Homefront is game set in an alternate future where a unified Korea decides to invade America. The game takes place several months after the invasion where Korea has instituted martial law and is increasing committing acts of brutality.
I prefer old-school shooters and I haven't played any Battlefield or Call of Duty games so Homefront is a game which is difficult for me to review because I can't compared it with anything except games I've played such as Hard reset, Half Life 2, Gears of War, Fear 3, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Spec Ops: The Line.
My impressions are overall that yes, it works fine as a modern chest-high wall shooter. The combat and mechanics are generally good. Shooting people is okay. The game itself seems very shy in doing anything new or different
with the gameplay. It's pretty much shoot this and that with guns. There are no special abilities to speak of. Explosives are also introduced in the beginning of the game but they
aren't really used until the end of the game except for grenades. There are some stealth sections which I found a bit of an interesting change of pace but like many other action games, the stealth is pretty much scripted rather than organic.
The sole new outstanding feature is the ability to remote control a six wheeled
drone, basically a jeep with a machine gun and rocket launcher, which is very fun by the way. Considering this does take place in the near future, I felt that if they had increased the number of robot drones you could use the game and make you some sort of gifted robotic 'puppet master' rather than a former military pilot it might actually worked out much better to distinguish itself for the rest of the other shooters. Back when Homefront was released, there weren't many games where you get to fly and coordinate robotic drones so I think that would have really helped make a difference.
The storyline however is really too American for me, a New Zealand Chinese (formerly Singaporean Chinese). It's trying to go for a gritty realistic "America under siege" game but it's precisely because of this, that it fails to engage me. The problem is that its just so overbearingly pro-American something out of a Tom Clancy type novel that everything ends up being too cliche. Everything 'good' is American and apple pie. Everything
'bad' is North Korean.The Koreans are hilariously evil to the point of being cartoonish, committing brutal acts for the heck of it. Compared to Spec Ops: The Line, the disturbing scenes in the game feel stupid and pointless. There to deliberately elicit a knee-jerk reaction. Spec Ops really asks you to question what it means to be a hero. In Homefront, you are the standard action hero who is definitely the 'good guy' just like in a Hollywood blockbuster. The entire game is a celebration of "American
values". It's like having a baseball bat wrapped in an American flag
being smashed into your face while someone yells "America! Yeah!" This game isn't a thoughtful piece of social criticism but a piece of American paranoid right-wing propaganda. I won't go much more in-depth into this but it left a bad taste in my mouth.
Overall, if you're American, you might get some kicks out of Homefront but the hamfisted "Go America!" values it espouses makes it difficult for non-Americans to understand just what is so great about the game. It's an okay action game but you're better off playing Spec Ops for the social commentary or an old school shooter like Painkiller or Max Payne or you're looking for awesome action.
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