Homefront The Revolution

Thanks for the thoughts Flanker! I pretty much agree with your assessment.

I'm not terribly far into the game because I'm waiting for a patch to come out. Quite a few people have hit a hard block in one of the sectors they are trying to liberate and now their games are "stuck" (this is on PC as well). I've no desire to experience that. Plus TBH I've been milking it a bit because it's a guilty pleasure in the wake of the aborted Far Cry Primal so I kinda don't want to blow through it real quick.

My impressions:

COMBAT - Punishing even at normal difficulty. The enemies can take you down in 3-4 hits (less from a sniper rifle). Inversely you can dispatch LOW LEVEL enemies fairly easily with headshots or 2 body shots at close range (or 1 shotgun or sniper blast). This ramps up pretty quickly with the game introducing more and more enemies who (of course) soak more bullets - commanders, heavies, armored trucks, tank drones and the like. So while YOU are always at the disadvantage the enemy is not. I like that I finally have a hard game, but I hate the whole bullet sponge thing. Fortunately as Flanker says you are given some heavier gear to deal with heavier enemies it just the damage model is strange at times.

Case in point - an SMG will generally be lethal at short range, but anything beyond say 8-10 meters and suddenly you use damn near a clip to kill the same guy. I'm not completely opposed to it (despite it being unrealistic), but the game has NO qualms about sending large waves of enemies at you and I can't even tell you how many times I've been killed reloading my clip after each kill. I would rather have realistic damage and lots of weak enemies peppered with a few tough guys to deal with, but eh despite it's frustration the game does a good job of reminding you that you are NOT Rambo but rather a guerrilla fighter who works best via hit and run and surprise attacks.

Which brings me to HEALTH - No regeneration! Yes! Finally a game that doesn't give you magic powers to hide behind a rock and heal up. Sadly we still have magic syringes which mend bullet wounds just fine, but hey a step in the right direction. Interestingly health syringes CANNOT be crafted. Instead you have to find them scattered around the game world (there are a ton along with a staggeringly huge amount of spare ammo and explosives just laying about). Alternatively you can buy them from Weapon Chests which look suspiciously just like the ones from Far Cry 3 (perhaps a bit more modern this time around though)

WEAPONS - Handle well and are interesting. As Flanker stated you are initially limited to a pistol and a primary. Later on your get a third RPG which you can swap for a different primary, but ultimately you have a max of 3 weapons at any time and the pistol is required. While ammo is named in a somewhat realistic fashion the weapons themselves are completely fictional. One unique aspect is you can buy 2 different conversion kits for each weapon allowing you to alter that weapon in the field and thus making each weapon actually THREE weapons. For example the starter pistol can be converted into an SMG or a Pneumatic Pistol (kind of STALKER or Metro 2033 vibe) that you can charge up for extra damage. Each weapon can use various attachments you buy although the pistol is the only thing that can be silenced (edit - sorry technically the crossbow is silent as well)

Weapons feel and handle OK for this kind of game. Each is unique. Some seem rather niche and I don't really get the point of them, but perhaps there are enemies or uses they excel at that I haven't figured out. Recoil exists but it's not really something you can counter with the mouse very well. It's just sort of instantly jerks and falls back into your aim. It feels... odd to me. I guess it doesn't matter that much since you can buy attachments and upgrades to help counter it and typically I burst fire anyway.

You CANNOT pick up enemy weapons which I think is actually a plus. I'm sure there's some kind of ingame lore for this since the North Koreans are portrayed as being technological geniuses (sic). I would imagine the have DNA safeties or some such. At any rate there's no lack of ammo and yes you cna loot their bodies (which surpise surprise hold ammo YOU need but they have no reason to be carrying - "oh you have a shotgun but I just looted some extra crossbow bolts? Makes total sense" )

CRAFTING - there's a very limited crafting system where you can create molotovs and other types of hurled/placed explosive type devices. One nice touch is you have to open the weapon wheel and hold down space bar to craft the item. While this is going on combat does NOT stop and you can get killed. Same thing with customizing your weapon - you need to be sure to get into cover or get it sorted before setting off the alarm. Unlike other games of it's ilk you are limited to just 4 of any one type of explosive which is a sharp contrast to say toting around dozens of hand grenades, C4, Mines, etc.

