Buy Homefront: The Revolution

Looking at the history of Homefront: The Revolution, it's a bit of a miracle that the game was released at all. After the moderate success of the original Homefront, a sequel was greenlit, but the original developers were out of the picture. A year of silence passed before THQ folded, and the project was taken on by Crytek, with work being passed on to a newly purchased team, formerly known as Free Radical. Crytek sold the game rights to Deep Silver, and the development team was rechristened Dambuster Studios. Finally, after an open beta period, the game is in the hands of the public.

The story follows a similar beat as the first title, although it takes place in a different region of the U.S. It starts with an alternate history where North Korea became an electronics superpower in the 1970s. That dominance led to them supplying the U.S. with loads of consumer goods and advanced weaponry. Meanwhile, the U.S. suffered a downward economic spiral after countless wars in the Middle East, leading to the crash of the dollar and the defaulting of loans to North Korea. What started out as a humanitarian effort from the North Koreans turned into an occupation as they took over the country by shutting off America's military weaponry and leaving them helpless.

You play as Ethan Brady, a newcomer to the Philadelphia arm of the resistance. When the game starts, you and a few other resistance members are waiting for the arrival of Benjamin Walker, a well-known leader who serves as the last bastion of hope for the people who still believe in America. After a daring escape and rescue, he's captured while you barely make it to a new resistance cell. From there, your job is to help the resistance rescue Walker to keep the hope alive of winning back your homeland.

What's interesting about the story is that it doesn't keep much from the original game. Aside from the collapse of the American military due to the Middle Eastern wars and North Korea taking over the country, everything else from the first game seems to have been thrown out. North Korea occupying all of Asia and the poisoning of the Mississippi River are just a few of the things now wiped from the game's history. Also missing are examples of the atrocities, like the mass graves and people getting shot in the street. On the one hand, those elements were being used for shock value, and this scenario is slightly more realistic since it starts by altering past events instead of making current events to fit the narrative. On the other hand, it means that the story loses some of its bite and feels just like the other games that have dealt with occupation themes and guerrilla tactics, such as Half-Life 2 and Wolfenstein: The New Order.

What's annoying about the story are its characters. Think of every type of character you've seen in games like this, and they're most likely here, from the determined-but-beleaguered leader to the doctor who's always hoping for less bloodshed or the person who enjoys torturing others. While the game tries to squeeze in all of those personalities, it doesn't take the time to grow them into anything beyond first impressions. It also doesn't help that your character is mute at all times, a trait that feels somewhat empty when everyone is speaking to you and asking questions. With nothing really changing from the beginning to the end, the affair is rather forgettable for anyone looking for a stronger narrative.

The gunplay is distinct in both positive and negative ways. Though it isn't sophisticated enough to feature real physics and bullet drops, your guns never feel powerful enough to take out an enemy in one shot. Unless you're aiming for the head, expect to dump quite a few shots into some of the early foes and almost entire clips for those you see later on in the campaign. Since the enemies always have more powerful weaponry than you do, you have to employ some hit-and-run tactics and use some cover if you want to survive. You can't pick up their weaponry and use it, forcing you to rely on scavenging their bodies for ammo, something you'll do often since it never seems like you get enough from their corpses. On the bright side, the game gives you the chance to make gun modifications on the fly. Modding is rather quick, so you aren't vulnerable for too long while you convert your pistol into a submachine gun. If you have the parts to do so, you can also craft other weapons, like Molotov cocktails and dynamite charges.

Instead of being a completely linear experience like the first title was, The Revolution goes for a more open-world version of Philadelphia. However, the map isn't completely open to you from the get-go, so you'll have to liberate sections of it in order to move around without too much trouble. Each of the sections is color-coded on your map, with blue noting the least amount of resistance while red often means there's a large presence of KPA units at every turn.

Of all of the environments, the red zones feel the most chaotic. The constant flow of enemy soldiers at every corner and their ability to call in backup almost immediately means it's futile to try to eradicate them head-on. Snipers are affixed to almost every rooftop, and drones fly around every block, so running around in the open is a surefire way to attract KPA troops. Blimps also do a good job of ratting out your location with an alarm. In essence, the game really wants you to proceed with caution down every block or use your fellow soldiers to create distractions while you get from one spot to another on foot or by motorcycle.

The stealth option is rather tedious since soldiers on both sides seem to have poor vision most of the time. Unless you're directly in front of them at point-blank range, enemies have a tendency to let you pass by unnoticed, leaving the drones to notice you instead. You can use the motorcycles in the area for fast travel, but the bombed-out streets, rubble and maneuverability issues make motorized transport less than ideal, especially if you're using a keyboard/mouse combo. You're better off traversing the red zone on foot.

Players who are trying to reach the end of the game as quickly as possible will treat red zones as areas where they need to get from point A to B, but those who are more thorough will find that they can easily lose themselves in the zone's many activities. The safe houses you discover often have different side jobs you can take, such as using Molotovs against KPA soldiers and snapping pictures of drones, all of which give you monetary rewards for weapon upgrades. Flash missions randomly task you with saving a few resistance members, and that gives you access to more tools and ammo. Hacking into electrical boxes with your phone gets you a better idea of where secret item stashes are on the map, and passing by certain buildings gives you a chance to hack into computer terminals or eradicate enemy forces to establish a new base. Enemies can still wander in and attack you, so it might not be as safe as the safe houses, but it's a good place for extra weaponry and is a good extra spawn point if you fall in battle.

