Homefront Review (6/10)

Kaos Studios pushed Homefront as a violent single player adventure that would shake its players to their very core, and to some extent it was right- the opening scenes and many later twists in the main storyline will quickly push players to feel total empathy with the American rebellion against the USA's Korean captors, and your weapons carry far more weight and realism than in other modern shooters such as COD or Medal Of Honor. What is a shame, though, is that the visuals and replay value simply don't match the quality of the plot, at which point you're left with a brilliant yet brief campaign and an initially thrilling yet eventually forgettable multi-player online mode. The latter mimicks Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (9/10), establishing teams to face off against each other with odds that can take the favour of either side depending on the skill and cooperation of their participants, and while that sounds like a good source of fun, the novelty of Battlefield with more recognisable locations wears off fast as you realise you're playing the exact same thing one year on. As I said, the graphics are nothing to write home about: weapons often look pixelated, as do vehicles, with locations and setpieces being the only areas that don't suffer as badly from the framerate drops. The worst mistake Homefront makes, however, is to assume that a harrowing story alone is enough, culminating after just six missions (roughly four hours of game-play), which in this day and age is really not on. Much as it pains me to say it, the reason Homefront has been released months ahead of this year's other big shooters is not to set a benchmark for everything that's to come in 2011, but simply because faced with the might of the major hitters (COD 8, Medal Of Honor 2, Battlefield 3) it just would not stand up to the competition. If you see it half price anytime soon and are intending to focus on the online modes, go ahead and pick it up, but otherwise this really is a hard one to recommend.