Sunday 17 April 2011

Homefront

About E3 time last year I noticed a trailer for a game I'd only heard vague things about before. The trailer was a back story trailer and used very believable plot points to eventually develop the story into the Korean invasion of America. The trailer was excellent and the story got my attention from the outset, I had high hopes for the game! I thought if narrative of this standard could be maintained through this game, and could be this interesting, it could help supplement what is getting to be a very tired genre.

As things got closer to the release I began to hear very mixed things about the gameplay. Formulaic, uninteresting were just some of the words that were banded about, and in the end I didn't end up buying it. But thankfully due to a work friend lending me his copy I did get the chance to play it.

Well, that was a lucky escape! Yes the plot is still good, but the game... not so good. Where to start? The characters, well each is a stereotype. Only the woman ever shows any real emotion (well a man wouldn't would they) The dialogue is dreadful, not so much the cut scenes, but the 'on the move' dialogue is a few lines repeated over and over again. The objectives generally switch between 1) Follow Connor 2) Shoot stuff 3) Follow Connor to next  laid on set piece 4) shoot more shit, and become tiresome quite quickly.

It follows the COD blueprint of throwing in sniper levels and vehicles, but this is the best and worst of the game. The sniper sections are reasonable enough, as good as it gets anyway, but the vehicles, especially the shocking helicopter level, are beyond poor. The helicopter is painfully difficult to control and about as much fun as waxing (or so I'm told...).

The enemies are all the same pretty much to look at, (except for 1 level where they're different, but still the same as each other) but they die randomly. I killed one guy with 2 to the kneecap, but his mate took 3 or 4 to the head... that does not make sense.Why would a Wookiee, an 8-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of 2-foot-tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!

In generally the single player is a let down, a horrible disappointment, but at least it was over quick, what was that 4, 4.5 hours? Not allot of bang for ya buck and ended with what can only be described as a weak ass ending, no spoilers here though.

Now throw in the traditional graphical glitches, corpses falling through walls and the like.

I've not tried the multiplayer, I've no inclination too either, I have Bad Company 2 if I wanted that.

Such a pity, could have been amazing, Portal 2 will be amazing. 1 more week!

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