The year is 2011. The economy has been in the dumps now for about a year or two but it’s said to be coming back. Jump ahead a few years and North Korea begins testing nuclear weapons. A few years after that a new war with the Saudis begins. Our troops are over extended again and North Korea begins to annex nearby countries as well as South Korea. North Korea’s leader, Kim Jung Il, dies off and his son takes power. The war with the Saudis constricts our oil to the point of rationing and further destroys the economy. North Korea begins to terrorize many countries in its hemisphere and before you know it, they’ve invaded the US. You’re sitting in your home watching as San Francisco is torn apart on television when outside your window you see paratroopers dropping in and attacking your neighbors. Now they’re at your door.
That is the setting for Homefront as handed down by John Milius who is the author of Red Dawn, the 1984 film with Patrick Swayze. The opening scenes of the game start with a surprise visit from the local North Korean propaganda officer and a flight of stairs meeting your face. You’re then put on a bus and driven past many different scenes. I don’t want to spoil the game too much in the beginning because this definitely sets up the mood for the game. When you first meet up with resistance fighters, you’re taken through some urban landscapes with familiar White Castles, Hooters, and billboards for Pabst Blue Ribbon. As you move on you then head into suburbia and disappear into abandoned homes. Your two rescuers banter amongst themselves about how things are bad and along the way you deal with a few skirmishes of KPA troops. Until you meet up with your commanding officer, you don’t really know why you’re being saved other than you’re an Air Force officer. As you meet up with civilians you realize they don’t want you around since you draw attention to them from the invading KPA forces.
From there a firefight breaks out and some gas is involved! You begin moving from house to house under fire while humvees reign destruction upon the landscape. When all is lost and you’re about to meet your end, you take shelter in a blue two story house. Troops are moving in and then with a crashing sound, a mighty six wheeled autonomous vehicle plows through the walls of the house to begin attacking enemy troops outside! This part of the game is pretty awesome and gets you pumped up for some action. You take hold of the targeting device and begin laying waste to your foes as explosions rock the area. As the enemy troops retreat you get to meet the rest of your crew. Oh, and all of this will take place within the first fifteen minutes of the game and is pretty intense.
The game itself is very straightforward in single player mode. You will end up being led by the hand for the most part and doing what your squad leader tells you to do. This will involve sneaking around, providing backup, and/or supporting something they end up doing themselves. Invisible walls will block any progress or areas that the game just decides isn’t time for you yet, for which can be a bit annoying at times. There are a few parts in the game where you can do what you like such as a mission involving a helicopter, which is what you were rescued for, and then providing sniper support while your team moves about. One nice feature about the game is when you run out of ammo, you’re out of ammo. No one will really hand you ammo for anything. The most you’ll get are the necessary spare grenades from your cohorts when, occasionally, you have to take out mounted sentries that are reminiscent of a Terminator HK. I was personally quite fond of the M16 with the under barrel 203 launcher and the M4 for which I was constantly trying to find ammo throughout the game. It forces you to be conservative just like you would expect in a situation such as this; you can’t really afford to be Rambo here.
The graphics are very vivid. The landscapes are rife with propaganda posters, destroyed buildings, bloodstains, garbage and wreckage from vehicles and military skirmishes. The explosions are very nice and the gunfire visuals, muzzle blast and such are also well done. The backgrounds and what’s going on in them are also very nice, as well as the glares and glows on weapons from the sun or moon within the game. Going through the endgame content you’ll get very nice visuals of jets flying about and the landscape of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
Sounds in the game are also very nice. The sounds of children crying as their parents are executed in front of them, screams of those being shot, the sounds of bodies being pushed into a mass grave, or the more uplifting “Ooh-rahs” of the Marines at the end pushing their way through enemy troopers all successfully help drive home the atmosphere. The sounds will definitely leave an impact on you as you play through the game. The sounds in multi-player are mostly just explosions and your commander calling out troop movements and such. The explosions from the armored vehicles are also all varied and none sound the same.
The multi-player is actually quite a blast! The maps are quite large and boast colorfully destructive environments. The maps vary in size and cater to all playing styles. You can snipe if you want to with a rifle or go medium range with an assault rifle. One great feature is that you’re going to have a very hard time trying to snipe someone with a sub machine gun. You can customize kits immediately when you begin multi-player and items will unlock quickly within your first few rankups. One downfall is that you don’t exactly know when what items are unlocked. The unlocks system for weapons, camos and add-ons are similar to the Call of Duty series. One interesting feature is the Battle Points system. Each game you join starts you off with 500 points. Capturing objectives or achieving kills earns you more points with which you can use special items or vehicles depending on your custom kit load out. You can spawn in vehicles such as humvees, APCs, tanks and or choppers. You also have two special items in your kit loadout with which I equipped Kevlar armor and two UCAV rockets. The perks vary and it is overall a very nice system that encourages you to be active in the games.
Some of the negative things that I experienced during game play only really occurred while playing online. During single player action you only really have to progress in the game at your own pace for the most part. Everyone knows that online play is where speed, dexterity and hand eye coordination come into effect at a higher rate. So picture it, you’re out moving through a freeway full of wrecked cars and semis and you spot a sniper out of the corner of your eye. You go into flight mode and begin sprinting for cover and then when you reach it you accidentally press several keys at once. On more than a handful of occasions that happens to me and what happens half of the time? My character will end up just standing still at the cover I ran to and then I end up being taken out. This happens once or twice at least during a game to me, although I’m not sure if it’s just my keyboard or if it happens to others as well. The community in game doesn’t seem to talk very much, or if they do the chat box on the bottom of the screen is so small that it seems transparent during combat. Almost no one will speak during a game and I have yet to hear the VOiP even used in game. The controls of the game work pretty well otherwise. I’ve been seeing random posts on Facebook about THQ actively seeking to remedy issues about the game’s online play and working feverishly at that too, so that right there is one positive note about the issues stated here!
Homefront is a shooter that doesn’t bring a whole lot of new concepts to shooters, but instead relies heavily on the story. The background of the game is laid out heavily within the first fifteen minutes of gameplay and is even further hammered in by the sounds that go along with the scenes. The game may be short, at around five hours for completion, but it’s a game that you won’t want to put down once you start playing. The multi-player is also a shining example of what shooter games can be that aren’t Call of Duty or Battlefield! The occupation has begun!
