Full Disclosure: THQ paid for my flight and hotel accommodations in Montreal. No coverage restrictions were placed upon me, and no promises of coverage of any sort were made to THQ by Bitmob.
I recently had the opportunity to play the first 15 minutes of Homefront's single-player campaign. Though my hands-on time with the game was limited, there were a few things I really enjoyed and some others that I didn't. Coincidentally, I'll share those things with you now. This is kind of like a preview, except I won't only say good things. Crazy, I know!
I really like the premise of Homefront. The teaser trailer is fascinating, not only because it's superbly made, but thanks to the outrageous nature of seemingly every North-Korean-related news story, it comes off as plausible. If you haven't seen the trailer, do yourself a favor and give it a look.
Alright, so the United States is in trouble. Just how bad are things? The game wastes absolutely no time showing you how dire the situation is. Anything remotely representing freedom is now an ancient memory. Families are physically torn apart, people are held in pens like cattle, and as you'll see in the clip below, the new regime doesn't have a lot of patience with non-conformists.
This part of the game continues with a person getting their brains blown out onto the side window of the bus, and ends with a family being executed right in front of their young child. The developers clearly intend to be shocking here, and they succeeded. To me, Homefront's setting is its strength, and much of the game's success lies in how it's able to leverage the premise of North Korea taking over America.
I say that Homefront's setting is so important because quite honestly, the gameplay didn't do much for me. It certainly wasn't bad, but it didn't really stand out from any other first-person shooter set in the present or near future. The gameplay clip below demonstrates this: You're a newly-minted member of the resistance. You're in an abandoned building and the bad guys are trying to get to you. They attack from the left, center, and right, and you and your CPU-controlled allies have to keep them away. When you kill enough dim-witted soldiers, everything's A-OK and you move on.
Plenty of games have this “kill a wave of enemies, advance, kill another wave” mechanic, and many of them have sold millions of copies, so really, what the hell do I know? As I continued through the level, I couldn't shake the feeling that I had played this game before. Again, it wasn't bad, it was just too familiar. Here's a quick sample of what the rest of the level was like.
Will Homefront be a hit when it's released on March 8? It's certainly possible. I didn't play nearly enough of it to judge whether or not it's going to be good or bad. I'm curious to learn more about the story, even if I'm not quite as anxious to play the campaign.
Based on what you've seen of the game, what are your thoughts?
