Homefront

War isn't pretty and this horrifying tale of war on American soil makes for a heartfelt adventure. While the core gameplay feels a little "behind the times," the setting and narrative keeps things fresh.

There isn't really a climax. It just finishes, coitus interruptus-style. [May 2011, p.114]

Homefront is not an easy game to digest. If you look at quickly pointing out all the errors, it will certainly not be a very rewarding experience. But if you leave aside its flaws, there is "life" beyond them.

It's not a terrible game, but it's agonisingly close to being SO much more.

Homefront doesn't live up to the hype and suffers from a short campaign that will only entertain you for four hours. The graphics aren't great and the many glitches don't help either. Homefront's best points are its multiplayer and its brilliant vibe.

Homefront doesn't live up to its expectations. The emotional and atmospheric story of the (way too short) single-player slowly changes into an over-the-top first-person shooter that lacks in character. Homefront is one of the biggest disappointments of 2011, while the game in and of itself, isn't that bad.

Homefront is a game that will live or die based on its online component. For $60, if you are investing solely for the single-player campaign, you are truly wasting your money. The multiplayer has the potential to be something amazing with a few tweaks and a better selection of maps, currently there just aren't enough.

'Kaos' may have been trying to spread their wings a bit, but the overall story in the campaign may have clipped their wings, more so with an abrupt ending. As interesting and deep as the SP world and MP gameplay can be, it's a tad outclassed by the rest.

You can complete Homefront Campaign in less than 4 hours. And the multiplayer is miles away form the CoD and Battlefield excellence.

As the FPS genre marches towards a Call of Dutified heat death, it seems success is based more on the strength of a brand than any semblance of innovative game design. Homefront is only adding to this growing mass of homogeneous goo but at the very least it's a solid game with moderately entertaining mechanics; completely generic but generally agreeable nonetheless.

Homefront's campaign tells a good story, but that's about the only thing it does exceptionally well. The action is fun, but nothing special, and it sometimes feels so rigidly scripted that it's almost stifling. Meanwhile, the radically different multiplayer stands out as a much better game, with chaotic, drone-and-vehicle-filled action that's just fun an involving enough to make Homefront worth picking up.

Homefront's engrossing vision of the future and gratifying competitive multiplayer outweigh its squandered potential and workaday game mechanics.

Incredibly rough around the edges, wasteful of unique opportunities, and light on content, we quite frankly question the longevity of this title. But you know what? There are worse games you could spend your money on.

Homefront is a good game, capable of entertaining the fans of the FPS genre only for a short period of time in singleplayer. The overall quality of the multiplayer is good but it's clear from where Kaos Studios took the inspiration, and it's not able to surprise us with entirely fresh new ideas.

With its interesting premise, evocative opening sequence, and clever variation on multiplayer, Homefront has a strong foundation. It's a shame that technical limitations and a derivative single-player campaign keep the game from realizing its potential.

There's enough material within Homefront's concept for it to spiral into something more interesting, and with plenty of talk about a sequel it's clear that's what THQ and Kaos is looking for, but this first crack of the whip falls far short of the competition.

One of the most unique shooters I've ever played, driven by an ingenious and surprisingly well-fleshed out plot and a dark and dreary, realistic setting. But it also controls and feels like a typical shooter, looks like a game that's several years old, and most importantly, has an inexcusably brief campaign.

An entertaining, if not a little under-polished, FPS that dares to strike out in new directions. [Issue#203, p.82]

Homefront is a decent shooter but with a short play through time and limited online multiplayer, not to mention no offline multiplayer, it just doesn't seem worth full the retail value.

It's apparent that the story and atmosphere of the game is much more important than actual gameplay.

It's an easy game to recommend for a rental since the story is too interesting to pass up, but for those who were interested in buying it, wait to see if there is still a community after the title has been patched.

THQ should have made a deal with MGM to turn Homefront into a tie-in for the upcoming Red Dawn remake. That game would have been way better than what we have now.

Kaos Studios manage to offer an intense campaign with several memorable moments in what seems to be a very faithfully-realized urban American environment. Unfortunately, the campaign easily ends in less than five hours, making it hard to recommend it to anyone who is not interested in the competitive multiplayer portion of the game.

Homefront is a solid, if uneven, experience that features an excellent multiplayer mode, with a very average single-player campaign attached.

The storyline just has an amateurish overall feel to it, and the adventure is over almost before it even started. The multiplayer component somewhat saves the day, but in the end, Homefront is a big letdown.

Kaos obviously had ideas for this game, yet seemingly couldn't bring any of those ideas to total fruition. The end result is a brief, brittle campaign bereft of impactful storytelling or creatively designed action, one that ends not with a bang, but with the build-up to a bang, followed by a title card.

It's a shame the game engine isn't flashier, because it does put up a good fight, but without a sexy bullet point like Killzone's graphics, Bad Company's destructible buildings, or MAG's 256 players, it's going to be hard to draw new players in.

Every aspect of the single-player campaign is poorly executed and designed. And when you finally push through it, the ending leaves far too much open to feel any sense of closure - you can tell that a sequel was always planned from the get go. Bad news Kaos and THQ, if this is what you give us, we don't want anymore.