Whereas the red zones are more action-packed, the yellow zones give the game a quieter approach. As you blend in with the civilian population, your goal is to rally the people to join your side by performing acts that capture their hearts and minds by saving them from the watch of the KPA, disabling loudspeakers, and blowing up trucks. Since outright gunfire scares away the populace, you have to do things more covertly and stay away from checkpoints, but if you ever get caught or cause too much commotion, you can duck into a hiding spot to cool things down before continuing. Once you get everyone behind you, you complete a few more objectives before you can completely win back the zone.

Much like the red zone encounters, the ones in the yellow zone don't seem as polished as they should be. Part of this has to do with the soldiers, who seem to give up the chase far too easily. Run off to a corner for long enough, and they'll stop looking, even if there's a small pile of bodies in front of your hiding spot. The other part has to do with the randomization of some events, like motorcade appearances or spots where soldiers are harassing people. It only takes a few respawns to see the same soldiers forcing the same group of captives to paint over graffiti. Killing soldiers builds up your hearts and minds meter, so you can still fill that meter by redoing the same task no matter how badly you fail at everything else in the section.

Perhaps the big thing plaguing the game is how monotonous it feels over time. Many of the missions are exciting to play, but they're repeated so often in each chapter that it all starts to blend together. Every escort mission or prisoner rescue feels the same. Saving civilians from being harassed by KPA soldiers all look similar to one another, and luring troops into choke points gets pretty old pretty quickly. Though everything is dressed up to look a bit different, the familiarity with the missions makes the decently sized campaign feel longer than it should.

Then there are the bugs, which make the title feel more unpolished as they stack up. Spawning into an area with your gun holstered is fine for not drawing attention to yourself in a yellow zone, but it's a terrible move when you get into a firefight and have to waste precious seconds to get your gun out. Looting bodies requires you to hold down a button, but you already have the loot before the hold button indicator is complete, making the swiping animation pretty useless. Aside from failing to notice your physical presence, both enemies and AI can sometimes decide to shoot at the walls instead of you, and there are times when they materialize out of thin air right in front of you. Combined with a few crashes here and there, and you get the feeling that an extra month or two of development time might not have hurt.

Unlike the first game, there's no adversarial multiplayer. Instead, The Revolution opts for a purely cooperative experience — dubbed Resistance — with three other players in tow. You create your character based on a number of templates, with the only differences being race and facial type. You can't customize your face or go without clothes and accessories, so your choices are very limited from the outset. Afterward, you identify your former profession before the occupation, with your choice determining your starting perk, such as the ability to revive someone at a faster rate, throw ordnance further, or move faster when you're at minimum health. After naming your persona, you choose any map and then jump into the game.

Though your missions differ by location, they're typically split into either defensive or offensive ones. You might have to find a new weapons cache and defend it against invading KPA soldiers. Some missions have you rescuing captives or trying to get a small group of refugees by your side. Others involve you sabotaging KPA equipment, but no matter what, you're never tackling just one thing because all of the objective types are strung together into lengthy sessions. It's pretty similar to Left 4 Dead in that sense, except that you'll be tempted to run away from most fights if you can help it.

As fun as the experience can be, those who were following the game up until this point will be disappointed to know that the map count has been reduced from 12 to six, with two of those maps being defense-oriented while the rest fall under offense. The length of each stage is enough that the low map count doesn't feel so bad initially, but this is really the only multiplayer mode. With nothing else to complement this aside from the campaign, the low map count means that there's not much to do aside from replay the levels to grind enough XP to unlock perks for your character. That might not be so appealing considering how many perks there are and their cost relative to what you earn per level.

Given the CryEngine logo at the beginning of the game, you'd likely expect something extraordinary in the graphics department, especially since the engine is best on the PC. Character models look fine during movement, and the game has no problems populating the world with a good number of KPA and resistance members on the same screen. There are a ton of lighting effects going on at almost all times, especially with a dynamic night and day and weather systems, which seem to transition too quickly from one state to another. Lighting also has a habit of glitching out, so flashlights from KPA soldiers produce some erratic shadow effects, and the base flame from a Molotov cocktail is a flaming square instead of something more realistic. Environments tend to look very drab, but the splashes of color from propaganda and graffiti do balance that out. What doesn't hold up well is the frame rate. Entering new areas or performing saves tends to make the game freeze, and it happens often enough that the experience feels rather choppy. Also, based on reports from other online outlets, it seems to take quite a bit of power to get the game to a more stable state. Considering how the game falters in a number of areas, there isn't much of an incentive for players to buy premium hardware in the same way that they did for the Crysis titles.

As far as audio goes, it starts off fine but swiftly falls apart. The effects are fine, with just the right amount of punch for the basics, like gunfire. Other times, performing ambushes and running over KPA soldiers with your motorcycle becomes less overwhelming since there isn't a real impact felt for the former and the latter only produces mild discomfort for the soldiers. Phrases get repeated far too often. The music is grim during missions and red zones, but it's more somber in the quieter moments in the yellow zones. The impact is lessened since it plays all of the time. It is times like this when you realize how a reliance on ambient sounds is quite helpful in open-world games since it adds variety to the aural landscape. Having the music play on a loop only adds to the grindy experience in a negative way.

Much like the internal woes that befell titles such as Duke Nukem Forever, it is unknown if Homefront: The Revolution would have benefitted from some stability behind the scenes. What is known is that the result is a title with some potential that was never fully realized for one reason or another. The idea of running guerrilla-style missions and liberating areas in an open Philadelphia may not be new, but it remains appealing. The missions, however, are rather monotonous, and the game drags on due to the lack of a solid story and characters backing it up. The multiplayer meets the same fate, since the co-op experience is dulled by a lack of level variety. Coupled with a number of bugs and other technical issues, it's difficult to enjoy The Revolution since the beginning of the year was unusually crowded with quality titles.

Score: 6.0/10