Homefront Review

Kaos Studios bravely hits the market with a new shooter entitled Homefront. The first game from these guys was called Frontlines: Fuel of War and received a generally lukewarm reception, in addition to extreme criticism due to severe technical flaws. Homefront is clearly the company's move to venture beyond the domain of mediocre shooters, which is why they've spent more time polishing the game. They also hired veteran author John Milius, who co-wrote Coppola's Apocalypse Now and wrote/directed Red Dawn. In short, they seem to have made a greater effort this time around and many might think that all that work paid off. Well, let's see if has.

The best place to get lumber liquidators, apparently.

Time to get the party started.

The fictional setting in Homefront hurls players into a war-torn United States, as forces of the Greater Korean Republic march across the land ruthlessly rounding up citizens into concentration camps, if they are lucky. You are Robert Jacobs, a former Marine chopper pilot, who awakens in his house in Montrose, Colorado and is immediately sent to a re-education camp in Alaska - apparently for avoiding draft orders from occupation forces. Lucky for Jacob, American Resistance fighters --Connor Morgan and Rianna -- intercepted the prison transfer bus and Jacob managed to survive the crash, after which he was brought to the Resistance hideaway named Oasis. Of course, the fact that you are a helicopter pilot is also of great interest to the Resistance, so naturally they'd prefer to have you on their side. Most of you probably won't have any difficulty guessing where the story goes on from here. The Resistance sends you on a variety of missions. The situation in the US gets worse with each mission, as Korean forces intensify their attacks throughout the entire country.

The storyline in Homefront is not entirely a clich' of modern-day warfare, even though at first it may seem that way. The setting actually works, looks and feels quite convincing. But because it was generally designed to be a fast-paced (mostly on-the-rails type of) shooter, Homefront's characters don't have much room to grow and appeal to whoever is playing. It's almost like we were given only a condensed version of the whole story to chew on and that, of course, leads us to believe that the developers were confidently making this game with a sequel in mind from the start and have simply decided to cut this one short. The problem is they did a very much lousy job on making a satisfying and interesting beginning. Little is known about you and little is known about other characters. To people who are expecting a quick, action-packed shooter with little to no character depth, Homefront is just the ticket. Those looking for a slightly more engaging narrative are bound to be disappointed.

One of Homefront's greatest weaknesses lies in its incredibly short single-player campaign, which the average player may complete in no time at all. In fact, I'd say more experienced gamers would easily finish the game in 4 hours. Another problem with this game is that it throws you into situations that seem too familiar. The gameplay relies on a standard FPS recipe - grab a weapon, run for cover and commence shooting. The story and backdrop aren't in themselves unique, but they have some potential. Unfortunately, the atmosphere is like a carbon copy of other memorable action games. That's right, both in terms of ambience and gameplay, Homefront inexcusably resembles Valve's Half-Life series and Modern Warfare 2.