Games

[Tagged NSFW because it's a pretty gory game. Screenshots include death, violence, burns]

Homefront is a 2011 shooter made by Kaos Studios. I played through the whole campaign on normal difficulty on PC. It took me about four hours.

The premise of the game is Red Dawn But North Korea. In this universe North Korea took over South Korea and reunited, then took Japan, and then conquered the US. How? It just did. My only explanation is that Kim Jung Un actually does have godlike powers in this timeline.

I played as a main character whose name I literally can’t remember. The important thing is that a bunch of Korean military goons busted into my bachelor pad and threw me into a detention bus, where a random NPC informed me that I’m a helicopter pilot. I sat unable to move while the most over the top horrors of an occupation were compressed into occurring in a half block radius. It’s a rough city.

I was going to make a joke that this section was like if John Milius wrote the Half-Life tram sequence, but then I found out that John Milius actually wrote this game. So I guess the game won this round.

Anyways, I was saved when Cinematic Mod Alyx Vance and Great Value BJ Blazkowicz crashed a truck into my bus to rescue me. Fortunately, their brilliant plan worked flawlessly to kill everyone on the bus but me somehow.

From that moment on I was in the resistance. The plot was simple, if a bit dumb. The resistance was going to put some tracking beacons on some Korean military fuel trucks, then steal a helicopter from a survivalist camp, then as the pilot it would be my job to fly to the trucks and help the resistance hijack them, then we’d all turn the trucks over the remnants of the US military to support their attack on San Francisco.

The gameplay was mostly aping the Call Of Duty games of the time. Two weapons, regenerating health, follow an AI squadmate who opened door for me. Nothing incompetent, but nothing notable mechanically.

But that’s okay, this isn’t a game about pushing gameplay limits. This is a game about plot, and story, and saving America. Step one was having a massive shootout in an American suburb with civilians caught in the crossfire.

Step two was getting my hands on those tracking beacons. I met up with a really sketchy guy who seemed like he was going to betray me.

Then he betrayed me. I was shocked. Shocked.

After killing him and a platoon of bad guys I found the tracking beacons sitting on a desk nearby. Wait, why did he even bring the tracking beacons if he was planning to hand me over to the Koreans first?

No time, I had to get to those fuel trucks. Between me and them stood a lot of bad guys, but no worries, Blazkowicz had gotten his hands on some white phosphorous mortars. It was like that scene from Spec Ops: The Line, but without all that depressing introspection.

Fighting my way through this part was when I really started to notice the abundance of real brands in the game. For some reason Tigerdirect.com had a physical store. The vending machines all had Full Throttle and NOS energy drinks. There was a Jansport store.

While that loser Ramirez might have defended Burger Town, I was holding down Hooters.

I put the tracking beacons on the trucks, and then was off to go get that helicopter from the survivalists. They didn’t want to deal, so I had to speak the only language they understood: American.

Eventually I made it near where the helicopter was kept. In a level of strategic brilliance that I can’t even begin to comprehend, my AI chaperon decided that I, the only pilot in the group, should provide sniper overwatch while the rest of the group made its way to the helicopter. After the mandatory sniper sequence, the resistance seemed to remember I was the main character and had to cheerlead me as I single handedly shot my way through a gauntlet of Dale Gribbles to reach the chopper.

The following section was played from the cockpit of the stolen helicopter. Surprisingly it was the most fun section of all the game. It was the only part of the gameplay that felt even a little ambitious. Starting with my AI resistance buddies riding as passengers in the helicopter I caught up with the fuel truck convoy and took out a few guntrucks defending the tanker trucks. Then in a plan straight out of an Indiana Jones movie, I had to maneuver the helicopter up against the doors of the tankers as my AI buddies jumped out and hijacked them.

The rest of the level was running cover for the hijacked trucks as the resistence drove them out of Korean territory and towards the US military. This part really showed Kaos Studios history with making combined arms games, because the helicopter controls felt natural and intuitive. While I had to stick somewhat close to the convey I still had way more freedom than I’d felt when playing on foot. It was a ton of fun taking out roadblocks and RPG troops, and then holding back pursuers as the resistance wired a bridge to blow up behind them. Once the bridge was blown, the level was over and the game moved to its finale. Unironically, best part of the game.

The last level of the game was supporting the US military in their attempt to cross the Golden Gate bridge and retake occupied San Francisco. I’m not sure if it is worth the effort, but sure let’s go. There was a nice moment riding along with a swarm of helicopters preparing for an air assault on the bridge.

Of course, being a military shooter made in 2011, one of the helicopters was shot down within ten seconds of taking flight.

Fighting on the bridge was made as suitably epic as possible with the game’s budget and engine. I appreciated the effort that went into all the little scripted moments that really gave it the right ambiance of a major military push.

The very end was a bit disappointing, as rather than playing the role of the final hero I only got to watch in a cutscene as Blazkowicz rushed forward into the middle of Korean armored vehicles with an airstrike beacon. Seeing that the developers must have known how unlikely this game was to get a sequel, or at least the relative forgettableness of the player character I’m baffled why it wasn’t me making the big sacrifice.

Should you play this game? Unless you have hardcore FPS gaming withdrawal symptoms that can only be cured by low budget Call Of Duty knockoffs, there’s really nothing in the campaign worth seeing. The multiplayer was actually quite fun around the time the game was launched. It combined elements of both Call Of Duty and Battlefield games in a way that worked well. Players could call in bonuses in lieu of killstreaks, with the game’s currency being given not just for kills but also for tagging enemies with drones and taking objectives. A welcome change from Modern Warfare 2’s reward only for kills. Vehicles were bought with the same currency pool and players could chose to spawn in with vehicles ranging from humvees, to tanks, to helicopters if they could afford to.

Unfortunately the game’s multiplayer, which was much better than its campaign, is long dead and abandoned. 7,000 gamers used to play here, now it’s a ghost town.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Sure the game might have killed Kaos Studios, but from it’s ashes rose Homefront 2: The Revolution. That’s gotta be good right?

If you think playing and reviewing a decade old COD knockoff are the actions of a sane and trustworthy individual, I've reposted this review to my blog, where you can look at it and my many other well adjusted opinions.