Summer Replay: Homefront (5/10)

Four months on from its inital release, Kaos Studios' Homefront still doesn't stand up well in my books, and the likes of LA Noire (9.5/10) and Portal 2 (10/10) having been released since makes it feel even less of a triple A title than it did before. The plot, while emotive and extremely engaging at times, can't possibly compensate for the gameplay, an overshadowed clone of the classic COD and Battlefield engines that never proves innovative or compelling. I can barely think of half a dozen occassions where I was actually driven to continue the campaign beyond my obligation for this retrospective, which is never a good sign in a video game and isn't helped by the unmissable fact that Homefront lasts not even four hours on Medium difficulty. There are a handful of setpieces which prove promising, but never anything more than that because they simply fail to deliver in every sense of scale, story and visual fidelity. Even more noticable this time around was the hampered AI, who either seem oblivious to your flanking to the point that your chosen weapon can mow them down in seconds, or manage to shoot you even through solid cover at the most unrealistic of angles, causing a frustating number of unfair deaths that prolong the tedium of playing this. The multiplayer is at least satisfactory, and fans of the big name online games will find this engine more than satisfactory (so can probably add another point or two onto the score), but overall Homefront is an overpriced package that has nothing to offer that cannot be found in better shooters like Modern Warfare 2, Battlefield Bad Company 2 or, heck, even Black Ops.