Re: Games Discussion Thread
Homefront. I've been really looking forward to this title since discovering one of the creators and writers was John Milius, the guy who brought us Red Dawn and helped bring us Apocalypse Now. It wasn't story I was really looking forward to, more presentation of story. The themes, tones and raw emotions that the developers have been harping about for a long while now.
I was very pleased to discover that Homefront did deliver... mostly.
My biggest complaints are the short campaign (I beat in a little under 6 hours on normal), the 'meh' ending, and the later few levels which mostly lost their emotional punch and became quite similar to most FPS games out there today.
However, the game's first half is astounding in my opinion. Everything from the opening where you get woken up by a knock by Korean Police before getting a rifle butt to the face and tossed down some stairs, to a bus ride to see the brutality of the occupation. Many of the things I've seen before in video games, but in Homefront they are presented very well to add that extra kick it needed to poke its head out from beneath the pile of Call of Duty, Halo and so many others.
The first levels are a hallmark, in my opinion, of video game design. It's one thing to fight through a suburb with a few civilians running around with animations to show their fear... it's another to have them yell at you for bringing danger to them before the bullets start flying, a mother rushing past you into the relative safety of her home clutching her baby to her chest, screaming, the baby's wails haunting you as you try and fight off the soldiers you had brought to this place. There are some other moments that I won't spoil that truly did catch me off guard. Some of the little details bringing the horrors of conflict to life. I was actually screaming at the enemy in those first few levels... in that moment it wasn't about the achievements or the checkpoints. It was about payback, it was about killing every fucking invader I could get my hands on.
While compared to some games out there on the market, the characters weren't anything special, compared to most FPS games, they had some real meat to their animations. There was a complexity rarely seen in this genre.
The collectibles in the game are newspaper articles ranging in dates from 2007 to 2027. They give small glimpses into the world and how it became like it did. While this situation will never happen, they've done a lot of work to keep your suspension of disbelief. Still, there are those out there who will nit pick the story to death, yet leave games that didn't even seem to try alone.
The controls are very straight forward... torn straight from Call of Duty. So is the core gameplay, but it works. It still stands on its own despite the copy/pasted core gameplay. If you like Call of Duty, you'll like Homefront. And depending on your reason for not liking Call of Duty, you still might like Homefront.
I've yet to try the multiplayer. The game is suffering from the usual 'first day, oh shit we underestimated how many people were going to buy this game' that has hit big multiplayer titles in the past. There just isn't enough servers at the moment. Still, from what I hear it's similar to the old title "Frontlines: Fuels of War". I'll try to get it working tonight, but we'll see.
All in all, I'm quite happy with my purchase. The world built here draws you in quite well, so that when you do get the almost emotionless later levels you're invested in the experience. There were a few things I wish they expanded on more, and that the game had spent more time with the resistance type fighting rather than jumping into guns ablazing style... but it delivers the action well, and ups the ante with substance.
I recommend it for fans of FPS games that want some more substance than is usual, but the strong focus of shooter gameplay won't be appealing to anyone who doesn't like the genre.
*edit*: And no I still haven't fucking got Dragon Age II thanks to the distributors. I won't get it till at least Friday now...
