Homefront The Revolution (Xbox One)

The sequel no one asked for, wanted or played. Thanks for this Deep Silver, and fuck you, Dam Buster.

Back in 2011, Homefront was one of the most over-hyped games released, it wasn't a success and a reboot was released in 2016 called Homefront: The Revolution, it had the opposite effect, in the sense that it was silently released, but kept the negative reviews. It's not a sequel, more of a reboot with new characters, if you read my Homefront review, you'll know I was much happy with this. A different approach giving us a more open world game. It wasn't like the old game where you went mission to mission. It's very much like a Far Cry game where you can do story missions when you choose and clear out strongholds.

Again, you're forced into the revolution against Korea's control over America. We play as Ethan Brady and for the second time running your character doesn't speak and blindly nods when told to do tasks. I thought we were past silent protagonists in games unless the game suits that approach. The graphics are so much better and the characters look great, unfortunately the characters aren't that likeable but they're not really unlikeable either. In fact they're well performed, just hard to really care about. The story was more or less the same, leaving me to question why they bothered and the objectives of the revolution on so miniscule. Their main objective is to rescue a man called Walker, who saved Brady at the start. According to some high ranking members, the whole revolution depends on this one man. How weak and stupid are these people without him that they need him that much. Rather than the goal to be liberating the people or destroying the KPA's control, it's free this one captured man because nothing can happen without. A weak minded revolution and weak minded story.

As well as the main story missions, we get strongholds. Each stronghold you clear removes the Korean soldiers, The KPA, and the more you clear, the civilians rise up and start to fight back. To be honest they didn't really do much at that point, they certainly never helped you in anyway. What's great about the strongholds is that they're not all the same, you get ones that are clear the buildings, find the stash and restore the power and some others too. There are job boards that give you small tasks and pay nicely, they got boring fast as it was usually kill this so many times or take so many photos of that. There were also random missions called Flashpoints, usually they were defend people or kill all enemies and get the stash. I often ignored them as so many times I was on my way to it, they failed, there was so little time to get there it wasn't worth trying.

They went with an open world, which I loved at first and was pleasantly surprised when I saw you could ride around open motorbikes. I did eventually get bored with it though, but I appreciate them trying something new. Your menu was a phone screen and you'd navigate the apps to take you to the map, objectives etc. It was cool at first but it was very slow, I was soon longing for just being able to press the 'back' button to instantly bring up the map. You could covert your weapons too which was cool,if you bought the upgrades, you could convert your pistol into an SMG or an assault rifle into a sniper. You could loot enemies for ammo, which would save you buying it. You could building throwables like molotovs if you found enough components. You could recruit resistance and I was happy to see you could recruit four at once, it was a pity they ended up being useless. You could shoot gas vents and take out a group of enemies but it was always the same, a idiotic group of soldiers stand by the gas waiting for you to blow them up. There was a great easter egg that let you play PS2 classic, Timesplitters 2.

There were so many faults, the long loading and I mean long. Around three full minutes just to load in the game and every time you did you'd see the NPC’s slowly load in and even in the concept stance were their arms are stretched out. You could buy attachments for your weapon but they didn't fit on every weapons and was option to see what went with which. After vaulting a wall first time it took numerous attempts to re-vault it, leaving me to think it was impossible to get back over. The number of jobs you could have at once was Inconsistent, sometimes four and then only three. Your recruits would often get lost and run into walls, if you recruited any in a safehouse they're automatically shooed away when you leave, leaving you to question why you can even recruit them in the safehouses. People would constantly disappear into the abyss, I even witnessed an enemy I just killed respawn in front of my eyes TWICE. After clearing a stronghold I didn't blow up a turret and the target stayed on my mini map.

Here's so more bad stuff! I was spotted by an enemy when I was safely hidden behind a wall. Enemies disappear at around sixty metres away, so you can never plan attacks far out. Whenever I tried to throw a brick to use as a distraction, they just vanished into thin air. In the story, a car driven by a friendly came past and the driver was floating sitting in front of the car, a side mission had me kill five snipers and once they killed me, they stayed crouched behind cover never resurfacing, leaving me to get crazy shots from all sorts of angles. While talking to you on the radio, a friend tells you to put on a dead guy's clothes, how can they see that? I don't talk so I didn't tell them. Once you start the reloading animation you can't interrupt it by I
shooting, like you can in every other game. Every door you push open, your hand goes right through it, in the story scenes you control the camera and the people talking move around so much they expect you to constantly move the camera on them, I got so bored of moving it I left it, so I often had nothing on screen and a voice chattering on. The choice kill was the dullest kill ever when it should've been satisfying and to top it all off, my Xbox randomly shut off, which had never happened before.

There were so many annoying things throughout the campaign, one guy is blaming you for all the death and chaos, despite the revolution existing before you joined. There was an obvious betrayal you could see way before it happened. On one mission they're talking about using you as bait as if you're not there, they practically sending you on a suicide mission and because your character doesn't speak, he doesn't chime in and say "Are you fucking serious?", he's more like "duh, ok boss". Again they try and create a sad moment with a character that you just don't really care for. You can't fast travel in missions and there are so many story missions you're forced into in what is meant to be an open world game. The cringey dialogue on the radio chatter when resistance members are checking in were incredibly annoying. The mission with the Goliath is a pain, the vehicle struggles to follow you and you use it to help you clear five objectives, I ended up clearing three without it because it just couldn't stay with me and it even blew me up.

The hard difficulty wasn't so bad, it was just sponging enemies and quick deaths. Enemies weren't so bad with upgraded weapons, but health upgrades were no help. What was hilariously bad about this difficultly, a headshots wasn't an instant kill, I tested it multiple times and it was a minimum two shots to the head, what a joke of a way to make difficulty. There was no penalty for deaths outside story missions where you'd only get a checkpoint restart, you didn't lose money or anything and just respawned to have another go.

The objectives were constantly changing and they always felt like small fry, when there were much higher stakes. After everything that happened, nothing was even won and they just set up a sequel. If this piece of shit gets a sequel, I will lose all faith in gaming, I'm standing on very thin ice as it is. At the start of the credits the developers are saying how much work they put into the game and that "this is just the beginning". Did they place this glitch-fest? The game barely worked and please God, let this be the end of Homefront, not the fucking beginning. Fuck you Dam Buster and get to fuck Homefront.

5.5/10