Homefront: The Revolution Review

For the purpose of this review I would like you all to take into account that I am reviewing this a good week post release. That being said and just on the off chance the internet does not exist in your orbit, I have to acknowledge that it has seen some scathing and very negative reviews. Call it my love of the FPS genre or maybe just the promise of a co-op game to play, I decided to put all notions of other people’s opinions to the side and dive in with a clear mind. Oh boy how I should have listened, that being said it wasn’t all bad but unfortunately the negatives heavily outweigh the positives. It also must be considered that I did want this to be good so I actively was on a search for positives to extract from my experience to ultimately justify my anticipation for this title, so here is the good, bad and predominantly ugly that is Homefront: The Revolution.

Developed by Dambusters Studio and published by Deep Silver is Homefront: The Revolution and by no means was it a smooth process. It was an on again, off again project being passed from one developer to the next but eventually it was picked up and finished. We take control of the silent protagonist Ethan Brady, therein which lies one of my many issues. You are recruited into the Resistance against the KPA (Korean People’s Army), who after an elaborate plan has brought the USA to its knees via a computer virus that affected all military technologies. The plot accompanied by the opening cutscene lays a fabulous foundation for a game to take in its stride and build an epic narrative. Unfortunately that is about as good as it gets in reference to climax building and delivery, the narrative though nothing earth shattering is merely held up by this over-arching theme of foreign invasion.

Having a silent protagonist almost instantly puts distance between us the player and the happenings in game. We cannot relate to any emotions of Brady for he does not express any and all conversations are one sided so no feeling is generated to aid immersion, so we are basically just a hand and a gun. Being just a hand and a gun couldn’t even be achieved correctly, the devil is in the details, when running we see our weapon in both hands as if ready to pull up and aim at a moment's notice but when you notice your shadow and that is of a person running with their arms by their side you just really start to notice the little things that lack polish.

The open world aspect of the game and the ability to navigate with stealth throughout a city in ruins is quite awesome and this coupled with crafting and weapon modification on the fly, there is some decent gameplay mechanics to work with. Each weapon and attachment needs to be purchased and the currency upon which to this is not very hard to come by so your desired setup is easily obtained and quite quickly, although this is a neat aspect to it you then feel yourself approaching every situation in the same way and as with many other aspects of the game it can become somewhat mundane.  When mentioning things with little variation I have to mention the repetitive side missions and liberation objectives, it all feels the same.

Liberating outpost and positions of interest basically consist of eliminate a given number of enemies and interact with a point of interest. Rinse and repeat too many times to clear the map and expose at times some very ridiculously placed collectables. Liberating each area feels like a typical Far Cry except not as well crafted. Maybe if Far Cry was on the PS2, that would be a better comparison. Just another time the game felt rushed, under polished and just not quite finished. It almost begs the question as to whether it was submitted to a quality assurance (QA) team that doesn’t consist of people who still require help to wipe.

The motorcycle mechanic was a pleasant reprieve from the mundane. It was actually pretty cool and with a lot of the world designed to be motorcycle friendly. The odd jump here and narrow passageway there really made for a fun aspect. Another part of the game play that had potential for a lot of fun and variety is the RC car with explosives attached to its roof and obviously controlled externally. The only, and I say only by no means insisting the issue is minor, problem is that it got bloody caught on everything and absolutely nothing. This then forcing me to go and pick it up and scrapping it.   

Scavenging from dead bodies of slain enemies and fallen comrades helped produce the feeling of guerrilla warfare but it also had a weird mechanic, nothing just clicked. Oh, being a sadist I very much enjoyed the violent nature of the game and it never shied away from this whether it be mainly in cut scenes but also in the hand to hand silent takedowns that was quite cool. Now for my biggest gripe to end this on, is the extremely blatant lack of optimisation within the game. Yeah ok it looks like a last gen release, yeah there is no immersion, ok it was too repetitive and sure it lacked any true feeling of an original IP, but the most unforgivable sin is the buggy unoptimised mess that would literally cause the game to freeze for seconds at a time when it auto saved. The most recent update, instead of addressing this issue by trying to rid us of these freezes actually just reduced the amount of times the game auto saves, just like an admission of guilt.

I regret that I cannot say or convey any more positives, it did have its moments and wasn’t complete rubbish but as you can possibly gather the negatives far outweighed the positives and we here at Aussie Gamers Express pride ourselves on trying to give you the most honest opinion possible.   

Positives:

Platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One, PC

Genre: First Person Shooter

Initial Release: 20th May 2016

Developer: Dambuster Studios

Publisher: Deep Silver

Red