Game Review 'Homefront: The Revolution': Cheesy and a rather poor plot
After going through multiple publishers, Homefront: The Revolution has finally been released but it might have been better off watching from the sidelines. All signs pointed to the game being stuck in development hell, and all of my fears regarding the quality of the game have indeed come true. Homefront: The Revolution is a barely functioning first person shooter that should be avoided at all costs, at least for now.
Homefront tells the story of Ethan Brady in the year 2029 in Philadelphia. Set in an alternate universe, in this story North Korea has invaded the United States in more Red Dawn-esque guerrilla action. It disguises itself as an open world game with the KPA controlling major districts of the city. Philadelphia is divided into three zones — Green acts like base for the KPA, Yellow holds most of the population under constant surveillance and Red, full of ruins and rubble, is where the Resistance is at its strongest. It tries its best to build up this story, with special emphasis on the visual design making the game feel atmospheric in parts. But the plot itself is extremely poor and cheesy, and every other element of the game ranges from bad to average.
I found combat encounters as well as the design of the game to be incredibly boring. It’s divided into districts and as expected, players are required to liberate them to inspire the population to revolt with you. Blowing up enemy vehicles and a hacking mini-game are some of the ways this can be accomplished. You perform a set of sabotage missions for one district followed by a story mission, and then move on to another district and repeat the process.
Repetitiveness on its own isn’t nearly as bad as poor mechanics though. I found the stealth and the shooting to be lacking on all fronts. The gunplay was extremely clunky and sluggish. You are able to handily craft weapon upgrades on-the-fly which helps with the monotony of the situation and things do get better once you get a better arsenal, but the mechanics just aren’t up to par. Not only is Homefront generic, it’s also filled with technical problems. Poor frame rate and annoying bugs are very common in a game that was clearly shipped months before it was ready.
Homefront: The Revolution is very close to being a mess. The shooting does not feel good and it is filled with technical concerns. Even without these issues, the story is laughably bad and everything else is bland and generic. It’s a game that came out five years too late but still has the problems of an unfinished product and completely fails to build on the lost potential of its predecessor.
