Homefront: The Revolution Review

Clinging to the shadows offered by the decaying buildings of the red zone, I expected to encounter KPA soldiers around almost every corner. But as I turned corner after corner I was able to avoid them, clearly I had under-estimated my stealth skills as I carefully out maneuvered them and avoided their watchful glares. That all changed less than five minutes later when I saw it, proof that my stealth skills were clearly not what I thought, almost half a dozen KPA members running into a solid wall; at that moment it hit me, the AI suck.

Homefront: The Revolution is a game set in Philadelphia during a brutal occupation from the KPA (Korean People’s Army), you take on the role of Ethan Brady, a recent recruit for the resistance who has just moved back to his home city after fighting alongside the resistance in Washington. The game holds nothing back as you are thrown straight into the story, arrested for making bombs, you eventually make your way back to your fellow revolutionaries. Who rather than treat you as one of their own proceed to torture you, a few moments later they claim it was all a misunderstanding! Personally this broke the game for me straight away, it tore me out of the story and made me ponder if the developers tried too hard to put a dark twist on the game. Personally the moment they handed me a firearm, I would have at least attempted to knee-cap a few of them, I am sure I am not the only one that thought at the precise moment they were handed their weapon; “I wonder if I can kill Dana...”

Homefront: The Revolution isn’t an awful game, in fact I would happily say that the graphics of the game are almost otherworldly. Incredible time and effort was put into producing and designing in an attempt to make the game stand out and almost as much effort was put into making the game seem as real as possible. Normally I could forgive games for their sins just based on the graphical quality alone, however I can not forgive the AI and the bugs in this game. I can not forgive the KPA soldiers that run into stone walls as if they weren’t there, the KPA peacekeepers that seemingly forget about my entire existence merely because I crouched behind a wall. The lack of intelligence displayed by the AI in this game makes my two year old nephew look like the reincarnation of Albert Einstein. What makes it worse is that it isn’t just your foes that have such a limited intelligence, it's your own damned teammates! More than once I was forced to stand in a doorway and embrace my own death, as one of my supposed friends stood there with a blank expression on their face, as my back was slowly riddled with bullets from a KPA soldier who had finally figured out how to use his gun.

The game is brilliant divided up into three zones which are almost entirely different from one another. With the red zone (bombed and ruined part of the city), yellow zone (residential and occupied) and green zone (rich kid town for all those commie lovers). As for the gameplay within the zones I would highly suggest sticking to the yellow zone should you get presented the chance, that is where I found the most enjoyment. Most people would argue that the red zone is more enjoyable due to the frequent firefights, however I counter with the simple thought of: “Isn’t the whole point of being a guerrilla revolutionary to be stealthy and launch ambushes, not get dragged into repetitive and rather one sided gun-fights?”

Co-op is actually rather enjoyable, with cooperative gameplay being fasted paced and intense, but rather limited in scope admittedly. It is still enjoyable to hurl molotovs left, right and centre as you fight back against the KPA with your friends. With character customisation available you can quickly sink a fair slice of time just simply editing your character into something you like, especially if you are like me and enjoy the pretty things in life.

I have started to form the opinion that games are like wine, once made you need to give it a while to perfect it in order for it to sell well and be adored. By this logic, Homefront: The Revolution could have easily done with another year or at the very least half a year in development to fix the massive multitudes of problems that it currently suffers with. None of these issues are unfixable but with the way the game is shaping up and how ruthlessly the community is treating its release, I highly doubt they will correct the majority of errors found in their game.

Being as delayed as this review is, you can truly soak in the disappointment of a once excited and hyped community as they turn on the game almost as quickly as they turned on the trailer for the new Call of Duty. Blunt comments that almost instantly devolve into praising the Steam refund option as well as slandering the general gameplay, whilst I normally do not pay attention to Steam reviews, I have to admit that a fair few of them are rather on point with their TL;DR bullet points.

To conclude, or for the too long didn't read version of this review: poor AI severely limits the immersion of the game, rather sadistic and somewhat irritating main characters don’t make it any easier to play either. Disappointing combat also plagues the game, overall this game is a complete and total letdown. Amazing graphics ,however, give me hope for Deep Silver’s and Dambuster’s next project. If something positive can be taken away from this it's the knowledge that Deep Silver and Dambuster know how to make games that look astounding. We still need to hope, however, that they can learn from their numerous mistakes.

Maybe the revolution was doomed from the start.