Homefront

24 Mar 2011

I was looking forward to this game after reading a preview in issue 78 of the [360 Magazine]http://www.360magazine.co.uk){:target=”_blank”}. The premise looked interesting. In this FPS you play ex-pilot Robert Jacobs who is taken prisoner by the Koreans People’s Army who have invaded and taken over the west coast of the good old US of A. On route to a labour camp you are rescued by freedom fighters and become a leading member of the US resistance, attempting to kick the bastards out of your country.

I’m not a hardcore gamer so usually play on the normal mode. Luckily for me the controls were almost identical to Call of Duty so there was no learning curve. The games single-player campaign is fairly standard fare with the obligatory stealth, vehicle and flying sections. One interesting element is your ability to control The Goliath which is a remote controlled vehicle used to blow the shit out of things. I have to say I found the game fairly easy and completed it in a very short period of time. There are only 7 chapters and I found each was quite short. I normally play in short bursts anyway so it takes me a while to complete a game with a good single player campaign. Here it was over very quickly. I cannot comment on the XBL element of the game since I don’t have it but I guess, like most games of this type, its bias is more towards multiplayer.

The cut scenes, especially news footage, were cleverly done. I found the realism to be very good especially the lack of ammunition drops. If you need to re-supply you pick up someone else’s gun. Plus it was nice to see bullets passing through objects, so on some occasions you couldn’t just sit behind an object while getting the shit blown out of you. There wasn’t much scope to free-roam although you had to do that if you wanted to find the 61 hidden newspapers dotted throughout the game (which if found in sufficient quantity attract 2 achievements). I also missed the ability to skip over cut scenes (although there was an option to do it towards the end of the scene) as when you play over the chapters again you don’t want to sit through each scene over and over again.

Despite the single-player game play being quite short there are opportunities for you to extend the life of the game by doing it all over again in an attempt to gain extra achievements such as completing each mission without dying, completing each mission on the hardest difficulty or for executing specific actions within a mission. I attempted to do the missions on hardest difficulty (Guerilla) and whilst I had success on the first 3 chapters found it a little boring.

Overall for me the single player campaign was uninspiring. I would have been disappointed to have shelled out £39 of my hard earned cash for such a mediocre game.