I need to confess: Homefront: The Revolution looks good. After the disappointment of the original, I had extremely low expectations for any further games in the series. Under a new developer and publisher, though, the sequel seems to be pushing all the right buttons in my robot gamer heart to pique my interest.
For one, this game tells the story of a dictator-approved North Korea having taken over the US; society is falling apart, and the citizens are forced to fall in line. The trailer that debuted this week, “Thank You”, paints that picture with a nice brush, starting off with a trembling young boy reading off a speech of compliance that slowly transforms into one of defiance. We’re tasked with taking on the role of a guerrilla soldier, fighting back against the tyranny. It’s another great Deep Silver trailer for a game — they’ve become the masters of the pre-movie tease that I *actually* go to the theaters for.
That’s all nice and pretty, but gameplay is obviously more important that a mood-setting CGI glamour shot. Thankfully the publishers understand this and have dropped along a 6-minute gameplay clip to show us what Homefront will actually play like. And it looks good! Fun, even! There’s fighting on land by foot and even motorcycle, and into buildings and through towns. The visuals remind me of a Bioshock-level atmosphere, and mixing that with a military shooter should be an interesting experiment.
Co-op multiplayer in the game will allow groups to form resistance cells and complete specific goals on the way to freedom, which sounds like a way to get a few friends together into small consistent forces instead of nameless sides in a traditional multiplayer FPS arena. It was announced that Beta access would be coming to Xbox One this Winter for those interested in checking out how the new game will play compared to the original.
Homefront: The Revolution will be televised in 2016.
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