I picked up Homefront yesterday and F***ING HELL. Wow. It is a seriously bad game.

I thought for a long time that the game looked very promising. The idea of setting the game in an American suburb of a f***ed up alternate future where Korea becomes an Imperial superpower intruiged me.

The developers said their biggest influences were Half Life 2 and Children of Men - in my opinion two pieces of media that have a brilliant atmosphere and an appealing setting.

They promised it wasn't just going to be another COD clone; shuffling behind Activision's behemoth, feeding off of any scrap or morsel that it leaves in it's wake.

They promised the game would focus on the people, and the real horror of war and occupation. That it would focus on the lives of Americans trying to survive in an unimaginable situation.

If only...

I think the moment that I came to the realisation that I hated Homefront was when I was tasked with blowing up AA guns. Not being funny, but how many times have I blown up AA guns in a game before? In fact, I think I have blown up AA guns in every single COD game I've played. The first COD game had AA guns, and it came out in 2003...seriously I'm f***ing fed up with AA guns.

****************SPOILERS INCLUDED FROM HERE ON OUT. NOT THAT THERES MUCH WORTH SPOILING************

Rage {ON] OFF

The first 10 minutes or so are very promising. The introductionary cutscene does a good job of explaining how world events have created the future of Homefront, and the bus-ride is honestly one of the most poignant moments I have ever experienced in a game. Then you are rescued, and from that moment on the game takes a pretty big swan dive; never truely recovering. A moment when you walk through a resistance camp gives you a nice breather, but when you later return to the base and find everyone dead, there hasn't been enough of a connection with the resistance themselves to truely give a s***.

The fact that KAOS were apparently aiming to avoid similarities with COD surprised me, since there are so many things copy pasted from COD games: a fight on a bridge, PERHAPS ABOUT HALF THE GAME THAT IS SET IN AMERICA SINCE MW2 ALREADY DID THAT, a level where you are tasked with sniping specific targets, a level where you and your mate(s) move around stealthily knifing people and you CANT BE CAUGHT, an ingame cutscene in a moving vehicle, forcing you to watch horrifying events, a fight in a farm, a vehicle turreted section, a keep the convoy alive level, and they even manage to shoe-horn in one of those COD levels where you're in a really high plane using the black and white grainy camera to destory vehicles and people...

The problem with COD and its clones is that they don't understand pacing. At all. Not even in the slightest. In fact I always liken COD games to Michael Bay movies - a lot of flash but no f***ing substance. Homefront follows suit, though does have a few breathers.

Then there's the story. Not even really worth mentioning.

And the characters? Wow. That guy, the generic macho, angry, tattooed, veteran guy. Why...WHY do people put these types of characters into games? Even COD manages to avoid them (except Black Ops - thanks Treyarch).

There's that girl and shes sad because the other guy dies, and there's the guy who looks east-asian that everyone they meet seems to hate, and I still felt no sympathy for him what-so-ever because NO ONE IN THIS GAME IS FLESHED OUT. NO ONE. NOT EVEN BIG-BALLS (I forget his name - the angry one).

To top it all off, the game took me all of 5 hours to complete, and there's no difficulty levels...and the difficulty spiked quite wildly. Also, why do bullets hurt more if they are shot by someone who is closer to you? Is that a real life thing? Because it started massively f***ing me off.

The checkpoints were **** too, especially on the convoy level...

So yeah don't play this horrible f***ing game. Just watch the opening 10 minutes on youtube and think about how awesome the game could have been.

I only rented it so yeay.

Rage ON [OFF]