What did you think of Homefront?

[Jacco]

I just finished the campaign playthrough (didn't even try the multiplayer because it wanted me to buy a pass for it. I refuse to do that on principle) and I must say, despite its short length, I was pretty impressed.
The story was decent and a couple of the visuals and "moments" of it were some of the best I've seen in a game since HL2.

I'm really looking forward to Homefront 2 and REALLY hoping they make the campaign longer.

What did you think of it?

 

[Crazedc00k]

Honestly, I hated it. Weak plot, zero character building, obvious Call of Duty rips, dirty visuals, poor writing, barren multiplayer, and muddled, boring gameplay. The "moments" were less then impressive, and that was when they worked successfully. It felt grimy, boring, and rote. I honestly had no difficulty believing that it was just THQ trying to get on the shooter train.

 

[MajorTomServo]

Strictly Meh.I do know what you mean by the "big moments" though. Like

Spoiler

hiding in the mass grave.

Dang, that got to me.

 

[Jacco]

Honestly, I hated it. Weak plot, zero character building, obvious Call of Duty rips, dirty visuals, poor writing, barren multiplayer, and muddled, boring gameplay. The "moments" were less then impressive, and that was when they worked successfully. It felt grimy, boring, and rote. I honestly had no difficulty believing that it was just THQ trying to get on the shooter train.

It certainly wasn't anything groundbreaking-- hell, the controls were identical to COD. Even so, I don't know how you can say it was grimy and boring. The atmosphere building was fantastic. The bus ride at the beginning reminded me fondly of the train station in Half Life 2.

Strictly Meh.I do know what you mean by the "big moments" though. Like

Spoiler

hiding in the mass grave.

Dang, that got to me.

Yeah, that one was really good. I think even more so, however was

Spoiler

when they shot the little kid's parents in front of him.

That scene alone made me hate them unlike I have hated a game enemy since the Combine. I even got an achievement at one point for letting a bunch of them die a horrible, painful death. lol

 

[SilkySkyKitten]

Although I'm probably going to be in the minority, I honestly thought it was rather underrated.

Yeah it was flawed in many points, but overall I had a blast with the campaign and the storyline was at least somewhat interesting. Hell, if it wasn't for the extremely short length I'd go as far as considering it one of the better games I've played this year. Plus I had a hell of a lot more fun with Homefront's campaign than MW3's (and no, I'm not just saying that because I'm jumping on the "CoD Sucks" bandwagon, I truly think Homefront's campaign > MW3's campaign).

 

[Jacco]

Although I'm probably going to be in the minority, I honestly thought it was rather underrated.

Yeah it was flawed in many points, but overall I had a blast with the campaign and the storyline was at least somewhat interesting. Hell, if it wasn't for the extremely short length I'd go as far as considering it one of the better games I've played this year. Plus I had a hell of a lot more fun with Homefront's campaign than MW3's (and no, I'm not just saying that because I'm jumping on the "CoD Sucks" bandwagon, I truly think Homefront's campaign > MW3's campaign).

When you compare anything to MW3's campaign it will always be better. lol. But I agree. Homefront's campaign was way better. It actually made sense.

 

[worldruler8]

I thought it was, well, ok. It certainly wasn't bad, but I've seen better campaigns in my day. The biggest issue I've had with it is it tried to act, well, too horrific. Now, during some of the scenes that were intended to be shocking, seemed a bit either off, or worse, overly done.
edit- needed to see how spoilers work.
The big issue I had was this scene.

Spoiler

when one of the main white NPC's (I want to say Carter, but I honestly forgot. the biggest offense from Homefront was how forgettable it was) lost his shit when he saw the mass grave. I had a similar response (at first) as he did, utter shock, but I reacted a bit "WTF?" when he opened fire on them. When We dove into the bodies, I really hated how the Koreans didn't even fire into the grave, but appeared to be fire directly above it. I actually stopped looking around because I thought they'd see me, but after that, I remembered it was a scripted event.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I honestly couldn't get over how silly the premise was, and so couldn't get the sense of willful disbelief necessary to enjoy the plot. Quite honestly though, I felt like the entire game was going "Oh, remember that airport scene in MW2? We can totally top that!" I wouldn't even care that the story was weak, but THQ kept on hyping it soo much that it's just unacceptable how mediocre it ended up.

The campaign was also short, and the AI teammates were completely brain dead, although that seems to be the standard rather than the exception in games these days.

 

[LetalisK]

I thought it was mediocre at the best of times and crap the rest of the time. It tried to use shocking events to get players engaged instead of having an engaging storyline to begin with.

 

[The Wykydtron]

I've only watched an LP of it but i'll give a rundown of it.

Zero characterisation, the one insane guy, some guy called Boone, and the chick.

The whole "evil Koreans" thing is fucking ludicrous for one, they go for the "shocking" crap from minute one making the koreans look like the bad guy at panto.

There's reinforcing an attitude and then there's making every single enemy look overly evil simply because you can't write. Why are they doing this? Oh they're Koreans so naturally they are all evil. /sarcasm

As for the mass grave, hey morons there's a perfectly good truck to hide behi- no you're going for the grave option...

Basically the game trys for the heartstrings in the most inept, obvious, terrible and some other mean words way possible.

And as for entertainment value, when Tobuscus can't make a game look entertaining. you are basically screwed.

Oh i think the pacing was either terrible or kinda k.

