Homefront Review

Homefront is no Call of Duty; whereas that offered you non-stop action, Homefront expertly juggles raw emotion that can leave you sad, breathless and a little bit terrified.

The story of Homefront weaves a dangerous tale of loss, human spirit and horror. Penned by Apocalypse Now and Red Dawn writer John Milius, Homefront has a lot going for it in terms of the narrative it tells. America is the battlefield as a stronger foreign power in the form of Korea throws the country into a violent war with you at the centre. Along with a group of rag-tag rebels, you carry out a series of tasks that will finally liberate you from the overpowering enemy.

Homefront is not for the faint hearted. Even before you've fired your first bullet, you're treated to a harsh slideshow of horrible acts through a bloodied bus window; lovers torn apart by enemy hands, civilians killed and rounded with sick intentions and children forced to stand and watch the deaths of their parents. As horrific as it is, it sets up the world you're playing in perfectly and gives you a damn good reason as to why you're engaged in constant combat.

Unfortunately, the story fails to ignite and there isn't any plot twists to speak of. Whilst this is a slight disappointment, the scripted events it throws at you happily compensate, giving you scenes of brutality and civilian causalities aplenty. The atmosphere in Homefront is simply fantastic and it envelopes you in this world of normal people fighting for their land, their house and their families. Whilst Modern Warfare told a tale of soldiers battling against all odds, Homefront instead gives you a story of normal people hastily, and unexpectedly, thrown into extraordinary events and their will to survive.

With recent Call of Duty titles setting the bar for graphics in shooters, it's a bit of a shame that Homefront never delivers artistically. Environments are dark but there's a nice range of places for you to shoot through, including a labour camp, the Golden Gate Bridge and a suburban street. Character models, excluding the main characters, are slightly dull and basically consist of bearded men dressed in army gear. Textures are bland and are nothing but block colours pasted onto the same wall over and over again. When compared to other games of this generation, graphically Homefront is a real shame.

If you're planning on buying Homefront for the single player offering, then don't. Surprisingly, Homefront is a very short game. The seven levels can, depending on how good you are with shooters, range from five to seven hours. Although that seems to be the normal length for games of this type, it was more obvious in Homefront as the premise and backstory hint at a more interesting world, teeming with danger and possibility. The campaign of Homefront seems to be nothing more than a hinting as to what's out there, rather than an exploration.

The multiplayer aspect of Homefront is a lot of fun; similar to Modern Warfare, it consists of up to thirty two players running around maps that are a variety of sizes, building up points to eventually defeat the opposing team and win the match. Along the way, you collect experience points that you can use to level up, all the time unlocking new guns and equipment. Similar to Black Ops, the level of customisation is fantastic; you can practically alter every single aspect of your online avatar, making him truly your own.

Whilst it borrows many ideas from past online shooters, Homefront changes things around a little to fit the world it's set in. During a match, you earn Battle Points which can be then spent on things to actually use during that game, like vehicles and drones. Even if you're losing, building up those Battle Points can change the tide of the match, making some conflicts incredibly exciting and tense. Homefront also brings something new onto the market in the form of a multiplayer match where the most dangerous player in that game, the one with the most kill streaks, is tagged and the opposing team is told to concentrate all fire onto him. This is a fantastic idea and can really make some games truly hilarious as that one team member is getting kill after kill after kill and soon becomes a walking one man army.

For some people, Homefront is just a cheap version of Modern Warfare. But dig deep and Homefront can deliver in certain areas where Call of Duty titles failed, like making you feel an emotion other than frustration as that same twelve year old kills you for the fiftieth time online. The raw emotion that Homefront makes you feel is what really pushes you along and keeps you playing, not that you will be playing on your own for a while anyway. Homefront does have its major flaws, like a short campaign, shoddy graphics and some crippling bugs, it delivers an original experience that really makes you consider the question of what you would do if you suddenly found yourself defending your home turf. Would you escape and cower in the shadows? Or would you pick up a gun, reload it and fight back?