Homefront Review

[Kegsen]

From seeing & reading the review, plus watching some live-gaming on jtv I`m not too pessimistic about the game. Sure, it could be called "just another shooter" or a (insert favorite fps-here)-clone, but at least it adds some new elements to the mix. The BP-system doesn`t seem that bad, the stages look good enough, and from what I heard from the player on the live stream the controls are pretty good as well. Will I buy it however? Probably not, and simply put - because I`m sick of the genre after MW1 + 2 and BfBC2. The latter game is the one I played the most, and had a kick ass time doing so, but in the end it just felt like just another grindfest. I doubt Homefront will feel any different to me after a while. Then again, I could be wrong - but I sincerely doubt I`ll lose any sleep over it.

 

[BrownGaijin]

I said it before and I'll say it again: Seriously? North Korea invades the United States? Seriously?

 

[John Horn]

Look guys, if you aren't just trolling then read the bloody plot before commenting on it, geeze. If you'd paid more than a passing interest in it you'd know all the relevant details that create the fictional future where a united Asia, the economic powerhouse of the world, is capable of waltzing into the States to casually molest everyone.

It's fiction, deal with it. Or do you complain that one guy single-handedly takes on a Covenant armada? That a middle-eastern warlord blows up a nuke and kills a bunch of yanks? That a Marshall can lead a rebellion and fly a seriously kick-ass battleship whilst consuming that much whiskey? At least these guys bothered putting together a timeline for you :/

I don't mind silly stories. Bad writing is common in most games (except Bioware). My original post was about the reviewer mentioning the narrative as some presumed strong point in the game.
I was merely pointing out the obvious:

(Silly narrative in the style of Man from U.N.C.L.E) < (Call of Duty clone)
Guess which aspect makes this a seller? CoD Clone

 

[[zonking great]]

I was going to get it by trading in MW1 and MW2, but I'd rather save trading those in for when something worth while rolls up.

 

[Zenode]

Can noone understand that this is a WORST CASE SCENARIO? The North Koreans dont invade South Korea they pretty much do what happened with East/West Germany.

Why noone was stopping the expansion, Economic Downturn (Read: German Expansion before invasion of Poland)

ahhh fuck it I can't be bothered explaining it anymore...So here's a link for you all explaining it rather well [http://au.ps3.ign.com/articles/115/1154611p1.html]

 

[Johanthemonster666]

I don't understand why the reviewer thought that the NARRATIVE was this game's strong suit.
It's the kind of narrative that is so ridiculous, it would only ever be taken seriously on Fox News.

NEWSFLASH:
NORTH KOREA ATTACKS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


Yeah... that's very likely to happen from a hermetically sealed impoverished country, just approaching 1980s technology. The whole of North Korea possesses 6 to 8 nuclear weapons.
Woopdeedoo.


The ridiculousness of the narrative was in my opinion the litmus test of the designers' mental faculties and lack of creativity. If the designers were able to introduce such a silly narrative, I have always ASSUMED the gameplay would be equally atrocious.

It's true, if they wanted to be somewhat "semi-realistic" it would have been the People's Republic of China. It has the economic standing, manpower and potential. Canada seems awfully quiet though... I wonder O_O. Heh.

But seriously, it's not that invasion by a foreign power is implausible, it's just that the circumstances and "baddies" list we have on likely candidates hasn't changed since the cold war. If they really wanted to be edgy, they could have made a game about civil/sectarian warfare within the US as a result of all the stuff this game's intro showed and it would have been compelling if they did it right. But of course we can't have that... too politically charged for us lowly, ignorant Americans to handle, and the media would probably put the entire gaming industry on the rack for such a plot concept.


Eh, my two cents.

 

[Darth_Dude]

Well, I wasn't disapointed, low expectations will never let you down.

 

[Chunko]

I saw the intro cutscene. It's still not believable.

Key word? Fiction. Disbelief? You must suspend it, just as you must with any other piece of fiction. It's tiresome to hear people chundering on about 'hurr, third world country could NEVER invade the US!' when that's completely irrelevant. Anyway, whether you can groove with the plot or not doesn't really matter - the backstory interested me more than the actual game plot and the game play was done and perfected easily by MW1, so not a lot left for this game to sell on in my opinion.

Normally that wouldn't be a problem for me, but read my earlier post.

I'm pretty sure the intro says N Korea annexed S Korea - more conquering than merging. That seemed to be the first hurdle in your protest, the rest fall like dominoes if you just go with the flow. Seriously, there's bigger thing to complain about in that game than a quite interesting back story.

That doesn't change anything though, there is no way DPRK would be able to take over RK. The South Korean military is WAY stronger than the North Korean one. I made the false assumption that they merged because it was the one that seemed most plausible.

 

[Cory Rydell]

Hmm, I saw this coming but is length so much of a problem in a single player experience? Clearly the developers didn't think so but they were comparing themselves to Cod in that sense which I see as the issue. I wonder if it was just the expectation of a longer more epic narrative that I originally had but nonetheless I feel let down by the length and I don't know why. I'll redbox it and see what's what regardless.

 

[DSK-]

Did they actually put the wilhelm scream in their video game?
I know a lot of things were covered in the article and video, but that's what stuck with me most.