 

[Crazedc00k]

Honestly, I hated it. Weak plot, zero character building, obvious Call of Duty rips, dirty visuals, poor writing, barren multiplayer, and muddled, boring gameplay. The "moments" were less then impressive, and that was when they worked successfully. It felt grimy, boring, and rote. I honestly had no difficulty believing that it was just THQ trying to get on the shooter train.

It certainly wasn't anything groundbreaking-- hell, the controls were identical to COD. Even so, I don't know how you can say it was grimy and boring. The atmosphere building was fantastic. The bus ride at the beginning reminded me fondly of the train station in Half Life 2.

Strictly Meh.I do know what you mean by the "big moments" though. Like

Spoiler

hiding in the mass grave.

Dang, that got to me.

Yeah, that one was really good. I think even more so, however was

Spoiler

when they shot the little kid's parents in front of him.

That scene alone made me hate them unlike I have hated a game enemy since the Combine. I even got an achievement at one point for letting a bunch of them die a horrible, painful death. lol

The parents and the mass grave were nice, but they were hardly of the caliber seen in Half Life 2. They felt forced and rote, although they were a step in the right direction on the road to making an enemy hateful in the right ways. As for "atmosphere building," I saw nothing capable in the setting department at all. Perhaps it was the game's absurd linearity, but the dirty graphics, bizarre pacing, and forced feeling really, REALLY dragged it down. It had no subtlety, which HL2 had in spades. Really though, I feel like the worst part was that it tried so hard--it really came through how much they tried to push the good moments, rather than let them flow organically and speak for themselves.

 

[PonceyMcTosserFaic]

i liked it. i just think more vehicle combat and just make it longer in general.

 

[tippy2k2]

The game just wasn't very good at all, I got it with Black Friday for $15 and felt like I paid about $16 too much for it.

The game was ugly as hell. I can still not understand how a 360/PS3 game could ever lag because of frame-rate issues. You know exactly what you're dealing with, this shouldn't be a problem.

The characters were bad. You have korean guy, angry guy, and chick. Why you insist on bringing angry guy to stealthy missions makes no sense to me but I'm not a resistance fighter, so maybe there's a good reason. Korean guy could have at least had some interesting things done with him but besides for "These crazies don't like Koreans", it was completely wasted.

Bad guys don't react at all to be shot until they die. Put three into the guys chest, he'll keep firing at you without missing a beat.

Guns were boring and just didn't sound powerful. They had no "OMPH!" to them, though the above point may be part of that.

That stupid robot tank. Seriously, those parts were so boring and it's about 1/4 your game that you sit in cover, tell the tank to shoot something, then hide again.

For resistance fighters, we get into major firefights with a lot of people. I was hopeful for the "Red Dawn guerrilla warfare" approach but got "Call of Duty with two NPC's" instead. At least with Call of Duty, I have a bunch of other soldiers with me during firefights to give the illusion of a big pitched battle.

Wow...I wrote a lot, I think I'll stop now before I get carpel tunnel. They can feel free to make Homefront 2 just as short if it's going to be the same thing.

 

[Zantos]

I was pretty good. I enjoyed the campaign, I just wish there was more of it. It was a good concept, hoping they expand it out a bit.

 

[TephlonPrice]

Wasn't impressed with the game too much.

Weak story that started off strong, but never really went anywhere or did anything interesting. Many of the characters had some sort of opportunity to really create something of a good story (eg. half-Korean character) but not much was done with the there. Stereotypical redneck southerners who simply can't keep their cool, along with angry guy, chick who's scared to kill despite the Koreans gunning everyone down.

Adding to above, the atmosphere just wasn't there. I thought we'd be improvising explosives, breaking into Wal-Marts to steal ammo & Ruger 10/22s & using insurgent tactics against an enemy who outnumbers & overpowers us, but there was really none of that. The mass grave helped a bit, but not much. There's nothing like the opening sequence throughout the game that really sells the story much, or the subtle moments that really create an atmosphere.

The gameplay was just COD copy and pasted, but with even more scripting that on occasion screwed up. There's no real Freedom Fighters style guerilla warfare (open-ended with objectives that affect everything), no Red Dawn style warfare (guerilla-stealth tactics & insurgency ops), just generic COD-style shooting with a severe ammo cap, terrible teammate (and enemy) AI, tank levels which are boring as hell, and enemies who can kill you 9000 times over since they cheat.

The story itself was short as well. I don't know how you have an excellent bridge level, and instead of following that up with something even cooler, the game just ends there. Nothing after that. Not exactly sequel-worthy material here guys though I hear Crytek is doing the sequel, so there's some hope.

 

[Brawndo]

It had an enormous amount of potential from the trailer, and I was hoping for a modern re-imagining of Freedom Fighters. Unfortunately, the final product was an uninspired, linear, and extremely short shooter than didn't innovate in the slightest. At no point did I feel like a guerrilla fighting a hopeless battle against an overwhelming enemy force. Instead it was just Joe "Super Soldier" America fighting the evil child-killing Korean hordes. Bleh. 5/10

 

[godofallu]

I thought the storyline was the average "meh" shooter, and the multiplayer was decent. That said they locked the multiplayer away for people who rent, so I decided not to buy the game because of that.

 

[Smeggs]

Is it even worth renting? I usually don't even rent a game unless I know it'd keep me preoccupied for more than one night, and seeing as how I've heard the campaign is only like 4 hours long I assume it would not.

 

[Phlakes]

Completely average. All the "big moments" felt like the developer was just yelling "BE DISTURBED" at me, and that was really all it had going for it. It was all forced, and it was ridiculously short, but honestly, any longer would've been too long.

 

[SnakeoilSage]

I dismissed it for the ridiculous farce that it is.