Sneaking around a Yellow Zone, for example, attempting to take out heavily-armed vehicle patrols head-on would be a suicidal venture, because there are no armed rebels to back you up.
![homefront the revolution homefront the revolution](https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/025/995/502/large/rory-durno-screenshot026.jpg)
Not so in Homefront, which forces you to carefully survey the field before attacking (or indeed deciding that in a given situation, it’s best not to attack). Many shooters play to the fantasy of casting you as a gifted, bullet-sponge capable of turning the tide of a conflict single-handedly – from the gung-ho antics of Doom Guy to the preternaturally gifted, drug-fuelled heroes of the Far Cry series. Sure, it’s not a Dark Souls-style ‘scream in anguish each time you cark it’ penal system, but at least you’ll pause for thought before you engage the enemy next time you enter the fray, making you a better guerrilla fighter in the long run. From my plentiful experiences of dying in Homefront, I can confirm that you lose a substantial portion of the scavenged goods (which you offload to traders for money) on your person at the time. To make you feel the weight of death, Homefront takes the BioShock Infinite approach of charging you a small penalty each time you die. Too many games in general present death as something inconsequential – an arbitrary marker that you’ve failed, but it’s ok because you can just restart from almost exactly the same spot as you died and keep banging your head against a problem until you smash your way through it. It’d be stretching it to call Homefront a ‘realistic’ shooter, and it certainly allows for moments of spectacular Hollywood heroism, but it does a great job of making you feel at a constant disadvantage next to a superior force. In order to survive, I had to take potshots at the enemy, wait until their return fire died down, then change cover, or even retreat if necessary. Each time I decided to make a zigzagging run across the street while a KPA vehicle was searching for me, or between a couple of bombed-out cars, I got a pleasant rush knowing that if I got spotted, I’d probably die. I regularly found myself pinned down and having to rely on the cover provided by the urban ruins. This means that charging out into a group of enemies while screaming ‘FREEDOM’ is never the best course of action, fun though it undoubtedly is. Not only do your bulletholes not heal up over time, but even on the default difficulty setting (appropriately labelled ‘Hardened’), it doesn’t take a lot of damage for you to start bleeding out on the ground. This isn’t Wolfenstein after all… or Popeye. While you have a limited supply of quick-fix healing injections, these are far from ubiquitous, and if you find yourself in a warzone with low health, you’ll need to scavenge for health packs in bombed-out buildings or seek out rebel bases to get stocked up.Īnd don’t go thinking that the cans of tinned foods you find in the world will replenish your health either. Once you’ve done this, the blood splatters will fade from the edges of your screen and colour will be restored to the world. Your health doesn’t recharge automaticallyĪccording to mainstream shooter logic, there’s no better remedy to being riddled with bullets than by sitting down behind a piece of cover and counting to five. Roaming these here parts, there’s a sense of perpetual conflict as skirmishes break out all over the map, though I did feel that the devs missed a trick by not having a constant back-and-forth of territorial invasions, which would’ve created a greater sense of a persistent, living world. Here, it’s a simple case of using fighting alongside your comrades to turn the red map blue. If you’re feeling in more of a ‘warzone’ mood, then get yourself out to the red zones, the site of all-out urban warfare between the KPA and rebels. As I fomented disorder in the yellow districts, I found it hugely satisfying to see the people steadily grow in confidence, get unruly, tag walls with graffiti, protest, and eventually take up arms against the oppressors. For example, Yellow Zones are heavily-controlled ghettos for the Philly populace, where you stealthily perform assassinations, take out loudspeakers, give money to the homeless (you good Samaritan, you), and infiltrate outposts. What’s interesting about this setup is that each zone forces you to play differently.
![homefront the revolution homefront the revolution](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/815TUHFx-oL._SY445_.jpg)
You take these over by winning ‘Hearts and Minds’, which are earned by setting up rebel bases, tuning in radios, taking out enemy patrols, and numerous other subversive actions. The game takes place in Philadelphia, a city divided into several KPA-controlled districts, each of which is either a red, yellow or green zone. And here they are, in easily digestible list format. Having played the game for a good half-dozen hours, I’ve found several distinguishing features that should make us, the gaming audience, stand up and take note.