I first learned about this game not from a stream of news, not from advertising banners on foreign sites, but when Steam thoughtfully offered me to pre-order the subject of this article for (just!) 49.$99, with a free copy of METRO 2033 as a gift. For that kind of money, a hitherto unknown and obscure shooter, I naturally didn’t pre-order. But I read a brief description of the Main Features of the game. And they promised us no less than interesting characters, an exciting story, a single-player campaign with amazing dynamism and an original multiplayer with “surprisingly huge maps” and “a rich set of vehicles”. It’s natural to believe such advertising nonsense, which is glued to literally every box with a game of any genre (even the next variation of Tetris), I could not, but a certain interest in the game appeared. Fortunately, the trailers showed good graphics, and even some drama. But at the end (and here I’ll get ahead of myself) we received a product of very, very ambiguous quality..
The game spoils us with similar videos after each mission. It’s better, by the way, to follow the advice and press “Enter” – you’ll do better for yourself.
The story campaign greets us with a beautifully stylized news release video where we are briefly told about the events that took place: North and South Korea united under the leadership of the new leader Kim Jong-un, forming the Great Republic of Korea. They did not think about how to bring light and prosperity to their native globe, and unleashed hostilities, first capturing Japan, and then using EMP (apparently stolen from the Japanese), and the USA. The Koreans quickly began organizing camps, shooting civilians, and generally having fun to the fullest. But brave American boys and girls could not come to terms with this state of affairs and organized partisan cells throughout America with the goal of destroying the evil occupier. This is where the game starts.
The main character is again a weak-willed person without a voice or any opinion of his own. His name is Jacob, and he is a former military pilot (I don’t think there is any need to explain why he was a former). His day did not go well from the very beginning: at first he was arrested by the Koreans and taken to an unknown direction in a school bus (apparently to take psychological tests, otherwise he is constantly silent, does what they say), but suddenly the partisans attack the bus and save the poor, mute guy, voluntarily – forcibly including him in the partisan cell.
At first the atmosphere is created very well. Broken buildings, streets filled with blood, people being shot on every corner, tears, screams. Everything is fine, there is even hope for a beautiful dramatic story. But the partisans (whose characters in their detail resemble a blank slate, and you will quickly forget their names, if, of course, you remember them at all) appear in the frame, the hero is saved and the atmosphere disappears. That’s it, finish. The best moments of the game are the 30 second bus ride at the very beginning. Then the uniform begins circus Call of Duty: a team of three famously kills packs of Koreans, destroys equipment and gets out from under enemy encirclement without a single scratch. In this case, the Koreans behave like complete idiots: they are stupid, they smear, they stick their stupid heads out of hiding (and they could also draw a target on the helmet – for convenience). It’s generally unclear how such an army was able to capture America. Or the Americans had a holiday that day, and everyone sat at home?
However, further – worse.
The authors try to revive the atmosphere a couple more times: first, presenting us with the headquarters of the partisans, “cleverly” camouflaged from the Koreans, and cunningly, this is when a camouflage net is stretched over the base, while solar panels are installed on the roofs of the houses, noise in the area. In general, they again make it clear to us that the Korean army is idiots who are incapable of discovering a base under their noses, especially not hiding partisans, and the Koreans managed to capture America, apparently by accident. The second time the atmosphere tries to remind itself during the scene with hiding under the corpses of innocently murdered citizens dumped in a mass grave. Then the game finally turns into shit stupid and pathetic, no, pathetic (and it just rushes on, pours in liters through the monitor, forcing the player to literally choke) category B action movie.
The same partisan camp. VERY discreet.
Hiding from the evil Koreans in a mass grave. The last atmospheric moment in the game.
And to hell with the plot. In the end, in the same Call of Duty X (where X belongs to the interval [1;7]) the plot was also… not of the best quality. But there we were entertained no worse than in any amusement park (though Black Ops was more like Monty Python’s Flying Circus, but that’s a separate topic). Are we entertained here?? Well, if you consider participating in a cheap and boring shooting range as entertainment, then definitely yes. They blew up something here, ran here, shot at the Koreans with a machine gun, then with a sniper rifle, then with a grenade launcher (we’ve already said about the enemy’s intelligence, but let me remind you – it’s terrible). We got into the car, fired from a stationary machine gun, got out, and again shot at the Koreans from a machine gun / sniper rifle / grenade launcher. We kick down the door and kill everyone in slow-motion. Sniper mission (which after Call of Duty 4 is shoved into all upcoming shooters), a little bit of stealth. And, as the peak of all this disgrace, a flight on a bucket with a propeller. No, well, don’t call this squalor a “helicopter”, after all.
Sniper mission. Once again emphasizes the weak-willedness of the main character: if you shoot in the wrong place, or ahead of time – reboot from the checkpoint.
"Bucket". Don’t be fooled by the looks http://casinomagicwin.co.uk/ – this is a real bucket, and it handles like one.
