Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Worth playing"

I'm not a huge fan of FPS games,but I must admit I did enjoy playing Homefront.Much of the reason I enjoyed playing it is because the game is quite story driven and I liked it's story.To make an explaination of it's story short,North and South Korea united to form one Korean nation once again(know as the Greater Korean Republic),but the communists from what was formally North Korea had a plan up their sleeve which was they used a satalite to hide and detonate nuclear weapons,which they detonated above the United States and it created EMP across all of America and made much of their electronics,computers,defense systems etc. useless and then the Greater Korean Republic army(KPA) invaded the vulnerable America and they also attacked/invaded other Asian countries and Middle Eastern countries and because America were in such a desperate situation they couldn't provide aid to the countries who the KPA had invaded/occupied.

What I like about the story is...

SPOILERS BELOW

the story shows the United States as the underdog as most of the U.S becomes occupied by the KPA and the KPA even do things such as using genocide(slaughtering many innocent American civilians or sending them to camps)and I like the U.S having the underdog tag for once,as most war-themed stories involving the U.S have them having the upper-hand over their enemies.It can be quite emotional watching civilians being slaughtered in cold-blood,and see children crying after they watched their parents getting slaughtered in cold-blood and large numbers of dead bodies of American civilians being dumped into mass graves.There's a scene when an American woman is trying to take care of her baby inside a house but she and the baby get caught in the middle of a battle between American resistance and KPA soliders and the baby is crying and the mother is begging the KPA to not hurt her baby and it's quite something to see.

END OF SPOILERS

For those who didn't want to read my spoilers,I will just tell them that Homefront's story can be very emotional at times.

The story is not black and white either,because it shows the bad things some of the Americans do and the Greater Korean Republic isn't your only enemy in the game.

Other things that can make the story emotional is the way you see some of the American survivors/rebels living in impoverished conditions in makeshift camps,but also you'll see them trying to rebuild little communities.

You play the role of a soldier named Jacobs who gets rescued by American rebel soldiers near the start of the game because he has skills as a soldier and pilot,which the American resistance needs.Other soldiers such as Rianna(an attractive woman)and Connor often fight along your side and Rianna and Connor eventually grew on me,because they have their own moral beliefs and because of the fact they're always there.

As for the gameplay,Homefront's shooting mechanics and character movement are satisfactory(they don't feel as smooth as on the Call of Duty Modern Warfare games but they are not bad either and believe me,I've played FPS with clunky or broken movement mechanics but thankfully,Homefront isn't one of them).The weapons available in the game are no different to what I've used in other modern war themed FPS games.However,some guns purposely give certain advantages/disadvantages(such as one assault rifle that has horrible recoil which makes it hard to aim while shooting but it holds a lot more bullets than other assault rifles that are easier to aim with when they shoot).

The gameplay can be fun because there's many KPA soldiers everywhere and you'll often be in tense shootouts and sometimes KPA soldiers will rush at you or they'll force you to deal with crossfire and even on easy difficult,the KPA soldiers can kill you easily if they hit you with a burst of gunfire.

There's tense covert style missions where getting spotted by the enemy or missing just one shot while sniping an enemy from over 700 yards away can result in instant mission failure.The gameplay tries to mix things up,because besides doing the close-quarter fighting,you'll need to do a bit of sniping,as well as pilot a helicopter and use it for escort missions and you'll need to order unmanned vehicles to clear certain areas as well as trying to prevent them from getting destroyed and you'll even need to steer vehicles and use their weapons whilst in combat against other enemy vehicles,as well as trying to maneuver past and destroy hightech guard towers/tanks.

However,the single player campaign is short(can be beaten in 4 hours)and I'm not into competitive multiplayer,so if you don't like competitive online,this game should only be a rental for you unless you find it for dirt cheap.

Also,the game needs it's checkpoints to be in better places,because it makes you replay slow gameplay segments or segments where there's lots of talking if you fail/die in certain missions or you might have to replay long gameplay segments,which can be frustrating.

The graphics during gameplay look dated and a bit ugly.The game has nice FMV at the intro to show the story and it's war-torn version of America provides a nice atmosphere and I like the detail in the environments such as seeing buses taking American civilians to camps and executed civilians hanged from the neck or with bags over their head and their lifeless bodies laying on the ground,and the resistance camps have areas where American resistance people are trying to grow food and there's resistance camps that are very impoverished and look like slums.

Overall,I enjoyed playing through this game because of it's story but unless you want to do it's competitive multiplayer,it should only be a rental option or perhaps you can borrow it from a friend,because it's single player campaign is very short.