Nice review and recap. I never finished Homefront but I bought and finished Homefront The Revolution this year. It was a pretty good time, it tried to be more of a sandbox.
Thanks. I've played the second game, I might do a review. I actually did like it much more. Different studio, different engine, and a reboot of the "franchise" (I don't know if one previous entry justifies calling it a franchise). The sequel's setup was felt much less like Red Dawn and much more Cyberpunk overlord dystopia with a minor Korea flair. Game is basically Far Cry in a city.
Game is basically Far Cry in a city.
I believe I remember thinking that while playing. But I like Far Cry games. And I paid $4 for it, that didn't hurt.
I remember the multi-player being not half bad and they had a few neat mechanics built into it to get vehicles and such.
Shame it never really got to shine
Yeah I don't remember much from the campaign other than the white phosphorus scene and the literal last scene of the game, but I remember having a total blast with the multiplayer for a while. Definitely felt like a really cool combo of CoD and Battlefield
Dude, I remember the intro, where the terrorists kill the kid's parents in front of him, holy fuck.
That kinda freaked me out a bit, on a video game.
I have quite fond memories of playing this games story, and never touched the mp (none of my friends had it). I liked it enough to pick up the second one shortly after release; it's still in my pile of untouched steam games, but I really should play it sometime. I just started on Borderlands: the pre sequel, after receiving it as a gift at launch. Patience I guess, I'll get to it eventually.
It's interesting - I view cod as a try-hard series, both in playerbase and in development (money printer go brr). Call me counter culture or something, but I just don't jive with the whole masses and their hype train. I really liked COD4, but that was likely because it was my first exposure to it. I went on to play, what, World at War (?) and thought it was trash, that one where "what do the numbers mean", and then MW2 which was /fine/ for a once-and-done playthrough. I haven't revisited the franchise since. "oh no, bad people in sand place are doing bad things and you should not think about it and just indescrimimately murder until we say so" as the story, give it "future ultra warfare X" behind the cod name, and bam, buy your next yacht. Two, why the hell not.
I also really liked Spec Ops: The Line, another game where seemingly nobody else has heard about it. Maybe the twist of not always being the good guys, coming to terms that war actually has depth beyond 'double kill', not always being on the offensive, not always "fuck yeah America"... is why I like these two titles in particular. COD, anything Tom Clancy or Battlefield, is just so... cookie-cutter bullshit. I like The Division/2 as well, likely for the same reason. We/Nato aren't always the good guys in a conflict.
I dunno. Maybe I'm just getting old.
I liked it enough to pick up the second one shortly after release; it’s still in my pile of untouched steam games, but I really should play it sometime.
It is very different. Much closer to a Far Cry game than the original's linear design. The story is also rebooted. You may or may not end up liking it.
MW2 which was /fine/ for a once-and-done playthrough. I haven’t revisited the franchise since. “oh no, bad people in sand place are doing bad things and you should not think about it and just indescrimimately murder until we say so”
The final villain of MW2 was an American general. Out of all the sand levels in MW2, you're shooting at American CIA goons in all of them except for one (two, if you count the obstacle course where you're shooting at paper targets).
I think the games copying Call Of Duty tended to rely on desert settings a lot more than COD itself. Between COD4 and the reboot of the Modern Warfare series, while the gameplay of Call Of Duty did stagnate, it was all over the place in terms of settings. After COD4's middle east levels, there were very few returns to the middle east or Afghanistan until the Modern Warfare reboot.
I also really liked Spec Ops: The Line, another game where seemingly nobody else has heard about it.
Spec Ops: The Line actually won multiple story awards the year it was released. For being story heavy, sort of surprise twist on the military genre that came out of nowhere, it received plenty of attention. While underperformed in sales (despite initially releasing with high launch sales in the UK), it has become something of a cult classic, with reviews from some of the larger gaming channels covering it.
It's okay, Spec Ops: The Line and Call Of Duty games can co-exist. Sometimes heavy subversive narratives are just what's needed to shake things up, but not every game needs to be heavy.
I played this game around when it came out as a kid at a family members house we were visiting while sick.
My only memory was beating it and about an afternoon, that it's story was completely nonsensical, and that it was basically just a mediocre call of duty clone but achieved my goal of killing an afternoon quite well.
WTF. I got this game years ago and only just started playing it, and you have made a review on it. What?
Cowards should've made China the enemy. North Korea just wasn't believable. It's Red Dawn all over again!
Ngl the only reason I remember playing this game is because of all the bugs I ran into while playing.
Don't get me wrong the gameplay was great when it worked but getting killed by npc's that can see and shoot through walls was infuriating.
I remember one part specifically where you were fighting in a suburban residential area and I got killed by the same npc's on the second story of the same blue house like 12 times because even though the second story had failed to load visually for me it was still physically there. So even though I could see them I had no way of knowing when I could actually shoot back effectively
There was so much fucking potential in this game. Execution was... meh.
It always struck me as odd that, the pilot, the linchpin of their entire fucking plan, was CONSTANTLY in the line of fire.
I never made it much past the white phosphorus bit. I saw the potential being squandered and the gameplay was, as OP said, textbook for shooters at the time. A bit janky, if I'm remembering right, another nail in its coffin for me.
I saw the second one release and never bothered to look into it.