The feeling of strong deja vu will not leave you throughout the game. The game seems to be a compilation of all the recently released first-person shooters. And flying on a bucket, and slow-motion, we have already seen all this many, many times. Homefront doesn’t have its own ideas. There is no frantic drive from Call of Duty, no scale and technology like in Battlefield Bad company 2, no unbridled fun like in Bulletstorm. Everything is secondary, boring and dull. Moreover, due to the efforts of the developers, the game is constantly slowing down in terms of action development. After another shootout, the main characters can stand in the doorway and start a conversation on the topic “what is good and what is bad?" or "what will we do next?». And the player will have to listen to all this verbal diarrhea, because the player cannot interrupt or run further, due to the fact that the hero does not know how to open doors, and climbs stairs only at the will of the script (and then only after idiots comrades will climb themselves). But the script can break, which leads to quite funny (and sad at the same time) results.
Example of a broken script. The man forgot that the stairs ended and the ground began. Or maybe he’s playing charades? I think it’s a monkey..
All this leads to one very, very sad conclusion: in single-player mode, Homefront’s content resembles a stub of something larger. This is facilitated by the lack of variety, stupid, meaningless ending and short game length. It can be completed calmly, without stress, at an average difficulty level in about 3 – 5 hours. Although this is even a plus. The player will not have to suffer for long while going through THIS. It’s better not to even move the mouse close to the “single game” button (just in case it’s accidentally pressed), but go straight to the “network game”.
Here the authors decided to shoot two birds with one stone: to please both Call of Duty fans, with their compact maps and high dynamics, and Battlefield fans, where a lot of technology and team play are held in high esteem. Homefront’s multiplayer mode is somewhere between the two games above.
All the necessary aspects of a modern network shooter are here: leveling up your character, which opens access to new weapons and new modules for them (sights, coloring, etc.).), perks, a classless character creation system (this is when you choose weapons and perks for yourself, and not as the authors wanted) and even equipment.
Character class selection screen. Doesn’t remind me of anything? and don’t be fooled by the names “demolitionist”, “stormtrooper”. You can at least put a machine gun in the “sniper” class.
On the server selection screen the game starts to slow down madly. Why is a mystery.
But the mechanics and size of the game are such that it is impossible to simply place several tanks and buckets of helicopters on the base for public use. And the authors came up with a Special System: initially there is no equipment on the map, but by killing the enemy the player earns points, and after saving up he can buy himself a brand new tank or bucket with screw helicopter. In some ways, it even reminds me of Counter Strike, doesn’t it?? Unfortunately, the equipment still feels uncomfortable on these maps – it often gets stuck, making a newly purchased tank an easy target for any soldier with a grenade launcher. Or for another tank. True, there is a chance that the other tank will also get stuck, and you will find yourself in the same conditions.
In multiplayer the stairs are made normally. Why couldn’t it have been done in the single-player campaign??
There are only two game modes, not counting the training mode, which can be used to learn all aspects of the game without starting the story campaign (which I advise you to do). The first is a classic team battle, where two teams beat each other, gaining points necessary for victory, the second is capturing and holding points, where the same two teams try to score the same points, only by holding control points. It’s sparse, isn’t it?? There is, however, another interesting thing – the commander. This is when this same commander assigns various goals, be it the murder of a particularly presumptuous sniper who has already killed half the team, or the destruction buckets a helicopter that shoots at anyone who leans out of cover. For completing such tasks the player is rewarded with additional experience points.
The appearance on the map, in network mode, is done beautifully – we are dropped to the ground from a bird’s eye view..
… Although there are mistakes here too. For example, in exactly a second we will fly through the house.
The main problem of the local online mode is precisely its attempt to cross two, in principle, uncrossable games (which, by the way, unfortunately, helps the feeling of déjà vu make its way into the online mode). For Battlefield there is not enough scale (the maps are too small, there are not enough vehicles on the map), for Call of Duty there is not enough dynamism and variety of modes. And in general there is not much in the game. Few weapons, few vehicles, few perks, few maps, few modes. Patches and additions are needed to fix bugs and expand the game. You just have to hope that KAOS, seeing the first successes of the game, won’t start chasing money in the Activision style and won’t demand $15 for a set of cards and weapons. Still, Homefront can still be saved by medical procedures, because even despite all the shortcomings of the online mode, it can interest and even captivate.
And a little about graphics and sound. The graphics are quite good, the detailing of weapons and equipment is especially good here, the special effects are beautiful, but do not cause delight due to their crooked use. In the problems you need to record the animation of the characters and their faces. The music in the game is very pretentious and unmemorable (which, in principle, corresponds to the mood of the campaign), but the sound of the weapons was successful – everything clicks and shoots quite richly and believably. Regarding the voice acting of the characters, in the Russian version it is traditionally terrible – it destroys the atmosphere even more, turning the game characters from idiots into idiots – clowns.
The graphics are generally good. Especially weapons.
As a result, we have a very ambiguous product. Terrible single-player campaign and good, but underdeveloped, multiplayer. As I said above, all is not lost for KAOS, patches are needed. Then maybe the game will take on a human form. True, this won’t happen with the second part (and it’s already being developed, rest assured). We need new ideas, we need diversity, we need what is called “direct hands”. Because if the sequel comes out the same as the original, then the game will face an unenviable fate.
Pros: Good graphics and sound, good but requires debugging, multiplayer
Cons: Single mode completely as it is, secondary project
Result: Average (in numbers 3.5 out of 5 or 6 out of 10)