Homefront
So my Crysis 2 post from yesterday got me thinking… There is another FPS in the pipeline, Another shooter placing you in the shattered homestead of the United States, where the world has already taken its turn for the worst and the only option left to ensure your survival is sickening and gratuitous violence – dispensed from the barrel of a gun. Today I’m going to look at Homefront.
I’ve read the back-story and the press release, so I’ll fill you in on the basics. The game is set 17 years in the future in an America that has been brought to its knees by a global economic meltdown. Strangely enough, it isn’t China that comes stomping into Hollywood, but the evil and insidious Greater Korean Republic. The country is quickly turned into a warzone, its football stadiums turned into detention centres, its shopping malls shelter armoured attack vehicles. You will fight alongside regular men and women that have joined together to form a resistance against the Korean occupation force and a police state.
OK, so the story concept isn’t exactly knockout and it already conjures up scenes from the latter half of Modern Warfare 2. You’ll also be using weapons you might already be familiar with. Luckily for America, most of the resistance will already be quite proficient with the M16, the SCAR and the LMG, having previously used them in hundreds of first person shooters prior to the Korean occupation. The same goes for the Humvee, the Apache Helicopter or the Abrams Tank – all present in this game.
I’m unsure as to exactly why this is all so underwhelming. Perhaps the “not so far distant future” FPS is being done to death at the moment (probably). Maybe the present day theatre of war needs to be given a rest for a bit, like they seem to have done for World War 2. Maybe it’s a question of personal taste – I tend to lean more towards science fiction anyway, which is why Crysis 2 seems so much more exciting to me. I doubt we’ll be seeing and weird and wonderful aliens descend into the midst of the American-Korean conflict to cut their ranks asunder with bright green lazorz in Homefront.
“Homefront isn’t about going to war on the other side of the world or battling aliens from another planet; it’s about fighting foreign invaders in your own backyard and defending your right to live,”
David Votypka, design director
I guess what I really need from Homefront is a twist or a hook – a MacGuffin to really pull me in. One thing that has peaked my interest is that writer John Milius (Apocalypse Now) is involved so there is still hope for an explosive story – one in which I care enough about the characters to want to keep them alive. I really want to be proven wrong by this one, so THQ don’t let us down! (they rarely do, to be fair.)
Homefront will be available for PC, XBOX360 and PS3 on the 22nd February 2011
