I've been looking forward to Homefront for months and I picked it up yesterday.
The verdict is in. It sucks.
From everything I was reading about Homefront, I expected a sandbox type game where you would move among the population in an occupied United States. Missions would advance the story, but the way you completed the mission mattered. If you plant a bomb to take out a target and blow up a cafe full of civilians you would lose support in that area; there would be multiple ways to complete missions and various outcomes depending on your approach. A sniper's bullet through a window into a general's staff room is much harder than planting a bomb under his car, but it wouldn't damage your standing with the population.
Sadly, Homefront is none of that. It's a simple, linear first-person shooter with no room for choice beyond picking which wall to hide behind (and even then there is a right and wrong answer). The game is so scripted that at one point I was told to GTFO of of burning and collapsing building, so I sprinted to the exit when it was in sight, only to have my NPC companion trigger a scripted collapse that killed me instantly. Lesson learned: stay with your chaperon at all times.
Even as a shooter it doesn't do very well. The enemy can see where you are even behind cover, so give up on the idea of low-crawling past the baddies and staying out of sight behind cover. No matter where you poke your head out they will already be pouring lead into that cubic foot of air. The levels are set up like a cover-based shooter with lots of chest-high walls, crates, derelict vehicles, and buildings to use for cover; too bad there is no snap-to-cover mechanic. You have to edge out from behind cover and soak up enough lead to put down a large Holstein to get off a couple poorly-placed rounds before ducking back to let your health magically recover. This is especially annoying when you see NPCs blind-firing over boxes. The enemy also has magic bullets that can hit you slightly around corners, allowing them to start pumping you full of Pb long before you can even spot their position as you edge around corners. The enemy NPCs are also very good with grenades and can consistently land them right at your feet; in fact the only thing more likely to land at your feet than an enemy grenade is a friendly one.
In a fight your allied NPCs are less than useless, the named NPCs won't die no matter what you do. At one point I was trying to assault through an old supermarket with a maze of shelving and the NPCs took off in opposite directions. The one I was supposed to follow decided the best place to go was a kill-box that took fire from three directions and an elevated position and the only cover was near exploding barrels. No matter what the NPCs would sit there shooting at the one baddie who was sitting behind a concrete wall sipping tea and eating cake while an entire platoon stood 6 feet away and perforated my spleen with 5.56.
The game is also horribly short. At times it seems that they tried to prolong the length by making some sections Nintendo-Hard, but I still beat it in less than 24 hours and I'm just a casual gamer. Homefront also commits the cardinal sin of the infinite respawn. Endless waves of enemies until you charge headlong into the teeth of their assault; you don't have the option, as I found out, to sit back in an elevated position and use the fancy sniper rifle they gave me to clear a path to the objective. When advancing through rubble or buildings don't bother clearing rooms as you go, the bad guys will spawn there when it is least convenient and shove an RPG up your ass. At least give me the chance to be smart about things by clearing buildings as I go, if I miss a bad guy hiding in a closet that's fair, but don't drop an entire squad in the room I just walked out of when there are no doors or windows.
I wanted something like The Saboteur but what I got was Call of Duty. If you like Call of Duty and all the various clones, by all means pick up Homefront. If you like something other than linear, scripted gameplay skip it and buy The Saboteur.
The verdict is in. It sucks.
From everything I was reading about Homefront, I expected a sandbox type game where you would move among the population in an occupied United States. Missions would advance the story, but the way you completed the mission mattered. If you plant a bomb to take out a target and blow up a cafe full of civilians you would lose support in that area; there would be multiple ways to complete missions and various outcomes depending on your approach. A sniper's bullet through a window into a general's staff room is much harder than planting a bomb under his car, but it wouldn't damage your standing with the population.
Sadly, Homefront is none of that. It's a simple, linear first-person shooter with no room for choice beyond picking which wall to hide behind (and even then there is a right and wrong answer). The game is so scripted that at one point I was told to GTFO of of burning and collapsing building, so I sprinted to the exit when it was in sight, only to have my NPC companion trigger a scripted collapse that killed me instantly. Lesson learned: stay with your chaperon at all times.
Even as a shooter it doesn't do very well. The enemy can see where you are even behind cover, so give up on the idea of low-crawling past the baddies and staying out of sight behind cover. No matter where you poke your head out they will already be pouring lead into that cubic foot of air. The levels are set up like a cover-based shooter with lots of chest-high walls, crates, derelict vehicles, and buildings to use for cover; too bad there is no snap-to-cover mechanic. You have to edge out from behind cover and soak up enough lead to put down a large Holstein to get off a couple poorly-placed rounds before ducking back to let your health magically recover. This is especially annoying when you see NPCs blind-firing over boxes. The enemy also has magic bullets that can hit you slightly around corners, allowing them to start pumping you full of Pb long before you can even spot their position as you edge around corners. The enemy NPCs are also very good with grenades and can consistently land them right at your feet; in fact the only thing more likely to land at your feet than an enemy grenade is a friendly one.
In a fight your allied NPCs are less than useless, the named NPCs won't die no matter what you do. At one point I was trying to assault through an old supermarket with a maze of shelving and the NPCs took off in opposite directions. The one I was supposed to follow decided the best place to go was a kill-box that took fire from three directions and an elevated position and the only cover was near exploding barrels. No matter what the NPCs would sit there shooting at the one baddie who was sitting behind a concrete wall sipping tea and eating cake while an entire platoon stood 6 feet away and perforated my spleen with 5.56.
The game is also horribly short. At times it seems that they tried to prolong the length by making some sections Nintendo-Hard, but I still beat it in less than 24 hours and I'm just a casual gamer. Homefront also commits the cardinal sin of the infinite respawn. Endless waves of enemies until you charge headlong into the teeth of their assault; you don't have the option, as I found out, to sit back in an elevated position and use the fancy sniper rifle they gave me to clear a path to the objective. When advancing through rubble or buildings don't bother clearing rooms as you go, the bad guys will spawn there when it is least convenient and shove an RPG up your ass. At least give me the chance to be smart about things by clearing buildings as I go, if I miss a bad guy hiding in a closet that's fair, but don't drop an entire squad in the room I just walked out of when there are no doors or windows.
I wanted something like The Saboteur but what I got was Call of Duty. If you like Call of Duty and all the various clones, by all means pick up Homefront. If you like something other than linear, scripted gameplay skip it and buy The Saboteur.
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. Upon realising it was a game, it looked really good. I was hoping for a real story-based FPS like the previews suggested.
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