Homefront: It grew on me. Seriously.

So I finally got around to finishing Homefront. And yes, it didn't take very long at all. General word is that the SP campaign is around 4 to 5 hours or so for most players, making on average a bit shorter than Modern Warfare 2 or Black Ops. There has been a lot of talk about this and I won't wade too much into that suffice to say that I agreed it felt kind of short.  But I thought the last two Call of Duty games were kind of short.

But the more important point is that the game did grow on me.  Yes, I was a bit harsh on it in my previous post, and I still think those points are valid, but I have to admit I enjoyed the SP campaign.  It got much better at the end, even though I still thought the voice acting and writing was generally not as good as it could or should have been, but even with that there were moments that I really liked.  For example, near the end, the Hopper character says something like (and I am paraphrasing): "I can't believe you're not dead. That's like the 5th thing you've fallen off of and lived!"  In context I found that very amusing and some much needed comic relief.  So +1 to the writer.  But anyway, I got used to the slightly dated but still very acceptable graphics and in a way grew to like it.  I still felt the run speed was too slow.  I got an interesting opinion from someone saying I didn't know what I was talking about on that one, but I stand by my point.

The last mission was actually pretty good, but it ended so abruptly and it actually left me wanting more.  Perhaps even a sequel.  See, there is so much possibility with the setting.  A few years ago I was in San Francisco for a very sunny and beautiful Memorial Day weekend. My wife and I walked all over and had a great time.  Like any game designer at heart I kept thinking, "How cool would it be to set an urban war game in a hilly city like this?"  It made me think back to my Day of Defeat days designing my map dod_switch just because of the hills.

But anyway, I think the premise and setting have a lot of room for sequels.  With some improvements to the gameplay and writing/acting, I think Homefront could become a real franchise with a loyal following.

Also, Homefront wasn't exactly a launch failure.  According to today's directional data from NPD, Homefront was the top selling game in the US in March after Nintendo's Pokemon Black/White games.  That ain't bad.

Homefront

Here is my initial impression of Homefront based on playing about half an hour of the SP campaign. Making games is hard and I hate to be too critical of Kaos and THQ for their efforts but Homefront has problems. The recent Medal of Honor game also had problems, but I actually enjoyed that. I'm afraid I'm not enjoying this game as much as that which is sad because I like the premise.  Still, I do think I may end up liking better than my initial first impression because I've heard it gets better later.  So in other words I'm willing to give it a chance. That said, let's get into this game...

1) The intro movie is basically what we saw at around E3 last year. Good premise. It's basically recycled Red Dawn with a modern spin of North Korea instead of USSR being the invaders. On this I'm sold and since E3 I have been quietly excited about Homefront. Then I played the game...

2) The first thing I notice is that the graphics and art design feel dated. The lighting at night feels...like a late era Xbox or early Xbox 360 game. Someone of more technical knowledge can confirm or refute this. Maybe my cataracts and eyeball arthritis are acting up again or my kid slipped the cat's ear medicine into my coffee this morning. I'm playing the 360 version. No clue of the PS3 version is any better or worse in the graphics department.  Interestingly, I've been reading actual reviews from real games journalists such as in the current issue of OXM saying "the visuals are laudable" which I am not sure how to interpret.  Put it this way, IGN got it right imo when its review read "Homefront isn’t ugly by any stretch of the imagination, but it looks rather bad if you place it next to the likes of graphics-pushing titles such as Killzone 3 or Crysis 2."  I would definitely agree, but it's also not  quite on par with Modern Warfare 2 or Black Ops.  Still, this doesn't kill the game by any means but it just kind of stands out since shooters are known to be pushers of high end technical graphical achievement.  I've received some emails about this regarding Borderlands and how Gearbox copped out by changing that game to cell shaded art style.  But the art in that game worked very well and complimented the thin story's humorous tone which worked well.  In Homefront the graphics don't stand out but they're not so terrible as to ruin the experience.  There. I've said it 3 different ways about the adequateness of the graphics.


