Homefront

Homefront is the next big shooter for next generation systems and the PC. Brought to you from the writer of Red Dawn and Apocalypse Now, this shooter feels second rate in comparison most shooters in recent memory and some not so recent.

I'm not going to go deep into the story as that's about the only thing going for this game, even if the story beats are as subtle as possible, but you play a man rescued by resistance fighters in Korean occupied America. You will go through suburban landscapes destroyed by the Korean occupation and see what Americans are going through in what is now their day to day life. Let me say, their new day to day operation consists of going through one animation so don't get too interested. This is one of the most vanilla and boring shooters I've played in recent memory and anything this game attempts to do is done better in other games easily available to you. Do you want to shoot through urban environments? Modern Warfare 2 did it better. Do you want to feel gritty combat that has intense action? Killzone 3 does it better. Do you want an incredible modern combat era multiplayer shooter? Bad Company 2, Black Ops, and Modern Warfare 2 do it better.

Graphically I was severely disappointed in the game. Mostly I can forgive graphics if the game itself excels in certain areas or is compelling enough to see through rough patches, but alas the game looks as if you are playing Fallout 3 on a Playstation 3 in standard definition. Models look bad at far away and even up close, horrible lack of V-Sync (which to be honest us Ps3 players are used to BUT a developer can work around that if they aren't lazy), horrible AI scripting, bad way pointing, screen tearing, audio glitches, and the list literally goes on. I had my AI companions get stuck in the level's geometry 3 times in a row, each time causing me to reload the last checkpoint.  Several times I would die in an attempt to move out of the line of fire only to get stuck on an invisible wall.

The weapons and items in the game are pretty standard and nothing to get excited about using. If you've played a shooter taking place anytime since the year 2000 you've shot these guns before. They also have that annoying issue where you can't really feel the weight of the gun when you shoot. Weapons feel like you are carrying cardboard cutouts of what you should have.

Multiplayer is standard modern combat stuff but they spice it up a tad. I won't go too in depth on the multiplayer as I have only spent about an hour in it, but check the main Giant Bomb review for a better in depth look at that.

Overall this shooter feels as if someone walked into the developer's studio and shouted “WE CHANGED OUR MIND THIS SHIPS NEXT WEEK!” Clearly the marketing team for the game was given a higher budget than the developers, but that happens from time time these days. I can only hope the developer is either given better resources or more time on their next project. Then again, they could get lucky like Danger Close at EA and the game sell gangbusters resulting in another shot at a sequel.  
 
I am not sure if all of the graphical issues I had with the game are Ps3 exclusive as I know the PC version looked "decent" when I've seen it previously, but I couldn't imagine the AI,scripting, or way pointing issues to be PS3 exclusive.  The only thing this game makes me want to do is play my copy of Freedom Fighters for Ps2.