Homefront: The Revolution

Homefront: The Revolution is the sequel to the 2011 game which entails North Korea invading the US in the not so distant future. The US has become a decaying shell of its former self while every aspect of value is either seized or destroyed, as millions starve or become victims of senseless brutality. You play as a generic/silent protagonist who eventually becomes the poster child of the Revolution when the leader of the resistance is captured. You become a one man army and they pretty much tackle the North Korean forces by yourself and start the uprising which no else had bothered to do, including the Leader of the Uprising. So your mission is to help overthrow key areas of Philadelphia in order to disrupt the Korean forces in a rather Far Cry inspired style of gameplay. But nowhere near as good as Far Cry.

Firstly, Homefront is painfully average and extremely repetitive becoming boring very quickly. Following a similar formula of Far Cry, players will explore large open areas and take over key locations including Military posts and bases, in order to encourage people to rise up and fight. Interesting idea, but the main issue with this aspect of the game is that it’s pathetically easy to complete. To acquire enemy bases require you to either kill a handful of enemies, hack a terminal or for the larger strongholds, all you need to do is turn a valve causing a small explosion. Happily enough this gets rid of the North Korean troops within the area just like that. They’re just poorly thought out and lack challenge or structure to make them engaging. They’re just too simple and quick to complete that there’s no sense of accomplishment or enjoyment. Strongholds are the biggest joke as they’re meant to be indestructible fortresses that no one has gotten into, but with some bolt cutters you can open the side door to most of them and take over within a minute or two.

The most laughable moment saw me outside an impenetrable fortress with some means of access. Either to use a bike to jump the wall or gather soldiers to take on the main gate or …. Just go around the back where a massive hole in the wall is where you can just walk in.

Combat is sluggish and more of a hassle to immerse you into when the AI is poorly programmed and the game itself is broken. This makes it more annoying when your protagonist can only take more than a handful of shots while the lacking of upgrades do very little to prolong your life or feel they have a greater effect in the game. This meant that most scenarios ended too quickly and with long loading times, the respawning process became infuriatingly longwinded. The only interesting mechanic here is the gun customisation which becomes the only dynamic component in the gameplay. But again it’s limited and rather short lived for acquiring all the different upgrades and modifications that you just forget about. This was pulled off much better in games such as Fallout 4 and Dead space 3.
You can ride a bike across some of the locations but what does beg to be questioned is how taking over bases with tanks and armoured cars sees no one using them. We can hack their most advanced scanners, RVs and security checkpoints, yet we can hot wire a car or start up a tank? Besides, riding the bike dropped the frame rate and with an ill designed map, the bike became an annoyance to drive around as it kept crashing into invisible walls.

The overall problem here is that Homefront is severally broken with bad graphical glitches, enemies popping in an out of the game world, long loading times and some awful frame rate issues. This made certain aspects unbearable (such as riding the bike) and it was just plain irritating when these glitches would affect your gameplay at vital moments.

The broken nature impaired most on the stealth aspect, making it highly flawed. It was sad as the moments you’re in the Yellow zones are the most interesting. The time you’re in the yellow zones see you having to sneak around, exploring for vital resources, helping people along the way and capture points in a very low key manner. This was a great idea until the bugs came and ruined the flow. One glitch took effect when I was hiding from enemy troops in one of the Yellow Zones and the alarm timer went down, for some reason the game projected out of the house I was hiding in and into a different place down the road where enemy soldiers where gathering.

Outside of these problems comes a tired and uninteresting campaign with side missions that revolve around go to point A, shoot this and blow up that over and over again. While the main story itself sees very little to engage with, harbouring cold, unlike-able characters who either preach and blame you for the violence taking place while not thinking that the North Koreans are doing much worse. While others are just cold, blood thirsty murders who appear to kill more for the fun rather than to inspire or break the chains of oppression.

What does hurt is the fact that there is a good game underneath all the crap, some great design elements that if developed better than this would produce one hell of a cinematic shooter. But due to its uninspiring nature and dull design, it’s nothing to shout about. But with it being broken in such an awful state, it gets a lower score for not even trying. I can’t recommend this without giving it some time for the developers to hopefully fix up the problems and take care of those annoying bugs which do impair on the experience as a whole.

+ Gun customisation is kind of cool
+ Looks fantastic ... when it loads up

- Broken - numerous glitches that break the game
- Dull, repetitive and boring
- Bland narrative
- Lacks challenge or a sense of reward