Homefront

Homefront is a first-person shooter video game developed by Kaos Studios and published by THQ. It was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 in 2011. After THQ's bankruptcy, the rights of the game were sold to Crytek who then sold the rights to Koch Media after restructuring their company. Deep Silver, a subsidiary of Koch Media, published the reboot Homefront: The Revolution.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Outdated graphics, despite running on Unreal Engine 3.
 * 2) Bad gunplay with poor sound design that makes the weapons feel like toy guns.
 * 3) Hit and collision detection can get pretty buggy at times. Sometimes you can't shoot an enemy if he's hiding behind cover, but he can still shoot you.
 * 4) Your character moves inconveniently slow, even when you're sprinting.
 * 5) The explosive range of the Grenades is really huge and may not give you enough time to get away from one before it explodes.
 * 6) The Guerilla difficulty is incredibly unfair, your character has barely any health, the enemies have perfect aiming and they will throw a lot of grenades. Taking into count that you move very slow and the saving system consists of random checkpoints instead of giving you the option to save the game anywhere, this will be a very frustrating and stressful experience.
 * 7) There's a pretty small variety of weapons to choose from with there only being 18 in total.
 * 8) All of the weapons (Except for the shotguns) have a very small amount of ammo reserves.
 * 9) This game seems to have been made only as a means to cash in on the success of Call of Duty given how heavily and shamelessly it was marketed.
 * 10) The campaign is incredibly short, clocking in at four hours or less.
 * 11) Anti-climactic cliffhanger ending with the Resistance dealing a major blow to the Koreans and Connor sacrificing himself only for it to abruptly end. Mind you, this cliffhanger was never resolved as Crytek and Deep Silver decided to reboot the franchise.
 * 12) Uninteresting and one-dimensional characters, two of which are racial stereotypes. The worst of these is Connor who gets so caught up in killing the enemy that he completely fails to take into account the safety of fellow Americans or ethical boundaries in the process.
 * 13) Stupid plot. A unified Korea under Northern control (or 'The Greater Korean Republic' in the game's universe) has taken over all of Eastern Asia and is now occupying the US. The story hand-waves it by saying that the US was unable to stand up to North Korea due to economic troubles at home, but that doesn't explain how the North Koreans were able to build up a military strong enough to conquer all their neighbors and invade America from across the Pacific. It also doesn't explain how the Koreas were unified before the territorial expansion began.
 * 14) * Apparently, the original concept of the game had China as the opposing faction. However, this was changed to North Korea at the last minute, since THQ wanted to sell the game in China and the Chinese government doesn't allow the sale of media that portrays them in a negative manner.
 * 15) It tries way too hard to be dark and edgy. For example, during the bus ride in the first level, a child's parents are executed right in front of him by KPA soldiers, leaving the poor kid to wail over their lifeless bodies while the soldiers walk away as if nothing happened. The KPA is also shown to be extremely brutal and just as bad as Nazi Germany.
 * 16) * Another level has you and your party hiding in a mass grave as soldiers open fire on it.
 * 17) There are shameless product advertising placements, like Hooters, Full Throttle, and White Castle.
 * 18) * The marketing for this game was just as shameless. At E3 2010, Kaos hired a faux North Korean army to march around at the event in an effort to promote the game. This alone proves that THQ had spent more on this game's marketing than on its development.
 * 19) An album called Homefront: Songs for the Resistance was released along with the game. This album is mainly a compilation of covers of popular songs performed by Metalcore artists that all sound terrible. This albums' existence is possibly due to the developers not having the money to get the actual licensed songs.

Good Qualities

 * 1) Decent voice acting. Connor's voice actor on the other hand isn't all that great.
 * 2) The concept of North Korea taking over America is actually pretty cool, despite the execution.
 * 3) Decent soundtrack.
 * 4) The atmosphere is handled greatly with it really feeling like you're going through a now desolate country.
 * 5) The multiplayer was good. Unfortunately, the servers were shut down in 2013. The PC version still has Third-Party servers active as of 2017, but they are few and far between.

Reception
Homefront was met with mixed reviews across all platforms. Some critics praised the atmosphere and story, while others panned those same aspects, along with the short length of the single-player campaign. However, the multiplayer aspect of Homefront was generally well-received. Review aggregator GameRankings generated a score of 71.70% for the Xbox 360 version, 69.33% for the PlayStation 3 version, and 68.89% for the Microsoft Windows version. Review aggregator Metacritic generated a score of 70 out of 100 across all platforms.

Trivia

 * There was going to be a "proper sequel" developed by Crytek UK, but their 2014 bankruptcy caused the game to be ultimately canceled, and the series to be rebooted.
 * Originally the enemies were supposed to be Chinese (People's Republic of China), but for economical and diplomatic reasons, THQ forced Kaos to replace the Chinese with North Korea/GKR in the final version.
 * Hilariously, in turn with the Japanese version, the premise of a Juche Unified Korea/Greater Korean Republic as the enemy has actually been removed and replaced with references to an "unidentified Northern" enemy due to the complicated history between Japan and Korea. Also, the fact that the antagonists in the game are a unified Korea under Northern rule caused the game to be banned in South Korea.
 * The game predicted Kim Jong-il's death by only a few weeks and the rise of Kim Jong Un as the supreme leader of North Korea. In reality, Kim Jong-il died from a heart attack on December 17, 2011, while in the game he died on January 2, 2012.
 * The game also kind of predicted the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol building. According to the newspapers that can be found in the game, the war in the Middle East combined with an epidemic that killed millions of Americans ruined the economy and led to many riots that ended in martial law.

Videos
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