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Review: Homefront: The Revolution

The deeper I begrudgingly delved into Homefront: The Revolution, the more I began to see glimmers of intent hidden beneath the frailty of a tumultuous development resulting in a misguided sequel and a technical disaster. After horrid first impressions subsided, I actually enjoyed a few moments venturing through a dishevelled United States, bowing to its North Korean captors. There are fleeting glimpses of good ideas buried within Homefront 2; but it’s mostly bad.

Playing on Xbox One, Homefront: The Revolution is the biggest technical disaster this generation. The frame rate is rubbish throughout, but I didn’t realise it was possible to release a current-gen game this sluggish. It’s irritatingly inconsistent during play, jumping all over the place, and constantly drops to 0fps – by totally freezing for up to 5 seconds – every minute or so. This happens not only when autosave kicks in, but also whenever anything is triggered; completing an objective, buying a weapon, activating a button, talking to someone, moving into a building, enemies appearing on screen, enemies being killed, receiving a message – you get the picture. Basic functions cause Homefront to completely freeze for between two and five seconds – it’s the only consistency in performance. Conservatively, I’d estimate this happens at least 60 times in an hour of gameplay, but now I reflect, it’s probably closer to 100.

We’re off to a horrible start. It’s impossible not to notice how poorly Homefront: The Revolution runs on Xbox One, and while we haven’t been able to play on PC or PS4, we have to imagine it’s not quite this bad – otherwise it would never have passed quality assurance testing.

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The technical blights extend deep into gameplay. The core mechanics are as solid as can be for a game that could freeze at any moment (and it happens a lot during combat), but the A.I. is horrendously incompetent, and characters slide around and poke their hands through walls as if it’s common practice; and expect to get stuck in parts of the world while trying to ascend an apartment complex using the only accessible route.

Despite lacking critical functionality, Homefront: The Revolution was spawned from strong potential; most of it just doesn’t make it into the game. Fusing elements of Far Cry, Watch Dogs, Fallout and Uncharted, with the original game, the pitch would have sounded promising.

Playing as an against-the-odds American resistance fighter, Homefront: The Revolution spans eight districts in Philadelphia crumbling under North Korean militia control. Liberating strongholds earns trust amongst the petrified locals, initially apprehensive about joining the revolution. Amongst the copy-and-paste objectives is a sprinkling of dramatic set pieces that would have looked good last-generation; and in many ways there’s no better description.

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While the size of the world is impressive, there’s no hiding the last-gen origins. Like the torrent of remasters inundating the PS4 and Xbox One, Dambuster has used modern lighting and decent faces on select characters to masquerade a last-gen world as something more. Still, it’s the highlight. Each district feels unique, and is brimming with optional jobs, collectibles and strongholds to liberate. It appears a lot to do, and it probably would have been if the rest of the game was engaging, but suffers from the Far Cry illusion; flooding the map with pointless pick-ups and repetitive side quests that offer little reward.

Homefront attempts to deliver a comprehensive cinematic experience, with tactical chatter between deadpan characters delivered through lengthy cut-scenes. Coupled with the explosive set pieces, it’s actually not too bad — but I’ve just played Uncharted 4. Unfortunately, the underwhelming characters, flimsy political themes and total lack of plot mar the fleeting potential. The opening stanza attempts to rush through too much, and delivers the setup without a soul. Homefront doesn’t seem to care about the inspiring leader of the revolution you’re meant to be rescuing, so there’s no chance of the player forging a meaningful connection.

Our protagonist, Ethan Brady, remains a faceless mute, key allies are passionless, the baddies are cloned goons, there is no imposing villain and the plot is only progressed through countless “we need this supply” or “this needs to be hacked” moments, which result in the same objectives regardless. There isn’t actually a narrative arc in Homefront: The Revolution, but rather a series of excuses to perform the same tasks, murder a bunch of goons and eventually have sh*t hit the fan (during which the frame rate can’t keep up); rinse and repeat.

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Shooting baddies is fairly straight forward, but the crafting system is confused about what it’s trying to achieve. Weapons are modified, so a crossbow becomes a flamethrower, but this is still bought from the store in a safe house – so why am I crafting it? Why can’t I just buy the flamethrower? Then explosives are crafted through finding items, using a carbon copy of Far Cry’s simple system, but with the store for weapons, why can’t I just buy grenades as well?

Brush over that and you’ll find enemy intelligence is apparently a homage to 2007. There’s no subtlety in their movements, and while being a one-man army is empowering, Homefront wants you to sneak around between objectives when possible. Except that doesn’t work. The enemy detection system is awful, they spot you much too easily, and then it becomes a total bloodbath. Stealth attacks are aggravatingly unpredictable. Sometimes nearby goons will be totally ignorant to Ethan stabbing their colleague in the face, but other times they’ll see him through two walls and an army will materialise out of nowhere.

Stealth, then, is out. You’re left with two options; murder everyone, which takes a long time, or run past everyone spamming medical packs, which is much more effective than it ought to be. But at least it provides an alternative. Despite this debacle, becoming trigger happy does work fairly well. The selection of weapons is plentiful and the dopey A.I. makes for satisfying head shots.

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Officially there is a fully-fledged co-op mode…except there isn’t. Four days since release (in Australia) and I haven’t been able to get into a single co-op mission. I’ve tried all missions on every difficulty at different times of the day, and total failure. It nearly happened once – I was connected to two other players– but then disaster struck, in the form of a soul-destroying disconnection. For our money, Homefront: The Revolution doesn’t have a co-op mode.

To butcher a Jeremy Clarkson idiom, Homefront: The Revolution is seldom ambitious and rubbish. There are some good ideas buried beneath the stench of failure. Nothing works as well as it should, made all the worse by glimmers of what the intentions may have been. The odds were against a Homefront sequel with such a turbulent development period (it began at THQ), but the end product is like a bean-counter demanded something be released in a feeble attempt to recoup Deep Silver’s investment as resurrecting publisher. I can only assume they all knew it was crap, but as soon as it became playable decided “that’ll do” so everyone could move on. Ultimately none of it matters. Homefront: The Revolution runs so badly, even if it were a good game, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Homefront: The Revolution was reviewed using a promotional digital copy of the game on Xbox One, as provided by the publisher.

Review: Homefront: The Revolution
3.5 out of 10

The good

  • The world is large and varied.
  • Some good weapons.

The bad

  • Technical disaster – deplorable frame rate.
  • Horrible A.I.
  • Story, protagonist, allies and goons. All bad.
  • The whole thing is half-baked.

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About the author

Ben Salter

Ben has been writing about games in a professional capacity since 2008. He even did it full-time for a while, but his mum never really understood what that meant. He's been part of the Stevivor team since 2016. You will find his work across all sections of the site (if you look hard enough). Gamertag / PSN ID: Gryllis.