[spoiler alert]
3) The initial tone is heavy handed. I give Kaos points for making it consistent at least. There is no stupid attempt at inappropriate humor (more on that later) in the middle of a sequence where a 4 or 5 year old crying and screaming boy watches the NK army execute his parents...and then he goes to grab their bodies to see if they are alive. It's supposed to be heartbreaking and make you angry, which I guess it does... But the problem is that even moments like this somehow feel recycled. It's like they want to force you to feel a certain way. I know it's just a game, but something about the opening just doesn't work. This is a vague criticism and I will say no more other than it made me angry at Kaos and the writer for putting in there in the first place. Sorry for the vagueness but if you play it you will probably understand...or completely disagree. Yoo make the call.

4) Too often control is taken away from the player or movement is artificially restricted so a "story" moment of dialog can be done. I admit that many, many games do this including some great games but the use of it here just did not work. Why? It's because the writing and voice acting were disappointing. The story concept is fine...no problems there...but the actual dialog such as "I'm getting too old for this shit" and other cliches stuck out too much. (Was that supposed to be a funny line? Cause I laughed at how cliched it felt.) Again, this would not be the first game to have bad or less than good writing and not all good story based SP games have good writing. I liked the first Far Cry but hated the writing and dialog. But in this game the combination of weak acting and weak writing with taking control away from the player at times to deliver it all was not fun. I wanted to skip through any dialog moment as fast as possible. Conversely, a game like Uncharted 2 is much better in this department, or a game like Borderlands which has barely any story has much better "little" moments. (Ahem...Mikey where's my $2 royalty check for plugging your game?)

Very early on in the game there is a point where you walk through a "safe house" type area. I think this area was shown at E3 last year or around then. You can walk, but you can't run. It feels like you are moving in molasses as you walk around to generally lifeless characters who deliver more dialog moments. A Bioware game this is not, but this brief section was not enjoyable. It actually made me care less about the characters.

5) The actual character models, along with the art design, feel dated. The animations feel dated. Further there are many graphical bugs with character models and collision detection.Often characters will take cover against a wall and except the bounding box or something is off and the character is partly inside the wall. Or a dead enemy on top of a broken wall falls down through the wall in a Red Dead Redemption on PS3 buggy type of way. Again, this is not the first game to have such problems, but along with everything else it just sorta piled on to the mass of issues.

6) As for gameplay, it did not do anything really interesting. You can use a robotic car called "GOLIATH" that drives around on its own mowing down enemies. You have a the ability to target pre-assigned (read: scripted) enemy trucks and locations to blow up with the robot car's rockets. Except this seemed buggy in that I could not get it to fire when I wanted once I thought something was targeted. It did not make me feel powerful or a badass. I suppose this was my fault for not knowing how to do it, but seriously if I have to think that hard for a weapon like this then it's a problem. I don't recall being confused in Halo or Call of Duty games about how to use something. It might have been because I was too lazy to figure it out.  But the reason I was lazy was because I had a hard time holding my interest because of issues #1 thru #5 on my little list so far.

But the big problem with the SP campaign is that it feels like a corridor shooter with semi-big chambers where you kill continually spawning enemies until either you destroy XYZ objective or a certain amount of time goes by. That's not all bad but so far it seems like it is all there is. I really should play the whole campaign before I pass too much judgement on the game. As I said I hear there is a cool sequence in the second half...

7) Bottom line...it's the combination of dated gameplay, dated graphics and weak writing/voice acting that made me not care and not get into the game as much as I wanted to.  And I'm saying this after playing the first 30 to 45 minutes of the game. They want you to feel like you are a ragtag group of rebels taking on a superior invading force and through sacrifice and pure will of effort you will overcome the bad guys in that true American can-do spirit! But it just doesn't come together...at least not yet. Honestly, it feels like they wanted to make an updated Red Dawn type movie more than a game.


However...


I'm still willing to give this game a chance because my gut is telling me I may actually get used to it and enjoy it.  More to come on this one...