Every once in a while, games do a stellar job of marketing through commercials and trailers that get us amped to purchase. The team behind Homefront: The Revolution did this in spades and I was beyond excited to jump in and see if it lived up to the hype. Many of the same team from Free Radical Design were responsible for Time Splitters and that was arguably one of my favorite IP’s from the PlayStation 2 era, going into this I was giddy like a school boy on a sugar kick.
Before we get into it, I would like to mention that I consider myself very fair when it comes to prejudging a game in its beta stage. I try to overlook the technical negatives and give the benefit of the doubt due to a game’s lack of polish compared to the finished product. Homefront: The Revolution was a game I was pretty much sold on based on the gameplay trailer alone. The makings of a game that I would love were all there: a dystopian survival shooter, squad based co-op mode, strategic style of gameplay, vehicles, and character customization with perk trees. After watching the trailer, I told myself this game is an auto-purchase because there’s no way in hell it could suck. Boy, was I wrong — so very, very wrong.
But let’s start with the good.
The purpose of this beta was to focus on the co-op mode Resistance, which are four player objective-based levels that require teamwork, communication, and careful planning to accomplish. On paper, this is a great concept and the game focuses on presenting an immense challenge to beat it. I find often with co-op games that there’s not enough challenge to really push teams to their limit but this game goes the other direction and makes it extremely difficult which is refreshing.
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“The driving felt smooth and it was fast paced, the level design also made it easy to navigate.”
There are ridable vehicles, well, I should say vehicle because there was only one type. Some objectives require you to pick up a dirt bike at a bike cache location, after which you ride to the extraction point for pick up. This was the most fun I had in the beta because it was the part that worked relatively well. You’re able to ride your bike through buildings, off jumps and past groups of enemies. The driving felt smooth and it was fast paced, the level design also made it easy to navigate.
And now for the bad…
If the good part seemed drastically short, that’s because it was all I could scrounge up from what has to be the worst beta I’ve ever witnessed. Starting with character creation, the options to create your hero are limited to a tiny selection of terrible preset faces. The one saving grace was being able to choose your former profession, with each profession offering a specific skill. So for example, if you were a personal trainer before you get a speed bonus on critical health, if you were a laborer you get extra health when revived and so on. The perks associated don’t really help you at all in-game but for an RPG player who likes to create backstories for his characters, this allowed me to have a smidgen of it.
But character creation is all just cosmetic, so how does the game actually play? Well, let’s start with the incompetent AI. One mission had our team escorting a convoy of trucks from a compound to the end point. The problem was, the AI driving a truck got himself stuck even before leaving the compound which resulted in an inevitable fail for the entire mission. If that’s not bad enough, I’ve witnessed enemies casually walking into walls, some would not notice me run by in plain sight but spot me when completely invisible behind cover. Other times I secured a building to hack a computer and after making sure everything’s clear a shotgun enemy spawns behind me resulting in my death.
Combat is very calculated because you run out of ammo quickly but enemies soak up a ton of damage. The game promotes a strike and move style of gameplay, incoming waves of enemies get progressively tougher as you expend all your ammo. Attempting a stealth approach is just as frustrating, I performed a silent takedown on an enemy and it took 13 seconds for the animation, a passing enemy eventually noticed and killed me on the spot.
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“As for the graphics, the entire build seemed more pre-alpha then a beta. The frame-rate would drop so low to the point of it not being playable.”
There doesn’t feel like a variety of objectives either, it’s mainly going to a target, hacking a computer, finding a bike cache and riding to the extraction point. After playing several rounds, it started to become monotonous rather than engaging. It was extremely hard to get from various objectives because the frame rate dropped to staggering lows — I’ll get to that in a bit.
First, I need a moment to discuss in-game ramps because they were awkward. As you enter some ruined buildings, there are makeshift ramps for you to walk up through windows. Every time I tried running up, there was an invisible barrier at the top which forced me to jump several times to hurdle it. As trivial as this sounds, when you are high-tailing it from an enemy armored vehicle’s turret and the ramp is your last chance to get cover, several times I got caught on the invisible barrier and was downed by incoming fire as a result. I mean come on! It really defeats the purpose of having a ramp in the first place, I rather gracefully hoist myself up through a window on my own.
As for the graphics, the entire build seemed more pre-alpha then a beta. The frame-rate would drop so low to the point of it not being playable. In the settings, sensitivity is set to 50 which is drastically low in-game, raise it to 80 for a slight improvement. Aiming at endless waves of targets became more of a challenge dealing with the graphical issues than actual incoming fire.
Even the character models all resemble each other, with textures reminiscent of the original Xbox. The enemies and NPC’s look similar and there’s no indicator saying who’s on your side. In all fairness, there’s a disclaimer warning about graphical and performance issues, but looking at the game it’s hard to see how the coat of polish will make a measurable difference. Aside from the character models, as the level began there would be pop up textures for the first few minutes, other times the buildings not loading at all.
Overall the Homefront: The Revolution beta was heaps of bad, and I’m not talking Michael Jackson bad either, I’m talking getting a root canal without anesthesia bad. Besides the myriad of technical issues, the gameplay itself was frustrating, unimaginative and most of all the gun fights were arguably the least fun of the game, considering it’s a shooter. The style and gameplay seemed like a mix of various different games, which isn’t necessarily horrible, but it wasn’t done in a way that’s fun. I really hope they can throw this back in the incubator and get it prepped for launch. I have yet to witness single player and I really want this game to succeed but from what I saw in the beta the developers have their work cut out for them.