Homefront - Review PlayStation 3 Reviews, Reviews, Xbox 360 Reviews | Brandon Hofer | March 12, 2011 at 3:12 am
Homefront is the latest shooter from Kaos
Studios and THQ. In a highly competitive first person shooter market,
Kaos has done an outstanding job in creating a memorable shooter that is
in a class by itself. The storyline in Homefront is what sets it apart
from every other shooter out there. There are a lot of shooter titles
out there that will have you fighting in some far off land. It is a
pretty rare thing when you have a shooter that uses a real world locale
and Homefront is by far the best shooter to do it yet. Instead
of fighting in a fictional, far away land, you are fighting at home.
The tagline for Homefront is “Home Is Where The War Is” and that point
is immediately driven home the instant you start the campaign and find
yourself in a tattered apartment while you see innocent civilians being
killed in the street.
The year is 2027. The Greater Korean Republic has
invaded U.S. soil and taken everyone by surprise. They conquered Hawaii
first and then invaded San Francisco. An EMP blast from a Korean
satellite has fried every piece of electronic equipment in the United
States. As you are dragged from your apartment at the beginning of the
campaign you will immediately notice how bad things have become. The
KPA (Korean Public Army) are performing atrocities everywhere you look.
You are thrown into a converted school bus that is now being used to
transport prisoners to detention centers. It isn’t long before you are
rescued and this is where the game really begins. As you progress in
the game you will bear witness to unspeakable acts committed by the KPA
as they try to hunt you down. You’ll have to fight through suburban
neighborhoods, popular retail stores and, basically, everything you
identify as “home”. Even though the EMP fried everything, there have
been a few people that have repaired some items, such as radios. In
between stages you will hear radio broadcasts from the “Voice of
Freedom” who is informing all the American citizens listening of your
progress and urging them to help the resistance in any way they can.
Kaos has done a great job here reaching an emotional level that most
shooters don’t get to. I absolutely loved the last level of the game
and thought that it was a great climax to the story. With that said
though I do want to see what happens next and that is where I am hoping
that Homefront turns into a franchise because I would love to see what
else Kaos has in mind.
The only thing that I would change about the game
is adding a cover system. It would have been nice if Homefront featured
a proper cover system where I didn’t have to be completely in the open
to shoot at someone. Having the ability to lean around a corner during
some of those huge firefights would have helped a great deal. The
scenery and set pieces in Homefront look fantastic. There were a couple
of instances where I would just stop and look at the environment for a
few moments because it looked amazing. Homefront also features one of
the most memorable stages that I have ever played in a shooter. I
enjoyed that level so much that I am going to go back and play it again
as soon as I am done with this review. As a matter of fact, I can
forsee myself playing this game for a long time. I fully intend on
going back and trying to beat the game on the hardest difficulty. That
is a rare thing for me to do too as there isn’t even a handful of
shooters where I will put myself through that. In that regard Homefront
has made a pretty elite list for me and that is one of the biggest
compliments that I can give to Kaos Studios.
Of course, the story is only part of the game with
the multiplayer also bringing some new concepts to the table. You can
play the Homefront multiplayer either over Xbox Live/PSN or over system
link. One interesting new feature that Homefront has is the battle
point system. Battle Points act as the currency in the multiplayer and
you will accrue them based on how well you are playing. The battle
points system is very much a risk vs. reward system. If you have a tank
barreling down on your position you can can quickly spend 250 battle
points on a rocket launcher to try and defend yourself. You can also
use battle points on flak jackets, drones and much more. The selection
you have will be dependent on your loadout. As you progress through the
round you will be gaining a good amount of battle points. What you have
to decide is whether you want the instant gratification of using the
points as soon as you get them or whether you will be patient for a
bigger payoff down the road. As I mentioned above, you can use battle
points to purchase that rocket launcher. Or you can save all of your
points up until you have enough to buy a helicopter. When you get
killed you get a choice on how you want to respawn. If you have enough
points you can purchase a helicopter and then respawn into said
helicopter and immediately start raining down death and destruction upon
your opponents. It is a pretty cool mechanic that could potentially
change how the battle unfolds, if you use it wisely.
I know that one of the things that the development
studio wanted to really focus on with
the multiplayer was large scale
warfare. With that said Homefront features up to 32 person multiplayer,
with dedicated servers. There are four different modes to choose from
with traditional team deathmatch, Ground Control, Battle Commander
(ground control) or Battle Commander (team deathmatch). Team deathmatch
is pretty self explanatory while Ground Control is all about an
evolving battlefield. In Ground Control, when you first start out,
there are three locations that you need to control. You will battle it
out with the opposition as you both try to dominate a specific location.
Once the round is over three new areas will be chosen and you will
have to make your way across the map and try to do the same thing with
that. The team that wins the game will be the team that wins two of the
three rounds. If the KPA wins the first round and then the USA comes
back and wins the second round, the KPA is forced to retreat to the
original three locations and try to prevent those from being overtaken.
It keeps the flow of battle flowing nicely and it changes the map(s) up
a bit so that you aren’t always fighting in the same spot. Next is the
Battle Commander modes. These modes offer up some different types of
gameplay as you will have an A.I. battle commander helping to coordinate
your team. In Battle Commander every player starts with a one star
rating. As you progress in the round you have the possibility of
getting to a five star rating based on how well you are playing. If you
are on a huge kill streak then the battle commander might give you a
mission to accomplish, such as taking out five more enemies, for
example. As you acquire more stars you will get more bonuses. At
the same time the opposition has a battle commander as well. If you
are completely dominating then the opposing battle commander might give
his troops the specific mission of taking you out. It will classify you
as a “Priority Threat” and, depending on your rank, you might have the
entire other team coming after you specifically. There are two
different types of Battle Commander modes with one of them being under
team deathmatch rules and the other under Ground Control rules.
The
game ships with seven multiplayer maps to choose from with the Xbox360
version having eight thanks to the exclusive “Suburbs” map for Xbox360
gamers.
