Homefront: Here's A Honest Hanswer

I badmouthed this game for days, this was of course after talking about how great the game would be before it came out. Hoping it would become a Black Ops killer.

So then the dang thing comes out. And people buy it up like crazy, and return it like crazy. Enough so that we have a justifiable amount that I could borrow one for a few days and just see how terrible it actually is.

I get it, start to play it, and well... I've had my tastes improved since 2002. Which is when this game would have been wildly successful. But you'll notice, its not 2002. Let us avoid all of the flummery that is the storyline and get down to brass.

The controls and gameplay mechanics are some of the worst ever. The rest of this post will strictly concern the mechanics of the game, nothing more. So there's that.

Homefront is one of two things, a game where you follow NPC characters who walk everywhere. (Walk as in, only push the stick half of the direction, so that the character actually honestly walks) or is extremely slow and requires your character to be positioned in some random area for them to open a door for you. Oh but of course there are a few times they have you open the door, which doesn't make sense. Then there are times you have to make your way to your NPC teammates. That's the entire game, it's either following, or making your way to them. That's it. Some shooting mixed in.


Oooooooh, but the shooting. There's something that doesn't make any sense. Let's talk about angular geometry. A guy is standing about 3 meters away from a block, you hide behind the block, so that you cannot see the guy, and since you cannot see him, he assumably cannot shoot you.

Well, Homefront wants you to realize that angular geometry doesn't come into play. Whether you're crouched or standing, they can still hit you. Unless your character is directly against a barricade, and even then sometimes, they can hit you cleanly. So the whole crouching behind cover only works if you're directly behind the cover, EVEN IF YOU CAN'T SEE HIM AND HE CANNOT SEE YOU.

Of course none of this matters, since the bad guys can also shoot through fences and mesh, but you can't seem to.

So you take two simple FPS gameplay mechanics, and either drag them out, or make them utterly atrocious, and you get Homefront. Don't you go using your standard FPS tactics, they won't have none of that.

The topper? When you're prone, and you're aiming with your sniper rifle, if you're at the top of a church belltower, don't move the left stick, your guy will continue to crawl even if you're aiming down the sights. Instead of being able to hold your breath, they let you be able to crawl off a ledge.

Thanks Homefront. Instead of playing you, I'll play Crysis 2.