Homefront Campaign Review: The war was finishing the campaign

Getting my hands on a copy of a new release this close to the actual release date is a pretty rare occasion for me, and I hope that fact serves to underscore the level of anticipation that I had for this title.  When I first read details about the then upcoming release of THQ and Kaos Studios, I thought, "This game really has some potential".  I was drawn in by the prospect of a war being fought by civilians against an oppressive occupying force, and the dramatic power such a conflict could lend to a first person shooter.  I imagined frenetic gunfights in ruined suburban and rural neighborhoods with waves of relentless foes pressing down on ill-equipped guerrilla forces.  In the end, all my expectations were left largely unfulfilled.  Lets explore why.

Visuals

I try to be very careful with this component of video game reviews because I firmly believe that graphics don't make a game.  However, it is important to note that serious gamers have come to expect a certain level of polish when it comes to visual presentation.  There is a minimum expectation if you will.  Developers don't need to cram every possible pixel and polygon into a character model or an environment to make it visually exciting, but a simulation game should attempt to draw players into the experience.  With that said, I took issue with several presentation elements employed in Homefront.  The first deals with what I would consider fairly simple character animations.  Like other FPS titles, Homefront employs a fairly generic control scheme.  A click on the right analog stick performs a melee strike with your knife, and a press of the right bumper (XBox) or the R1 (PS3) button triggers a grenade toss.  The animations of these actions typically only require a handful of frames to complete, and it doesn't take much work to make a simple arm swipe look convincing.  The designers of Homefront seem to have ignored this fact.  Grenade tosses and knife swipes are shown in ultra high speed, and the animations look awkward and unrealistic.  You can barely see the blade of your knife, and the grenade toss looks more like a gentle egg tossing competition.  Not to mention that if you hold down the grenade button, you don't hold the grenade.  There is no cooking of grenades in Homefront, or much opportunity to aim for that matter. 

These were minor issues, but what really bothered me was the quality of the games rendering.  In a word, Homefront looks gritty. This is not a comment on the developer's portrayal of a war-torn environment, but rather a criticism of Homefront's lack of texture smoothing.  As objects become more distant, they also become more grainy around the edges.  I'm not sure if this was an attempt to blur distant objects or characters, or a failure of the game's engine to retain a high rendering quality.  I didn't notice any texture popping or fogging, but the textures used in Homefront weren't anything to write home about in the first place.  Some objects seemed too detailed while others were lacking.  I don't feel that these shortcomings ruined the overall experience in Homefront, but they certainly detracted from the credibility of the game overall.  Other games like Battlefield: Bad Company 2 have done more with less and still have managed to create a more immersive experience in the past, so it seems unacceptable for a newer title to put out an unpolished product that takes dates itself back to a standard that other titles have already surpassed. 

Story

I couldn't find much fault with how the game was written, or with the overall concept of this fictional war, but I think that the direction employed overshadowed the underlying message that Homefront was capable of.  That coupled with voice acting that failed to convey the proper emotion in some situations left me wanting for a more visceral involvement in the game's conflict.  Having seen the work of John Milius on screen before (Apocalypse Now, Red Dawn), I have seen what the narrative could have been if it would have been employed correctly.  I think, however, that this is a shortcoming that may have originated from having a noted screenplay writer develop a story and dialogue for a game where action has a high potential for overshadowing dialogue and narrative. 

The opening "on rails" scenes where the main character is shuttled through the streets of an occupied town did a very good job of conveying a sense of oppression, but from that point forward I found it difficult to connect emotionally to the story at all.  There was no sense of triumph after battles, and I felt no disgust or betrayal in moments of defeat.  Video games are quickly becoming one of the most prominent artistic outlets for storytelling, and titles who fail to meet the standards that gamers expect quickly get left by the wayside. 

Gameplay

This category is where Homefront ultimately failed to live up to the hype.  Early descriptions of the campaign claimed that the war in Homefront would be fought block by block, and from house to house.  Indeed, there were some scenes that involved clearing houses and eliminating targets, but I feel that other games have created a better sense of invasion than homefront in a smaller span of time.  In Modern Warfare 2, for example, you take control of a military unit tasked with clearing a suburban neighborhood of invading Russian forces.  The battles were intense, and it was easy to feel the emptiness, and horror of an abandoned area that families had occupied.  In Homefront, homes looked empty, but not necessarily lived in.  Little time was spent in these areas, and due to the pacing of the game little time was available for exploration. 

Waypoints were also a matter of some concern while playing through Homefront's campaign.  The game has multiple difficulty levels, and hard could be rated as medium, by other game's standards, but there were some sections where the enemy AI seemed to be heightened to frustrating levels.  There were several scenes where opponents scored quick kills through precision shots and through their uncanny ability to throw grenades with deadly accuracy.  With that said, the placement of waypoints seemed frustratingly unfair during some sequences.  Many times I found myself completing an objective only to be dispatched by the enemy, and the game would put me all the way back at the beginning of the sequence.  I would say that there were at least half a dozen of these situations where the odds seemed unfairly stacked against me, and luck was the only thing that allowed me to push through. 

The last part of gameplay that detracted from the Homefront experience was the way the non playable characters reacted and interacted with each other.  Isn't Homefront supposed to be a civilian resistance war?  From my understanding, the characters of Homefront were supposed to be ordinary people taking up an extraordinary cause, but throughout the campaign they acted no differently than the soldiers you would find in any military shooter.  There was no hesitation or remorse from any of the main characters that made it past dialogue.  Each character seemed as well equipped to fight a ground war as any well trained soldier.  Even the dialogue between the characters was riddled with military lingo.  I would have expected more civilian dialogue from normal folks.  This was yet another aspect of the game that failed to convey the mood that the story had the potential to convey.

Final Thoughts

Homefront had the potential to be a very interesting if not groundbreaking campaign, but with a short duration (I played through in 4.5 hours on hard difficulty) and slew of presentation issues THQ and Kaos studios missed the mark with this one.  The fact that this game had a great premise but failed to create a compelling vehicle for the emotion and scale that the story demanded was easily the most disappointing aspect of this title.  With so many FPS clones on the market, seldom does a title stand out as being unique.  Homefront certainly had the plot to carry it, but its failure to create a polished and fully developed gameplay experience that melds story telling and action as a cohesive whole may have doomed this title to the ranks of mediocrity.  I have yet to play any of the multiplayer component yet, and maybe that can save the game.  However, it is disappointing to see so many games that have both a campaign and multiplayer yet the amount of effort devoted to both is lopsided.  Games like Halo and Battlefield put a great deal of effort and love into crafting both sides of their titles, and consumers seldom feel that there is anything lacking, but Homefront definitely left me wanting.  My overall score for this one is 6 out of 10 (barely memorable/hardly replayable).  Again, I haven't played multiplayer yet, but that is for a different review.  If you don't plan on playing online, opt for a rental on this one and save yourself $60.