So I’ve just finished playing through Homefront a second time, and it has grown on me. In between my last play through and this one I’ve upgraded my video drivers and also invested $20 in a laptop cooler pad. It’s not a very high quality unit, two plastic pads with a pair of thin fans, a couple of stops at the front and a pivot. It’s actually doing a pretty decent job at keeping the heat levels down, and a majority of the graphical glitches in the game have gone away.
After the second run through, I’ve got some more appreciation for the gameplay, it’s still a fairly generic shooter based on the Unreal 3 engine, but I’m half tempted to go back in to fight the NORK’s again. Eventually I got tired of playing Modern Warfare 1 and 2’s single player missions, and I’m sure I’ll hit the same wall with this title as well. All in all, worth $25 – not the full $50 it was originally sold for. It’s too short, and has an almost Red Dawn type ending where the final battle is the beginning of the US starting to push back the Korean invaders. Personally I’d like to be able to invade Oakland fully armed and start taking down some bad guys. Maybe that’ll be an expansion pack?
The environment is actually pretty good, shattered cities and suburbs, Americans struggling to survive enemy occupation. Cover is key in this game, get cocky and you will be dropped. Accuracy and patience is rewarded, while a guns blazing all out assault will generally have you reloading the level numerous times. I also appreciated one of the easter eggs I caught in my last run through – during the final mission where the player is assaulting the Golden Gate bridge, you hear that ‘we own the rock’ – if you look you see green flares, just like the ending to The Rock.
So I’ll definitely recommend picking this up if you can get it on sale… not quite worth $50, but not a bad game at all.
