Here’s what people are saying
So Homefront: The Revolution is out. Where is our review? Well, here’s an explanation.
Back at GDC, Destructoid co-hosted a party where Deep Silver and Homefront were involved. To avoid any grey area stuff, we’re sharing impressions from critics so you can make an informed decision.
Here’s what others are saying:
- The Jimquisition – 1/10
- Hardcore Gamer – 4/10
- We Got This Covered – 4/10
- IGN – 5/10
- PlayStation Universe – 5.5/10
- Polygon – 6/10
- VideoGamer – 6/10
- M3 – 7/10
- Eurogamer Italy – 8/10
Having played the final build I’m somewhat torn. On one hand there are a few cool ideas here, particularly when it comes to the co-op elements. But a lot of it doesn’t add up and most of those concepts aren’t new or refreshing in any way — with the exception of the modular weapon system that allows for some pretty unique upgrades that change the rate of fire in just about every gun.
As for the premise itself, I’m dubious. The aping of Red Dawn sort of kind of worked out for it the first time around — mostly through its shock and awe “what if” campaign — but the sequel never really gives us a definitive reason why we shouldn’t like Korea. Okay, so people might be able to piece it together outside of the confines of this fantasy world, but going off of the events actually in Homefront? They’re sort of this shadowy entity that could have just been anything, like “New Eurasia” or something similar in the far-flung future. There’s no real exploration of their motivations here, they’re just “bad,” mostly masked people, and some antagonists aren’t even Korean, they’re just “traitors” from other nations.
The campaign is just as opaque. It’s open world, and consists of a ton of errand missions, hacking sequences you’ve seen before, and by-the-numbers sidequests. I just can’t connect with Philadelphia — it’s not a great setting, and nothing during my journey did anything to change that. Revolution‘s performance on PC is also concerning. Running it on a dual 3GB NVIDIA GTX 780 Ti setup, I encountered framerate issues, and my counter consistently dropped between 30 and 40 FPS. It was stable, but obviously not ideal. I was not able to test the console version.
I admire the move away from competitive multiplayer. Full stop, it did not need to be there in the first game — not when so many other shooters do it better. Instead, focusing on a four-player co-op element in Revolution that has its own progression system is a great way to keep people invested, and offer something different in an era where Uncharted 4 didn’t ship with co-op (it’s coming later this fall). It’s far more fun than the story mode, but I’d still only recommend trying it if you can get friends in on it at a discount.
[This writer did not attend GDC or the GDC party. Code was acquired from the European branch of the publisher.]
