Homefront: The Revolution - fire sale

I want to love this game so much, but it's plagued with every bad design decision we hate in Far Cry - massive amounts of easy "loot" and ammo, bad enemy AI, aggressive culling of units so that they sometimes literally appear and disappear within view (especially if you are using scope and trying to snipe). Not to mention a thousand hand holding conveniences like flashing objects and enemies on the radar (even if unspotted)

The story is... well it's pretty good actually. It's not going to win any academy awards and some of the characters are a bit cringeworthy, but overall it's a solid story of being in a rebellion and dealing with a military occupation.

Combat is so-so. If you up the difficulty you can't take a ton of hits, but you still have armor, health packs and all that jazz. *Most* enemies aren't too bullet spongy, but there are some mechanized things that are tough to take down with guns (use explosives, RPGs and the like) I;m not sure where to rate it compared to other games, but to me like a lot of the game it's just "ok". Like I said the enemy AI will have your head shaking sometimes. Walking against walls like they are stuck. Sometimes they literally watch me dive into a dumpster and they just walk away because to them I don't exist any more.

The "open world" is a series of city blocks connect to each other by underground tunnels. These areas are kind of claustrophobic, but not horribly so. Think the levels in the dishonored games. The complaint here is that there isn't much open air fighting. Any of the Far Cry's have WAYYY more open spaces. The bulk of this game is inside of buildings, tight alleys, skulking about streets, etc. So that's one part good and one part bad in my book. It's a lot different than Far Cry, but a lot less... "elbow room" as well. Even Dying Light has a much more open feel to it and larger area to work with.

Now the thing is is a day or two a huge final DLC comes out that takes the fight beyond the walls of the city and they are showing off open countryside areas like lakes and farmhouses, etc. It has a very similar vibe to the way that last Dying Light DLC came out and shook things up. I think that may help this game a bit more.

Is it worth $10? Hell yeah it is. Is it worth a lot more than that... nahhh I can't say it would be. As a definitely Far Cry style FPS I would say it's very much worth a play. Just set your expectations about mid-height and you won't be hugely disappointed. 6/10 maybe ? Feel like I would be stretching it to say it was a 7/10... maybe with the DLCs...

PS - The first Homefront game is also worth a play as well. It's way more linear (in the way Ghost Recon Future Soldier is), but there's a lot to like about it as well. Then again I'm a sucker for "occupied America" settings Patriotism and all that.

Well I'm sad to report that Beyond the Walls DLC is some of the shortest DLC I've ever experienced

I guess it's about 2 - 3 hours if you stealth it out. Really unfortunate because I feel like there was a lot of improvement here - outdoor areas, some limits to weapons and gear, the protagonist actually talks quite a bit in this one (in the main game Ethan Brady is one of those mostly "silent heroes") and an epic storyline that is wayyyy too short.

Also this DLC is clearly meant as an epilogue to the main game so really it should be played after the main campaign is finished.

Anyway it's just a string of encounters and not a mini-campaign in any way shape or form. Too bad because what little it presents is very good.

Still hoping someone comes up with mod tools for this game.

Yeah I saw that tool Steve. Thanks for pointing it out though. I wasn't smart enough to ever backup my game files so I only have the latest version of Homefront Hopefully that tool will be updated sometime or someone else will come along and make one. I guess they removed Denuvo protection from it with the last patch so maybe now it will be easier for the compression guys to decrypt.