Homefront® (The Revolution): Full Game Review For PC

Homefront the revolution is the sequel no one asked for after a game that no one played. I honestly don't know anyone who played the original game and yet, here we are with a sequel developed by Dambuster Studios. Dambuster Studios is made up of folks who've worked on the crisis games as well as the time splitter series so you think these guys know what they're doing. But according to all the reviews for this game they apparently don't, one reviewer even said that he gave up on playing the game. Yeah that's fine, if someone's paying you to review a game you can totally just give up on it and give a half-assed verdict.

Other people are even calling it the worst game they've ever played, well it pains me to say this but if this is the worst game you've ever played, then you need to play more games.

THE STORY

The story is that you're a guy named Brady, working with the resistance in an alternate future where North Korea has taken over the world through their highly advanced technology and weaponry developments or something like that. In the game's prologue, you're meeting up with Benjamin Walker the leader of the resistance until things go south and he's kidnapped by the North Koreans or the Norc’s as they're referred to in the game, yes the Norc's.

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I can’t really remember any of the main character's names and what exactly their goals are which made it all the more confusing during some of the plot twists, also for no apparent reason Brady is a silent protagonist which almost gets him killed during the prologue because he doesn't tell the resistance that is on their side. You soon meet up with other resistance members and begin taken over the pockets of the city one section at a time. This is done exactly as you'd expect completing story missions as well as various side missions. There're areas we have to kill a bunch of bad guys then flick a switch or activate something then the area becomes a safe house populated with friendly NPCs.

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There're up to a dozen of these per area and you get points for unlocking them that can be spent on the many weapon upgrades available. Weapons are basic in the sense that they're just simple archetypes like pistols, sniper rifles, assault rifles but what gives them a bit of uniqueness is the weapon mods. For instance, you can turn the basic pistol into either a submachine gun or a silenced pneumatic pistol, the marksman rifle can be modified into a more powerful longer range version and also a grenade launcher and the crossbow can be turned into a flamethrower because I don't know maybe that totally makes sense.

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You can also make a bunch of different grenades from Molotov cocktails through to hacking grenades. Then there's the expected upgrades for Brady as well like faster reload times, more ammo, more health kits, more armor all that kind of stuff. These all require cash which is looted from dead soldiers or given in high quantity when you complete the main story missions. Now the city itself is broken up into a number of different zones which are either red or yellow zones, red zones are basically just entirely hostile where the norc's will shoot you on sight and gunfights and combat is happening almost constantly.

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In the red zones, you can ride a motorbike to get around the area faster and there's also a big focus on guerrilla warfare type tactics is it's easy for the North Koreans to call in reinforcements and outnumber you. Combat is tricky mainly because your health just melts away so goddamn, quickly even with the so called upgraded armor. The enemy AI is far from intelligent I mean they're accurate and all that but they often have issues with pathfinding and will circle around a building you might be in as opposed to just walking in the front door but the challenge comes from their numbers in their higher damage output more than their actual tactics.

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Then the kind of the red zone, you've got the yellow zone which is populated with citizens that haven't yet joined the resistance, in the yellow zone you're advised to keep a low profile or else you'll find yourself attacked by droves of enemies and you'll have to resort to hiding in a dumpster or a portaloo to get rid of your notoriety. Stealth is pretty basic, it's really the absolute bare minimum required to pull off a stealth system.

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Basically, if you're in line of sight with an enemy, a semi-circle is going to slowly fill up and then you detect it and then they all just start chasing after you. Using silenced weapons like the pistol or the crossbow will quietly incapacitate an enemy and you're able to do the good old-fashioned press F to take the our movers well. When you're detected, the game goes into total bullshit mode where the Koreans just spawn incessantly and somehow they have some kind of x-ray vision where they know exactly where you are at all times. In the red zone, it's even more chaotic as they often literally do not stop pursuing you until you're killed.

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It removes a lot of the sense of power and control from the player is you just constantly being bombarded but maybe that was kind of the point. Obviously, it's not as bad in the yellow zone though due to the magical portaloos that render you pretty much invisible. The whole goal of these yellow zones is to get the citizens to fight alongside your cause which you do by causing dissent like killing high-ranking officials, destroying generators or hacking display screens to broadcast your own messages.

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Once you get enough people on your side,the yellow zone rises up against the norc's and the citizens begin fighting back, once your work is done, you move on to the next area.
There's nothing inherently bad with any of this kind of stuff it's just that it really does have this perpetual feeling of déjà vu. It's like the bastard child of every open-world game you've played in the last decade all rolled into one. If familiarity is a fault, then this game sure is faulty.

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You've seen it all, before taking over what is essentially the app post from the Far Cry games removing all 31 shred at a time like in the Just Cause series and then just the very cookie cutter player and weapon upgrades. Wow, I can make my machine gun reload faster and now I have a better scope for my sniper rifle "whoop-dee-doo".

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I was playing homefront, all I could really keep thinking was man this would make a really good Terminator game, when I was riding around the city at nighttime on one of the motorbikes being chased by drones I kept thinking if this was Skynet I was up against this would be a much better game. I mean check it out and tell me if it doesn't look like something from the future wolves. Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked.

GRAPHICS AND SOUND

Homefront The revolution is far from a masterpiece but it's also far from the worst game ever made. On a positive note, it's a pretty good-looking game and it runs on the Cry Tech 3 engine and it supports some pretty large environments with detailed interiors. Character models look good though the animation can be a bit jerky at times and all things considered the performance wasn't all that bad.

There's a night-and-day cycle with the game looking realistically dark at nighttime and suitably glarey during the day and there's variety between all of the zones you visit. It's a shame that the music, sound and the voice work is mostly forgettable but in terms of the visual presentation, it's really not that bad. I'm a bit pissed off at how the game blocks up for a second or so every time it reaches a checkpoint but I can deal with that.

It's real problem is that it doesn't have an original bone in its body and every mechanic and feature has been done to death in similar games. It has a few bugs to make matters even worse which is really nothing compared to other games like fallout 4. Overall, it's still largely playable despite being burdened by mediocrity.

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

OS: Windows 7/8/10 all x64
Processor: Intel Core i5-4570T (2.9 GHz) or equivalent or AMD FX-6100 (3.3 GHz) or equivalent
Memory: 6144 MB RAM
Graphics: GeForce GTX 560 TI (1024 MB) or equivalent or Radeon R7 260X (2048 MB) or equivalent
Storage: 38 GB available space

RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

OS: Windows 7/8/10 all x64
Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K (3.3 GHz) or equivalent or AMD FX-8320 (3.5 GHz) or equivalent
Memory: 8192 MB RAM
Graphics: GeForce GTX 760 (2048 MB) or equivalent or Radeon HD 7870 (2048 MB) or equivalent
Storage: 38 GB available space

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REVIEW/RATING

Graphics 7/10
Sound 8/10
Gameplay 7/10
Controls 7/10
Effect 7/10

OVERALL REVIEW/RATING

7.3\10

DEVELOPER

Dambuster Studios

PUBLISHER

Deep Silver

GENRE

Action, Adventure

MODE(S)

Single-player‎, Multi-player

PLATFORM(S)

Microsoft Windows

PlayStation 4

Xbox One

Linux

OS X

RELEASE DATE

20 May, 2016

CONCLUSION

Homefront is a pretty crappy game let's not mince words but it's not unplayable and I think that's what the big takeaway is. It's got a decent length to it, you're looking at easily 12 plus hours on the first time play through and upwards of 20 if you're a completionist. Then you've got the resistance mode on the side to sink your teeth into as well. If you see this one on sale or in a bargain bin, it might be worth taking a look at.