Homefront was written by John Milius the creative source behind Apocalypse now and Red dawn which also featured an invasion of America. The story is a brilliant concept for a game, turning the tables on their head. Rather than being the aggressor invading some Middle Eastern country you play the role of the insurgents fighting back against a foreign aggressors.

I can’t help but feel that this game missed the boat, the opening section sets up a country overrun and a population in disarray. You play a captured pilot who while being transported to the prison camps is freed in a daring raid by a resistance group. This starts the campaign, it follows on with a pretty enjoyable experience despite being quite linear. The main disappointment comes from when the game finally starts to pick up in the last few missions and it is finally turning into the game you hoped it would be, it’s all over way too quickly. Reports of 3-5 hours in length are simply not good enough.

I had hoped this game would delve further into the story but for the most part the history of how the conflict came about is played out through newspaper clippings that you must read. It gives you a good idea of what happened but it does seem a bit cheap and if you don’t stop to read the clippings you may be left thinking the conflict is really farfetched. They could have also buffed out the game with some RPG elements and some side missions. I know they are cheap tricks to buff games out, but this is a story I was interested in exploring further.

The length aside the solo campaign is quite enjoyable and while it’s not earth shattering it does set up the franchise to go from strength to strength and maybe take the criticisms on board to make a really great series. Generally they have everything else working quite well. The gameplay is pretty standard and the controls are all pretty standard. In fact the game does look and play fine it just won’t blow you away.