Homefront: The Revolution Beta Impressions – Save Yourselves!

IRB Gamer stepped into The Revolution beta, the second installment to Homefront, originally by THQ and Kaos Stidios. Now under the development of Dambuster Studios, it’s a questionable push to revive a shooter that began with mixed reviews and now only the hype of The Revolution trailers; until now.

Similar to Tom Clancy’s: The Division Beta, you’re given limited access to character customization. While not as detailed when selecting the look of your player, you are given a unique background. The background you choose whether a baseball player, gangbanger or a personal trainer grants you special skills like throwing farther than normal, running faster and more.

Between the three missions it was a challenge attempting to play all due to either bad servers or finding people online willing to play. Infiltration was the most successful mission so I can fairly speak to the overall experience.

Homefront: The Revolution is a first person shooter with the modern concept but an ancient feel. As a reminder you are a group of civilians looking to take back what been taken away, your freedom. Gameplay itself felt like a cross between Call of Duty 2: Big Red One and the worse World War II shooter out on legacy consoles PS3/Xbox 360.

The game allows you to either play strategically utilizing stealth or allowing the enemy to spot you and go in guns blazing. There were plenty of enemies and armored vehicles needing to be taken down, but only so many bullets to do so. Luckily there are 4 players in total in this co-op shooter. In addition you can scavenge for items in buildings and falling foes.

Yes the game informs you plenty of times of being in beta phase, but overall, it didn’t seem ready. You’d wonder was it even ready for Alpha! The AI in the game was for the most part completely dumbfounded. From a distance I took a shot at them only to watch them briefly take cover and retake their post like nothing happened. Even in streets I managed to blind fire, run out of bullets, reload and keep shooting without the enemy ever looking my way.

When shot down other players have the ability to revive you, literally whenever they feel like it. Unlike most games you don’t bleed out because of too much activity to allow a teammate to revive. Getting kills however earn you XP (experience points) and cash, allowing you to upgrade skills and unlock crates awarding you weapons, attachments and more.

The overall gameplay failed to leave any lasting impressions and was quite honest uninspiring. I’m truly hoping this was because of it being early concept. Considering previous betas such as Destiny, The Division and Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, gamers know to expect high level quality with minor inconsistencies. Homefront is in short low-level resolution with a plethora of things gone wrong.

Sadly the list is rather long with what’s wrong in Homefront: The Revolution. Before starting a game session your player stands center screen with a rifle. You notice here character limbs disfigure and glitch out of place, and that’s just pregame.

At one point I managed to go (-2) in ammo. How in the heck do you manage to go negative in bullets, owing the game 2 bullets? I can deal with the bad framerate, horrible audio that makes almost everything sound distant and the loading screen appearing every time someone dropped out. But how do you go from 120 rounds to negative 2? The worst of the worst have at least ensured the laws of physics were in place.

Lastly, I was surprised how challenging it was to play Homefront as players were seldom. In addition, there was no option to start solo and allow drop-in/drop-out during game sessions, making the early impression of an online only title.

It was overall a disappointment with online capabilities that felt even worse than THQ/Kaos attempt to adjust the servers. The old saying is if it ain’t broke, but what about when it is? Here’s to hoping this game doesn’t take an arrow to the knee by putting an unfinished product on shelves. May 17^th needs to be pushed back and this game needs serious help, along with a second development team.