Homefront: The Revolution – Half-Life
Homefront: The Revolution is a title that promised so much and delivered so very little. Numerous bugs, a nonsensical plot, and repetitive gameplay ruined what was a fairly innovative narrative premise, especially in a genre that suffers from over saturation.
We don’t see many FPS titles that emphasize a substantive single player campaign, and while it’s easy to poke fun at Homefront: The Revolution’s rather inevitable demise, it truly was a shame that its tortured development failed to improve on the lacklustre original.
To cite a seminal classic title such as Half-Life in the same breath almost feels seems like sacrilege given its poor reception. After all, Half-Life needs no introduction as the godfather of FPS titles, and one of the most critically acclaimed games ever made. Moreover, you’d be hard pressed not to find a FPS developer that didn’t cite Half-Life as a source of inspiration for their game.
Yet, Homefront’s use of its game environment as a device for dystopian storytelling is one aspect in particular that borrows heavily from Half-Life. Indeed, Half-Life’s brilliance derived from its ability to tell a story despite a silent protagonist, and without the need for the scripted action that has become a norm for the genre today. And even if Homefront: The Revolution wasn’t quite able to implement that to same degree, the game was, at least, a commendable attempt to offer a point of difference from other titles in the genre.
