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Homefront: The Revolution is a first-person shooter that isn’t a sequel to 2011’s Homefront but is more like a reboot. Not sure why. Then again, the only question posed at the 2015 reboot of Fantastic Four was “Why?”, although that had an answer – 20th Century Fox were contracted to make three films based on those characters in ten years, they’d only made two and no-one was clamouring for a third. But I digress…
Actually, it’s meant to be in an ‘alternate timeline’ set in 2029… so, a reboot, then.
As Ethan Brady, you’ll do battle the KPA (Korean People’s Army), through red zones and yellow zones, the former being more hectic (well, red light spells danger) but if you sprint through, it’s normally not a chore to get through without dying. And when faced with a barrage of baddies – who all come dressed as Top Gear‘s The Stig, you can craft in advance items like Molotov cocktails, but all of this has been done so much better before in The Last Of Us, for example. There are also safe, green zones but you’ll be spending more time doing battle in the other two, since if you wanted peace and serenity, you’d instead buy Farming Simulator.
This title reminds me of Kingpin, as you’re wandering about outside amongst ne’er-do-wells, going from one location to another. That was a great piece of gaming entertainment. However, that one came out in 1999, where it was fun but the visuals felt a bit stilted with the look of items close-up sometimes being quite poor and, unfortunately, that ‘theme’ has been carried on here, as Homefront: The Revolution really does feel like the graphics of a game from 10-15 years ago. To that end, it also maintains a steady, low 20fps, despite the power of my PC and I even tried turning the settings down a notch and it made no difference, so clearly this is how it runs.
This isn’t the first game to have poor PC performance upon launch – Assassins Creed Unity and Call of Duty: Black Ops III also spring to mind, the latter being the straw that broke the camel’s back for me as I fed the details of my PC’s spec back to the PR company to raise with the developers and I never heard back. By the time that one was finally fixed, it was too late to make a serviceable review.
To add to the disappointment. it claims to be open sandbox game, a la the Grand Theft Auto series, yet it guides you from A to B to C and so on. You can complete side missions on behalf of resistance, to earn extra money, eg. testing guns, taking pictures, checking out the motorbikes on site (handy for getting about, although if you travel from A to B and then get killed, respawning back at point A, your bike stays at point B!) and, since there’s strength in numbers, you can also recruit resistance members to help fight the KPA. Alas, none of this is enough to sustain the interest.
Check out the gameplay video below for glitches aplenty.
Homefront: The Revolution – Gameplay and Glitches (1080p HD, 60fps, DTS5.1) – PC – DVDfeverGamesDVDfeverGames
To try and find something good to say about this, briefly, you can accessorise your weapons to beef them up, such as attaching a submachine gun to a pistol. And as is standard with games like this, you can buy upgrades and health packs as you go. In this game, the ‘shop’ doesn’t have anyone manning it, it’s like a vending machine with an honesty box, as it’s wide open but you can’t just nick stuff. In addition, I like collecting ammo off dead guys, especially since once deaded, they don’t fade away after a few seconds like most games, so if you get caught in a firefight that lasts a while, you can still go and collect the spoils.
However, as I mentioned regarding the graphics issues, this game just doesn’t feel at all smooth, and I know it’s not me because not only does my machine run other games, like Mad Max, like the clappers, but also there are numerous reports online of the problems this game contains. And note that reducing the graphics settings doesn’t improve the frame rate. It also suffers a problem that a lot of games have where the environment has terrible textures when checking something out up close, but unlike a lot of games, I found this one freezing more often than Siberia.
For no apparent reason, it doesn’t recognise my Logitech F710 Gamepad, and there are also often long loading times between levels, once taking almost ten minutes. In fact, it went on for such a length I thought Godot might turn up!
Still, if multiplayer gaming is your bag, then this one has a “Resistance Mode”, but note that it’s just a co-op game between you and up to three other players. There is no traditional multiplayer gaming.
Oddly, you can’t physically save the game and have to rely on checkpoints. There are a lot of them, but since you never know exactly when you’ve passed one, and you might want to quit out of the game as bedtime is calling, then it’s frustrating that you won’t find out when it last saved until AFTER you’ve quit back to the main menu.
For a while, Homefront: The Revolution does have that ‘just one more go’ factor, but on the other hand, it’s such a dog to play. PS4 and Xbox One owners have also complained about the performance issues, so it’s not just on PC that there are problems.
And, as David Attenborough begins his 91st year on Earth, you know he would love this… because it’s full of bugs! You’ll be going back to Lee Carvello’s Putting Challenge more often than this one.
Seriously, though, just how did Deep Silver release this game in the state it was in?
Homefront: The Revolution is out now on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
Homefront: The Revolution – Gameplay Walkthrough Part 1 FULL GAME (PS4 1080p) No Commentary –
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Important info:
- Publisher: Deep Silver
- Players: 1, co-op multiplayer: 2-4
- HDTV options: 720p/1080i/1080p
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English
|
GRAPHICS SOUND GAMEPLAY ENJOYMENT |
4 5 4 3 |
| OVERALL | 4 |
Writer: Ross Tregenza
Music: Winifred Phillips
Cast:
Jennifer Blue: Jennifer Armour
Gabi Hendricks, Various Characters: Ashleigh Haddad
Sidney Cook, Craig Doyle: Mark Holden
Daniel Murphy: Paul Kelleher
Huojin Yang: Akie Kotabe
Various: Mitchell Mullen
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.