whole thing rather tedious, and then as if by magic, it’s decided to crash and lose my save game progress, so that’s as good a time as any to call it a day and write this review.
The gameplay is much more open-world, do it at your pace, than the original, with the game broken up into different zones which are accessed via subway tunnels. Within these zones are sub-zones, which if you perform the sub-zone specific activity, puts it sort-of under resistance control. Familiar with the idea? That’s basically what happens in Farcry 4, from 2014, GTA San Andreas from 2004 and probably a whole bunch of other games before those too. It’s not a new concept, but it was at least somewhat enjoyable to do for the first three or four zones. That’s when the bugs came into play and it stopped being enjoyable for me. Well, it’s not where the bugs came into play, it’s where the bugs stopped me from being able to continue with the zone-taking-over-stuff.
Outside of zone conquest, you’re completing all manner of missions for the resistance, such as helping track down people, resources or schematics; defending against attacks; stirring up trouble; rescuing people; or basically being everyone’s bitch because we’re a silent protagonist and don’t argue back. It’s very much run-and-gun, with the game emphasising early on the idea that you want to hit a target and then run away, rather than engage in prolonged firefights. It is perfectly possible to engage in prolonged firefights. The game acts like you shouldn’t – and you probably shouldn’t – but it’s very possible and honest, probably simpler than going in, shooting, running away, hiding, then repeating the process however many times. Just take cover, shoot stuff, move on.
Visually, the game is fine – about on par with games from the mid-00’s, and Farcry 4 is probably the closest comparison to the stuff I can think of from the top of my head. I don’t recall it being a game that blew me away, visually, but everything looked as it was supposed to look and there weren’t any major graphical glitches anyway to put me off looking at the screen. More importantly, I didn’t witness any specific war-crimes (though there was the aftermath of a few, and the suggestion of performing a few more), which automatically earns a point from me, over the original.
I think, though, the word that sums up the game for me is “tedious”. There came a point when doing the game felt tedious, and about five minutes after I’d come to the conclusion that I just didn’t care any more, the game decided to do the same and conked out. I’ve read the rest of the plot, there’s nothing there that’s overly exciting or surprising, but the trouble with shooting games is that it’s hard to make a truly compelling story from them. Not impossible, but hard. I was enjoying it for the first half, but becoming the dogsbody, and all that accompanies it, really put me off even trying to continue. Oh, and they did that thing where they made a shotgun much better at long-distance than it really should be. Not complaining, necessarily, I made good use of it, but it’s definitely something worth noting.
5/10
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