Developer Dambuster Studios and publisher Deep Silver have finally released Homefront: The Revolution on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. While the original Homefront was somewhat linear, Homefront: The Revolution attempts to step things up by introducing players to an open-world environment, which has been filled with ruthless enemies and challenging missions.
As according to the game’s intro, Homefront: The Revolution takes place in an alternate history setting in which the digital revolution of the 1970s took place in North Korea’s “Silicon River” rather than the “Silicon Valley” of Northern California. As a result, the nation of North Korea has become the most powerful and influential nation on Earth, controlled by the APEX Corporation and led by Joe Tae-Se.
The United States, meanwhile, after years of multiple conflicts in the Middle East, resulting in a massive war debt from purchasing weapons technology from APEX and severe economic recessions. In 2025, the United States’ economy collapses resulting from the wars forces the United States to default on their debt to North Korea, Joe Tae-Se’s son, John Tae-Se, (with the approval of the international community) uses this as a pretext to invade and occupy the country, using a backdoor installed in all APEX technology to shut down the United States military.
Although initially presented as an international humanitarian effort to restore stability to the United States after the economic collapse, the Koreans proceed to strip mine the country for its natural resources to repay the debt, and proceed to brutalise the populace in response to a national resistance movement against the occupation.
Fast forward to 2029, four years into the occupation, and the city of Philadelphia is now a heavily policed and oppressed environment, with civilians living in fear as the Korean People’s Army (KPA) patrol multiple districts in the city, aided by American collaborators led by Mayor Simpson.
However, among the city’s demolished buildings, rubble, and propaganda filled historic landmarks a resistance has formed. A resistance that is determined to take back Philadelphia, and free its citizens from those who stand to oppress them. Among the resistance is, player controlled, Ethan Brady who has been tasked with multiple, sometimes impossible, objectives in order to lead the Resistance to victory. In order to avoid major spoilers, I will end off the synopsis there.
While Homefront: The Revolution’s plotline sounds exciting at first, it tends to be mediocre… to say the least. The story plays out in a mundane fashion whilst the player attempts to complete a number of impossible mission objectives. When I say impossible, I refer to the game’s difficulty, which punishes the player even on the easiest setting. Granted, there is a challenge here; however busting and grinding your way through the frustratingly difficult 20-25 hour campaign does not entirely feel worthwhile.
The silent protagonist, and supporting cast, don’t entirely contribute to the plotline either. Brady tends to never question the Resistance and their motives. He happily accepts each mission while never questioning authority. In addition to this, the supporting cast tend to hold little backstory to them as well as throw out the most cringe-worthy one-liners at times.
While Homefront: The Revolution lacks a well-crafted story, the developers have placed a great amount of effort into crafting and creating a great representation of a war-torn Philadelphia. The streets are occupied by a formidable force of KPA troops, drones, and vehicles which ultimately make it difficult for the protagonist to make it from one point of the city to the other. Even if you can manage to dodge the ground forces… there is a menacing airship that scans the streets for any Resistance fighters. In addition to the occupying force, buildings are abandoned, streets are filled with rubble, and the entire city looks and feels like it like a real war-zone.
Even when scampering around monuments you will find areas littered with propaganda as well as graffiti. When you move away from the hostile streets, and into the districts you can hear chatter amongst civilians. Earlston, which reminded me of a rundown refugee camp, is one of the first areas where you will experience this. Citizens can be heard discussing the current situation.
To add to the atmosphere you can also hear soldiers droning on about how citizens caught damaging property will be arrested on sight, as well as how protesting is a crime. This adds to the entire experience that Homefront: The Revolution attempts to offer to the player, but fails to deliver smoothly due to a numerous amount of bugs featured in-game.
While playing on the PlayStation 4, Homefront: The Revolution had a tendency to freeze and unfreeze while performing certain actions. This was largely noticeable when visiting a store to purchase new weapons, taking on missions from the mission board, and attempting to leave a safe zone.
This, along with enemies disappearing and reappearing, as well as poor framerate issues made the overall gameplay experience feel unpolished and poorly stitched together. Granted, there is an amazing on-the-fly crafting system in-game, but its glory is shadowed by the tremendous amount of bugs that riddle this title.
Apart from the single-player campaign, there is online co-op; however, this mode features very little content to keep a team of four players entertained for a worthwhile duration.
Conclusion:
Homefront: The Revolution could have been a great title, and I personally wish it was; however it’s beautifully crafted world is flawed greatly by in-game bugs and a mediocre storyline. I wouldn’t say completely skip it as there is a decent title hidden among its faults, which could potentially be salvaged by the developers via patches.
Homefront: The Revolution was reviewed by Darryl Linington on the PlayStation 4.
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