Well, here's a franchise I never thought would
have the balls to show its face around these
parts again: Homefront, the contemporary shooter
hinging on the ever so slightly barmy premise
that North Korea could be a credible threat
rather than the national equivalent of a talkative
Counterstrike player.
Oh but it's alright, it's an alternative universe
North Korea that found a whole bunch of money
and military tech in a Christmas cracker or
something and now wants to muscle a considerably
weaker country on the other side of the world
for no adequate reason.
But if you're going to make alt-North Korea
so wildly different to the real world equivalent
then why even call it North Korea, call it
Bastardstan or Spermany.
I feel like the starting point must have been
a slightly creepy desire to kill North Koreans
and then they had to tortuously contrive a
scenario in which the conflict wasn't totally
unfair.
The first Homefront was a linear shooter about
as worth committing to memory as the lyrics
to Agadoo, and Homefront: Revolution seems
barely connected at all.
Incidentally, well done for using the single
most overused subtitle, you fucking - oh hang
on, my mistake, it's actually called Homefront:
The Revolution.
Well that's alright then.
Carry on.
In Homefront world, North Korea is a global
centre of tech manufacturing and the US is
cripplingly indebted to it.
Guys, if you want the villains to be China,
just make the villains China.
Dancing a twelve foot-radius around it is
just undignified.
Anyway, The People's Republic Of Chorea call
in the debt, occupy and enslave the US and
you're part of a guerrilla resistance movement
to take the country back.
The problem is, or rather the first problem
on the dizzying pile I've prepared for today,
is that while the whole alt-universe thing
asks us to mentally disassociate from the
North Korea we're familiar with, we're simultaneously
asked to root for America based on our knowledge
of the real-world version, rather than the
deadbeat nationwide slum presented for us
here.
I dunno, doesn't seem like Korth Norea could
run the place any worse.
Oh but the evil lurking behind the friendly
facade of the occupying force is revealed
in the intro sequence as our character is
interrogated by a sadistic torturer before
escaping and rejoining the resistance, who
mistake us for a spy and take us to be interrogated
by their sadistic torturer, and I guess we're
supposed to think it's cute this time?
What purpose could the 'sadistic torturer
speed dating' sequence possibly have except
to establish that both sides are cocks?
And the Shmorth Shmoreans at least have better
hygiene.
So with our investment in the struggle completely
not established, the game finally gets going,
with a shuddering cough and a little squirt
of piss into its pants.
Homefront: The Refrigerator has technical
issues the way the Waffen-SS had a few bad
apples.
This is the worst audio mixing I've ever heard
in what purports to be a finished game.
Is that all you've got, Yahtzee?
Do you really give that much of a shit about
audio mixing?
No I bloody don't.
Nobody does.
So imagine how godawful the audio mixing has
to be that I consider it important to mention.
I was being talked to by an NPC on our way
down a corridor and my fucking footstep sounds
were drowning out his speech.
It was like my shoes were trying to do the
Bane voice.
But even if you're the kind of Biblical messiah
who can forgive the sin of bad audio mixing,
the frame rate was so awful I could practically
hear the clicking of the joints of the old
man turning the crank, and the game freezes
for five seconds every single time it autosaves
like you're trying to watch a Youtube video
on an oil rig.
And whenever it happened, every single time
I would cross my little fingers and say a
little prayer.
"Please crash.
Go on, you pussy.
Give me the excuse."
No such luck, but Backyard: The Renovation
is a sandbox game, which are at increased
risk of buggering up, so there was always
the chance of it buggering itself to death
at some point.
It's a sandbox shooter in the inevitable 'liberate
all the districts' mould, but I wonder if
as the medium has evolved we have rather lost
touch with the essential purpose of the sandbox
shooter.
The word sandbox implies carefree entertainment
free of the restrictions of linear game design,
and the word 'shooter' implies that the bang-bangs
will be going into the man-mans.
But it seems like there's nothing that Human:
The Resources wants to avoid more than those
two things, with the possible exception of
adequate QA testing.
The game cheerfully supplies you with shitty
standard FPS weapons and puts an emphasis
on weapon modding and crafting, and then if
you actually try to get into a shootout to
make use of it all you get a clip round the
ear, because enemies just keep on coming and
your health bar empties faster than a cake
shop after your mum gets off the leash.
"Guerrilla warfare, yer idiot!
Stop trying to have fun and go hide in a bin."
The districts are split between secure yellow
zones, where you use stealth to avoid having
fun, and contested red zones, where you use
motorbikes to avoid having fun.
The motorbikes are just there so you can quickly
get around without having to fight things,
even if you try to run enemies over you go
straight through them.
It takes quite a bit of effort to make motorbiking
around a combat zone not fun, so well done
on that front.
Homefront.
In both kinds of district liberating the individual
regions largely involves finding the one slightly
obscure route through a stronghold to press
the 'liberate region' button, at which point
the occupying armed enemy soldiers all shrug
their shoulders and piss off.
Well, maybe all your resistance chums get
so inspired by your button-pressing prowess
that they chase the baddies away, but frankly
I doubt it, because I saw the resistance in
action and 'inaction' is precisely the word
for it.
You can enlist passing resistance members
to aid you, and I attempted this precisely
once, because my new chum spent the whole
time consistently standing in the doorway
I was trying to get through.
Yes, the buggery continues.
The AI in this game would struggle to pass
remedial colouring-in lessons.
The characters must all have hitboxes like
brick chimneys because they can get stuck
on discarded crisp packets.
The one incident which was the defining moment
of the game for me took place in a resistance
hideout where I guess I'd forgotten to flush
the toilet properly before I left because
two NPCs came over and pinned me to a wall.
They both stood staring at me refusing to
move and every time I tried to get past they'd
hurl foul-mouthed abuse.
Well, fuck you too, game.
If I wanted this treatment I'd have attended
my brother's wedding.
And if Hurdy the Gurdy doesn't end up in the
year's bottom 5 then it's a fucking depressing
six months ahead.
The problem, by which I mean the rancid underlying
problem upon which all the other problems
scuttle and defecate, is that it's chasing
a trend that we've already left behind.
No-one wants contemporary shooters anymore.
Battlefield has decided it's going to wring
some fun out of World War 1 and good luck
to them because that's like wringing apologetic
tears out of Hillary Clinton, while Call of
Duty is off to fight Zargon warships on the
planet shithouse.
Meanwhile the success of Doom and Overwatch
shows a lean towards good old-fashioned fast-paced
fun violence on a layer of shrink-wrapped
bum cheeks.
Homefront the Revolution is just a game that's
past its time.
Its time was 1346 AD when the Black Death
broke out.
