Homefront

If you browse the wiki page for Homefront's basic premise, it's kind of hard not to get very intrigued and get a desire to find out more. A convincing and eerily plausible scenario, a Hollywood writer and a campaign geared towards actually building emotion out of the player rather than just living out your action junkie fantasies was quite intriguing. But whether it's lack of faith or a case of "I call 'em as I see 'em", Homefront looked kind of generic and what I'd like to call a "placeholder" game: something you play when there's nothing else out yet and you're bored with your current game library. Now I'm going to try to refrain from criticizing Homefront in comparison to other first person shooters since that wouldn't be fair to the game. But that's kind of the rub with it: you have played better than this, and really, other developers have learned from the mistakes Homefront seems to keep doing. It's almost as if they made this game in 2003 and forgot about until last year when they're like "oh shit, we still have this? maybe we should put this out finally?" Granted, the multiplayer is promising but the game as a whole is just unremarkable. 
 
There's something very interesting and even thought-provoking in Homefront's plot: North Korea and South Korea unite as one, other countries fall to this new regime and the detonation of an EMP blast over the United States allows a full invasion and occupation of the country. You play as Jacobs, a former helicopter pilot rescued by some resistance members as they decide to hijack some fuel trucks and make their way over to the military to aid in the fight to reclaim their country. And that's where I stop which is quite fitting: a short plot synopsis for a short game. Now, if you've ever watched a movie that was longer than it needed to be, you might look at Homefront's brief running time and go "well it doesn't overstay its welcome, right? It's not 5 hours of good and 7 more hours of crap, it's cutting the filler". But Homefront just doesn't do enough with its story and the more it starts to gradually introduce you to things, the quicker you realize you're barreling for the finish line. There's a moment when you notice these arned Americans in the countryside being a bit too crazy and the game could've explored the concept of the lack of punishment and sanctions means people can run amok and do whatever they want (as long as it's against Koreans) yet that quickly disappears. This is a case of the premise being better than the actual execution of it. 
  
I'm not sure if it's just the PS3 version but graphically this game looks ugly. There's 2 different types of "bad graphics" as far as I'm concerned: ones that look very last-gen and not that impressive in the slightest and then there's HD visuals done poorly. This game's the former with some fuzzy looking textures, rough environment detail and at times, AI companions don't even look properly programmed within the 3D space so they'll have this weird "outline" around their bodies, like they've been pasted onto a background like a bad digital effect.   Not sure if the 360 version has it worse but there's barely anything in this game where I went "wow, well at least something looks nice".
 
 When it comes down to the gameplay, it just feels kind of ho-hum. The movement speed feels sluggish and slow, weapons don't seem to carry that much weight and there's times where you could take quite a few bullets before you're finally downed and then there's times where I left cover and not even before my brain realized I was getting shot and could send the signal to my hands to go back into cover, I was dead. There's respawning enemies and I received some cheap deaths where enemies just appeared and fired at me, without any indication there was still people left. Worst of all is that the game is so linear and scripted that literally certain events are programmed to only allow one outcome. Granted it's not during the firefights but there was one mission where I had to cover teammates with a sniper rifle in a church's bell tower and the HUD display will show a "Wait" above his head. You literally can't fire at the guy until the "Eliminate" pops up unless you want to restart from a checkpoint. I mean, nobody's around and he's going to die in that very same spot anyway so who cares, right? Oh and don't even think about crawling under that fence first, you have to let your 2 AI buddies go first lest you love running into invisible walls. Oh and the best part? Enemies can occasionally shoot through things that you know, physically, they shouldn't be able to. How's that for quality? 
 
Now we come down to the multiplayer, probably the only saving grace in the entire package. The game plays out on a gigantic map in one of 2 basic gametypes: a team deathmatch and ground control, which is kind of like a mix between Rush and Conquest from Bad Company. You're to capture certain areas and once your team starts dominating, you move up ahead and have to capture 3 more areas and the first to win 2 rounds wins. It's actually quite fun and the battles are quite chaotic though for new players, they might be a bit too chaotic. Long distance gunfire, sniper fire, drones (aerial and Johnny 5-sized) and helicopters, air strikes, tanks and humvees, it's quite easy to spawn and barely make it 10 seconds before something takes you out.  
 
The benefit of all of this however is that you can supply all that goodness yourself too thanks to the "Battle Points" system. Completing objectives, rescuer and revenge kills, headshots and assists add to a point total which you can cash in right then and there for a bonus. Want your own personal UAV? Or a flak jacket to guard against grenades? Or how about a mini-copter that you can use to highlight enemy positions on the map? It makes for some intense action which recalls the random "holy shit that was close" moments of Battlefield. One time an enemy humvee, saw me, and started to turn around. Right then, I purchased an RPG and blasted his engine as he tried to run me over and I blew him up, nearly taking me out in the process. There's also a Battle Commander mode that gives you additional objectives and a VIP-type feature of making a player doing exceptionally well receiving a nice bounty on their head and a bigger points bonus which helps dissuade campers and snipers.
 
I kind of laughed at somebody's comment on a different site where he says companies seem to focus so much on making a great multiplayer that they forget to make a good campaign. I actually find the opposite since most games have online that's more of an afterthought and an attempt to bring replay value and longevity for those would-be game traders. But in the case of Homefront, it's actually a correct statement: not everything made with good intent will work in the end. A really forgettable and wasted opportunity in its campaign and a surprising and I'd even use the word "promising" multiplayer suite, Homefront's just a classic case of great idea, poor execution.