That is exactly what I was thinking

 

[AvsJoe]

Seriously. Why does it seem like no one can properly translate the "America gets invaded by -INSERT FOREIGN COUNTRY HERE- " story into a good video game? I mean, IO Interactive did pretty decent with Freedom Fighters, but everyone else...

You haven't played Red Alert 2.

Soviet Russians invade America in an alternate version of 2001. Damn good RTS with a massive fanbase, myself included. This may be nostalgia talking but it's easily the best game about the invasion of America that I have ever played.

 

[Vrach]

The story is ridiculous modern military hardware is hardened against EMPs so as soon as they wipe out our electrical grid the military would start launching nukes, then everyone loses.

Stop complaining about the story, we get it, it's unrealistic. It's a game, it doesn't need to be plausible.

OT: Shame to hear the singleplayer is a bit of a let down... however it still looks intriguing and the multiplayer looks fun! So I'll be picking this up anyway :3

Stop using the "it's just a game" excuse. Also, a game that markets itself heavily on plausibility kinda needs to actually be plausible.

OT: Yeah, kinda saw this coming from the moment I saw the first trailer, I never saw a lot of promise in it tbh.

 

[Swifteye]

Well, TBH, multiplayer shouldn't be an important part of the review. It's like Yahtzee put it, a full price game should be able to stand up on single-player alone because there are inherent flaws with multiplayer the game can't help. Like the multiplayer being deserted within a few months or the playerbase being incessant bellends.

See this does not make any sense to me. This would mean you would have rated a classic like Battlefield 2 with a 0 because it did not have any singleplayer. Why should multiplayer not be an important part? Me and many others play Modern Warfare games not for the single player (which are awefull), but for the fantastic multiplayer. In these games the core is the multiplayer and not the singleplayer experience. Therefore focusing only on the singleplayer would actually give a wrong view of the game. Whether or not it is for you depends on your interest in multiplayer, but that is not up to the review to decide.

Um dude they don't do reviews of single player and multiplayer games together. multiplayer gets it's own review if it's worth someones time to even review it(milage really varies cause really just how many dynamically different multiplayer experiences are there?) Also I almost never play multiplayer games even when I like them because I don't have the spare change to get an xbox live gold membership so singleplayer is really all I have.

 

[veloper]

The most rediculous premise ever cannot save a very generic MW clone.

We never expected that.

The most "rediculous" part of this post here is calling Homefront a MW clone, when it actually has vehicles, a decent story for once, and doesn't kill of a character pretty much every chapter to make you go "OHH NOOO!"

Homefront isn't amazing, and the campaign is lacking, but it's still better than Modern Warfer 2's. And the multiplayer blows MW's out of the water from all the different games I've played. Why? Because it's actually fun, not "camping simulator 2000."

Decent? Having a poor taste in stories is understandable, making a big deal out of the gameplay not being 100% identical, isn't.

 

[Phlakes]

I just played it about twenty minutes ago, and I have to say I would give it no more than a 5/10. There's not a single bit of immersion, all the emotional scenes come off as forced and gimmicky, there's no connection with any of the completely cliched characters, the entire story is predictable from before you even start the game, every texture is all dirty and gritty and the graphics (while I don't care that much about them) feel like they're from '06, the guns feel like heavy plastic and have no recoil, the music is completely uninspired and forgettable, all my deaths were either because I was standing in the wrong place during a scripted event or something randomly exploded beside me, and there was even one time where I climbed into a truck where you can't move and have to wait for a scripted chase scene, and I got insta-killed by a rocket.

I could go on for hours, but basically, there is not a single reason to get this while Black Ops and BFBC2 are still available.

 

[Dougomite]

As someone who isn't a CoD player I enjoyed Homefront. The review constantly mentions how 'this or that' aspect of the game was already done in CoD. Well for those of us that haven't been through all 5(i think) CoD games those interesting moments were simply interesting and fun.

I'm getting tired of reviews taking short cuts by simply labeling a games as 'just like "insert game"'. It usually doesn't really help describe the game and people who haven't played the referenced game are left with still knowing absolutely nothing. I'd have preferred a more descriptive review and less of a comparison to CoD type video.

 

[beefpelican]

This was great. Hilarious but still informative, in a way that only a review about a bad game can be.

 

[YoUnG205]

Even after this review and some other reviews that I have read I still want this game. I don't know why but it just looks like something that I would enjoy but maybe thats just me.

 

[BrownGaijin]

I said it before and I'll say it again: Seriously? North Korea invades the United States? Seriously?

Hey it's a videogame, anything can happen.

True. And now that I think about it, the game may have been a bit better if it had a gun that shot shurikens and lightning.

I kid.

 

[DaHero]

Moral of the story: If it ain't CoD, it's probably crap, right?

Sure, if this had CoD on it? Definitely would have gotten better reviews. CoD has a worse storyline idea, less plot twists (at least in the last level of Homefront it wasn't some pathetic general whining about war itself) and overall just seems like the pathetically generic "bad guy, go shoot them" that we've all become used to. Yes, Homefront didn't quite make it, but only because it was an FPS that wasn't Call of Duty. It tried something new, but nobody WANTS something new unless it's labeled "CoD: MW3."