The Red Menace
It's been a long time since there were games that I tore to pieces and had to force myself to play. Usually, on the contrary, games are considered entertainment and bring pleasure, but here everything is different. Today I will introduce you to such a game, I present to your attention Homefront: The Revolution. Since this game is a restart, I will criticize it especially carefully.
And first, a little background. It all started in 2011, when Homefront appeared, where a rather interesting topic was raised: North Korea captured the United States, but there were people who continued to resist.
In the new part, this concept has remained in the restart. Now the resistance has hope for change, perhaps the time has come and the revolution will be crowned with success. Well, a start has been made. But what do we see at the end?
I’ll probably start with the main character, since this is the first aspect of the game that I really didn’t like. As a rule, in games designed for a single playthrough, they reveal and tell us about the character: they make it clear what the character’s character is, what his motivation is our hero, perhaps even tell something from his past. This all created the feeling that this was not some kind of drawn 3D “robot” carrying out your orders, but “alive” man. But our hero (hereinafter referred to as GG) doesn’t even speak! Just imagine! It’s the 21st century, technology has moved forward
and our hero is dumb as a fish. No, I understand that there are games where such a move looks good, but not in this game. The times of silent heroes are over, and if they remain somewhere, then after all, they fit into the game. I’ll give an example, when someone contacts the GG, and he doesn’t answer anything, at least it looks ridiculous. You're surprised when other characters understand him. Telekenesis? No, technology has gone far ahead: but not to the same extent? Unfortunately, the further it goes, the worse it gets.
Let's talk gameplay. It would seem that an open world would give not only freedom to the player, but would also provide scope for the development of the plot, but no, and here the developers did not come up with anything original. The entire map is divided into zones, it would seem that there is scope for possibilities, but these zones are so made uninteresting, that there was no desire to study them. To be honest, I felt that I was in rectangles measuring a by b, it was impossible to go beyond the boundaries and there was nothing interesting inside. But what is this world filled with? - you ask. To raise an uprising in any of the zones, you must earn revolution points, and they are earned in the most tedious way: turn on radio propaganda, organize sabotage, etc. If in the first yellow zone this is still normal, then in the rest it becomes boring and becomes a routine. The most important thing here is that until you complete these small boring buildings, you will not be able to advance further in the plot, the same thing happened with just cause and just cause 3.
Here are two more main features: to open blind spots, you can hack transmitters (similar to transformers), and to capture zones, capture outposts. Doesn’t it remind you of anything? It seems we’ve already seen this somewhere in FaR Cry with its towers and bases, so in terms of gameplay there is nothing new.
The last hope remains - the plot. But what about it? Unfortunately, the developers didn’t succeed here either. The idea itself: the war between North Korea and the revolutionary forces is good and I have no complaints about it, but the story is the plot about nothing. We are not clear about the hero’s motivation, nor how he got into the resistance. The plot itself turns into running around that same rectangle from point A to point B. Sometimes several story missions take place on the same map, but they just changed places and you attack from the other end. The dialogues are also nothing interesting, and completing goals comes down to fetch/destroy/find and that’s it, nothing new.
Multiplayer is also not interesting at all, because the maps are taken from the single player, and the tasks are reduced to the same ones that were in the single game. That's all.
And the result is sad, at least for the developers. We got a game where there is nothing new and revolutionary, a lot of borrowed ideas and it would be nice if they were somehow modified, but no, they were added as is. I don’t advise anyone to take this game , even for fans of the first part, because... You'll just be wasting your time here. I hope the developers learn a lesson from this failed experiment.