Homefront Review

This past week was the release of THQ and Kaos Studios’ patriotic video game Homefront. The basic story is a not so far into the future video game rendition of the movie Red Dawn. The year is 2027; North and South Korea have united and slowly began to take over the world. They take Japan and of course the next logical step would be to invade America. Of course I may have a slight bias against the game due to the fact that there’s really nothing that new about this game. You play as pilot Jacobs and are picked up by the resistance forces to fight against the Korean forces. Your man objective is to get fuel, which has become a rare commodity, to the U.S. Army in San Francisco to aid in the war effort. You with your rag-tag group of freedom fighters must fight into heavily militarized areas and highjack the oil trucks against all odds. Jacobs is put with hardened solider Conner, the compassionate Rianna, and tech-savvy Korean Hopper. The majority of the game takes place in rural suburbs where you are fighting either from house to house or sometimes inside a super market. Of course you will manly be fighting Korean soldiers, there are levels that have you fighting against crazy survivalist Americans. While this isn’t a “bad” game by any means there isn’t a lot that sets it apart from every other army game out there, and with the monster of a franchise that Call of Duty has become games like HomeFront need to be over the top amazing to be truly recognized for what it is. The campaign is your average hid behind walls, shoot, and then hid some more. Don’t expect to get friendly with a certain type of gun because the lack of ammo keeps you constantly picking up different guns which gives the game a nice feel of finding tools of survival whereas in games like Call Of Duty your given a gun with enough ammo to carry you through the game. There is emphasis on the fact that you get to fight in stores that many people would recognize such as Hooters and White Castle. I thought this would be really interesting until you actually get into the restaurants. Other than the fact that they have the logo on the store the insides look nothing like a Hooters I’ve ever seen so really it’s just product placement. But really what many people buy the game for it for the online multiplayer, and to be honest it is probable one of the better online army shooter games that I’ve played. You a placed onto a huge map with the standard array of guns and items but instead of just being a solider you can earn enough points to unlock tanks and drones and all kinds of cool things. The maps are usually set big enough with amble roof room for anyone who wants to snipe and truly being outside of where all the madness is happening. It is a little buggy though, there were a few times when I was clearly shooting someone and it would never register and many times the server kicked everyone from the match. All this are problems that can easily be fixed with a patch but the one thing that kills this game and honestly would have kept me from buying it is the fact that there is no co-op available in either campaign or online. I still simply do not understand how in this day an age of video games companies do not get that we want to be able to play games with the people beside us. Regardless of how amazing a shooter is if it has no multiplayer at the end of the day I’m still going to be switching back to a game like Halo or Call of Duty that will let me play with my roommates.  With all that said the game is a pretty fun game. Story mode is a little bit short and again with no ability to play co-op I’d say that this game is worth picking up when the price goes down a bit. As always let us know what you think of the game if you’ve managed to get a hold of it yet.