Home is where the war is, well at least that’s how it seems in Homefront the alternative future FPS from THQ. America has been taken over by the new Korean alliance and it’s down to you to help lead the rebel forces to freedom.
Developers: Kaos Studios for consoles & Digital Extremes on PC
Publishers: THQ
Platforms: Microsoft Windows PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, OnLive
Release date: USA March 15, 2011, AUS March 17, EU March 18, JP April 29,
Genre: First-person shooter
Modes: Single-player, Multiplayer
Ratings: BBFC: 15, ESRB: M
Minimum System requirements:
Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 or later
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon X2 2.8GHz (Quad Core 2GHz+ recommended)
2GB of RAM
Shader Model 3.0 graphics card with 256MB of memory
NVIDIA GeForce 7900GS / ATI Radeon 1900XT (GeForce 260 or ATI Radeon 4850 recommended)
10GB of free hard drive space
Internet Connection
Campaign Story Overview:
Homefront is set in a near future America in 2027 when a nuclear-armed Korean People’s Army invades the USA. The game is written by John Milius, who co-wrote Apocalypse Now and wrote/directed Red Dawn. The beginning gameplay is reportedly set in Montrose, Colorado.
One of the major portions of the story arc is built around not only the growth of the North Korean forces over the years leading to the year 2027 (the year in which the game takes place), but also the economic downfall of the United States of America, and the unrest that seems to grip the nation before the invasion
Multiplayer:
The multiplayer part of Homefront is focused on large-scale vehicle based combat reminiscent of Kaos’ first title, Frontlines: Fuel of War. The defining innovation of Homefront’s Multiplayer is its battle points system, which is an in-game currency that allows a player to purchase weapons, gear and vehicles. Players earn points by taking objectives and getting kills and are forced to choose between many small purchases such as weapons versus larger, higher cost items like helicopters and tanks.
Multiplayer will support up to 32 players in one match, with 16 players on each team. It’s said there will be 7 maps for the PS3 and PC and there will be 8 maps for the Xbox 360. Homefront on Xbox 360 will be getting a limited exclusive map called “Suburbs”, which will be set in the Suburbs of America and will be infantry / drone only.
So that gives you all a brief run down of what to expect, but let’s get to the video review.
Okay so now it’s time to break down the scores and see how close to home this game hits.
Graphics: 7
Homefront’s graphics wont be blowing anybody away as far as technical achievements go but it’s a really good-looking game with a lot of attention to detail. Real life products and logos have been integrated into the city environments and everything feels like it belongs. The character models are well rendered even if they do sometimes do a strange penguin walk every so often, on the whole it looks good it just feels a little dated.
Gameplay Single Player: 6
This is where I started getting frustrated, although the story is one of real brilliance and deserves to be a blockbuster film the gameplay of the single player story mode is very disappointing. levels of which there are 7 take around 25 mins each to complete and there is no difficulty level either so if you found it a bit easy well that’s just the way it is. The game is so heavily scripted that it even impairs your ability to progress in simple tasks like crawling underneath a fence, your character will need to wait its turn while all the AI characters move through first, taking away any sense of being able to move freely, you feel like your simply moving your character along a pre determined time line. On the plus side the game does a good job of creating some good set pieces but with everything else mentioned it’s still not enough to warrant anything higher than a 6.
Gameplay Multiplayer: 9
So after the disappointment of the single player campaign the multiplayer will put a huge grin on your face, this is great fun to play. All those of you out there looking for something to cure those black ops blues should start playing Homefront online. It has very carefully woven in lots of the elements of some of the best online shooters and moulds them all together in this neat little package. You receive battle points during your game and these can be used to purchase upgrades or extra bonuses even vehicles during the game and this leads to every battle having its own epic feel. A very welcome break from the online antics of black ops.
Sound: 8
Some of the most disturbing parts of the story come from what you hear, women begging for there lives to be spared children crying in agony as they watch their mother and father gunned down all of this is felt more through the sound than the actual game visual, the general score also sets a good tone for each battle.
OVERALL FUN FACTOR: 7
So it may have been a big let down on the single player side of things and that may be enough to send some running to the hills, but if you’re a big fan of multiplayer online shooters I think Homefront will provide you with hours of good fun.
For help with the game, check out our Homefront walkthrough.