LOOT - rather poorly implemented unfortunately. Loot takes the form of 4 different kinds of crafting components to craft the aforementioned throwables. There are also "valuables" you can loot from drawers and discarded electronics, but tbh you just a text notification that you grabbed a "can of tuna" or a "power supply". Loot has NO kind of HUD integration and you can never see it. Only an indicator that you've collect x out of a max of 20 (can be doubled to 40 with a later upgrade). When you hit a weapons chest you have a single button to dump all loot and get rewarded cash. It's a bit odd since the loot items actually have slightly different values ranging from $5-$20 (approx), but there's no real way to interact with this and pick and choose the best loot, drop/discard it or do anything with it at all... so no plithy loot descriptions this time around. The loot naming is rather uninspired (or realistic depending on your point of view).

When you die you lose all of your "valuables" you haven't sold yet, but oddly not your cash nor any other kind of penalty. You respawn at the nearest safehouse. Pretty typical for these games, but I wish it was a little more punishing to encourage you to try and be careful. Given that it's a bit of brutal game maybe you shouldn't be harshly punished for dying too often...

HUD - obnoxious. This game does everything we hate and more from other games of it's genre - huge red dots on the minimap for enemies, glowing items, lots of large HUD elements and text that can get in the way, icons in the 3D space to show you exactly where to go. Hopefully a future patch will allow the HUD elements to be adjusted or at least a button to hide the HUD the way you can in FC4.

There is a camera gadget in the game. This time it's part of your cell phone which is pretty neatly implemented along with email, a GPS map, etc. The camera does allow tagging just like the FC series of games.

SKILLS / RPG - unlike other games there is no XP, levels or skills sets. There are however a variety of pieces of expensive gear you can buy that replaces most of the major skill bennies you normall get - i.e. boots that let you crouch walk faster, a backpack to hold more valuables and body armor to give you an extra hit or two in combat.

My chief complaint here is that the game world has WAYYY too much loot, ammo and money (Kyrat anyone) and so in just a few hours you can purchase just about everything. To make matters worse each mission you complete frequently gives you hundreds if not thousands of dollars making the process even easier.

Some weapon kits and throwable upgrades are hidden behind a "tech point" wall. You earn tech points by taking missions and liberating outposts. Again you get these in large clumps so not going to take you days to unlock everything.

STORY - not bad, but not stellar either. The acting is OK but some of the characters have a lot of... well.. "character" but not in a good way. The villains of the game are mostly faceless entities. There's some minor baddies to move the story along, but no stand out Vaas or Pagan for this game.

Ethan Brady the protagonist you play is completely silent. He never speaks which leads to some awkward and unintended comedy in the cutscenes. I guess they thought a silent hero is better than a poorly voiced and written one. After the fiasco of Jason (who had too MUCH personality) and Ajay (who was as bland as a biscuit) this may have been a smart play... particularly if this game was as rushed and unpolished as it feels around the edges.

Overall I think it makes great strides in the FPS "open world" genre. I really do like it. I don't think it's better than the other games I've played of it's kind (FC2-4 and Dying Light), but I DO enjoy the change of environment and the unique features it brings to the table.

I think it's getting a lot of undeserved hate at the moment simply because it was prematurely released with a lot of bugs, but lets be honest we've all seen the AI fuck up and do REALLY weird stuff in other AA titles. Many folks have had framrate and shadow issues, glitches, bugs etc. in the other games this one mimics. There's nothing extraordinary different about the problems this game is tackling.

Someone complained that a convoy they were following disappeared when it rounded a corner and others are saying the AI sometimes gets stuck in place and trys to walk against a wall or an object. ORLY? I wonder where we have seen those kinds of bugs before???

I'm not sure this game is worth the $60.00 price tag atm. In fact it may never be. I personally think I would wait for it to go down to $40 or less and let a patch or two come out to address the most egregious errors, BUT if you are like me and you LOVE this kind of game I think you would be remiss to skip it completely.

I probably overpaid for it (I DID find a small discount) and I'm not liking some of the bugs, but I'm not upset that I did and I think it was a worthwhile game to add to my collection.