In the world of military based video games, it’s not uncommon for developers to create outlandish scenarios for the player to trudge through while playing the game. Homefront offers a premise that is probably the most outlandish that I’ve played to date.
The game starts out with a basic explanation of the setting by way of a movie before you begin playing. After the death of Kim Jung-Il, his son Kim Jung-Un has succeeded him as the leader of North Korea. After reuniting North and South into a Unified Korea, economic crisis around the world has caused the superpowers of the world to weaken to the point where the United Nations is dissolved. North Korea has built up its nuclear capabilities to the point where they invade and conquer most of Asia and afterwards, the U.S., which is in disarray due to $20 gas prices and its failing infrastructure.
The game begins with the player being interrogated by the Korean occupation in a small town of Montrose, Co. After taking a ride towards a detention center and seeing all of the atrocities and horrors being committed against Americans by the Korean occupation, your ride is abruptly held short by two members of the American resistance, Connor and Rianna. You then join them in order to free the world from Korea’s oppression.
The gameplay in the single player campaign is pretty similar to that of the Call of Duty franchise or even Killzone. The user interface is laid out in a very similar style. There are similar features such as grenade indicators and the same style of surviving damage where the player will recover after a short period of rest.
The multiplayer is where this game starts to get pretty interesting and is, in my opinion, the best part of the game. Upon joining a certain type of online game, such as team deathmatch, the player is greeted with a video tutorial, which can be skipped, of what must be accomplished in this mode complete with examples. The multiplayer maps are vast and it will take some time to run to an enemy. The multiplayer also includes something called Battle Points, or BP. BP is accumulated by getting kills or completing objectives in the various modes. Players can then use their BP to either buy killstreak rewards, such as a combat drone or a rocket launcher, or they can purchase vehicles such as a Humvee or an attack helicopter to spawn in.
There are a couple of problems that mainly lie in the single player aspect more than the multiplayer aspect of the game. The first is that the campaign in the game was relatively short. The average player will have no problem completing the campaign in about five hours on a normal difficulty. Another problem with the campaign is that there will be random moments throughout the game where enemies will randomly spawn on top of you.
If you are a fan of the Call of Duty series of games, then you will want to give Homefront a chance. If you can get past the couple points of potential frustration along the way, then you will have a very enjoyable experience playing Homefront.