Homefront (video game)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Acceptable Political Targets: North Koreans, survivalists, and ultrapatriots to name a few.
  • Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: A substantial portion of articles have been written about the game being racist against Asians because the North Koreans have invaded the USA. Ironically, a fifth of the game is devoted to killing racists against Asians.
  • Complete Monster: The entire Greater Korean Republic off all spades. To elaborate, one of the first scenes in the game involves two KPA soldiers killing a woman and man with their child being forced to watch it. And it's heavily implied that they killed the child too.
  • Critical Dissonance: The game only got mixed reviews from the critics, which contributed to a 20% drop in THQ stocks. The game is THQ's most pre-ordered game, selling 375,000 copies on the first day (pretty impressive for a new IP by a game company that's not Activision or EA games), topped the UK charts until Crysis 2 came out and is still in the top ten, and recently surpassed one million units in sales worldwide (all in one week).
    • Now, Homefront has outsold Crysis 2.
  • Game Breaker: At the time of release, sniper rifles, which have very little sway and very high damage.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Old newspaper articles in the game talk about the GKR deliberately destroying a Japanese nuclear power plant. Homefront had the unfortunate timing of being released right in the middle of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that rocked Japan--in Japan, it was released during the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant accidents that resulted from the tsunami.
    • Kaos Studios was shut down the day before the first (and apparently only) Homefront DLC was released. The name of that DLC? "Fire Sale Map Pack"
    • Luckily, THQ has confirmed that Homefront 2 will be developed at a little-known game studio called Crytek. One can already hear the fandom rejoicing from miles away...
    • In the storyline, Kim Jong Il dies in 2012. He actually died in December 17, 2011. Sounds creepy enough...
    • The Arab Spring, picking up when the game was released, has resulted with Iranians and Saudis trying to exert influence on key countries (Bahrain being one). Wikileaks reveals of Saudis pushing for a war with Iran, and the worsening relations between Iran and the West also took place around the same period.
  • Hollywood Tactics: Usually averted; shortly after Jacobs' rescue by the Resistance, the cell comes across KPA infantry on the ground, with an MG on the second floor, which is more or less right out of the playbook. After Arnie betrays the cell, the KPA keeps Hopper and Connor pinned down on the ground with an MG, while troops move to flank on the second floor. Basically, if Jacobs couldn't Walk It Off, he'd be dead.
  • It's Short, So It Sucks: Many reviewers voiced complaints about the short length of the campaign, with five hours being the common number.
  • Kick the Son of a Bitch: If you really hate the GKR, the survivalists would love to put a smile on your face.
    • Which is probably why John wrote the survivalists also doing equally bad things to Asian-Americans and trying to do the same to your Action Girl sidekick plus...well... you.
  • Paranoia Fuel: A majority of the events in this game could actually happen in real life.
    • In fact, Kim Jong-II died on December 17, 2011--so very close to the date of his death in Homefront's timeline. Just like in Homefront, Kim Jong-un succeeded him. Cue a Mass "Oh Crap" from Homefront's fans.
  • Memetic Mutation: Since Japan is replacing every reference to Korea with a "Northern Country", Canada is apparently the greatest threat in the known world.
  • Moral Event Horizon: The North Koreans cross it in the opening level and keep going.
    • The Survivalists cross it within minutes of meeting you.
    • If you had any sympathy for the North Koreans after the opening level, it was lost by the time you find a mass grave where all of the re-education subjects were systematically executed and put into a gigantic pile to be forgotten. Did we mention you had to lay down in the corpses to hide from them?
    • Also, see Harsher in Hindsight above. Considering the devastating effects of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant meltdown in Real Life, this qualifies incredibly well.
    • Not to mention what happens when the Resistance base is attacked. There are a large number of children in it. The KPA KILL ALL OF THEM.
  • Nausea Fuel: At one point you have to hide in a mass grave to avoid getting shot. By the way the black guy's lifeless stare sticks in your mind.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: What some reviews said about the game's single player, arguing that the entire occupied US thing could had been explored in greater detail, along with more character development, but was nudged aside for COD style gameplay and game mechanics, putting the campaign into So Okay It's Average territory. They were much more positive about the multiplayer, though.
    • Kaos Studios has announced that they will attempt to rectify this by developing DLC campaigns to continue the story, and to lead up to a sequel that is already in the works.
  • Unfortunate Implications: The North Korean forces are treated as effectively Commie Nazis, but the atrocities committed by their forces may be Truth in Television. To balance things out a bit, later levels have you killing xenophobic Korean-hating Americans in addition to having a Korean American teammate from the beginning.
  • What an Idiot!: The Nobel committee give Kim-Jong Um a Nobel Peace Prize for peacefully reuniting Korea. Five years later, the Greater Korean Republic invades Japan.
  • Villain Sue: Kim Jong-Un. On one hand, he manages to take a backwater, underdeveloped pariah of a nation and uses it to gain control of South Korean (presumably in a sufficiently subversive, non-violent manner that he credibly gets the Nobel Peace Prize for doing so), takes over several major neighboring nations, and build up the Korean army to the point that it's able to successfully take over the United States. On the surface, this looks like Draka-level hypercompetency. And that part about reunifying Korea non-violently under his rule? Yeah, he does that in one year.

    On the other hand, there are mitigating factors. The United States (as well as other major world powers) had been weakened by a global economic crisis. In the case of the U.S., the situation was so bad that the states were given autonomy and were just a few steps away from civil war. The Asian Bird Flu epidemic only made things worse. One in-game newspaper article notes that when Canada closed its borders to the U.S. (thus requiring a visa to enter), there were also new laws requiring permits for food, materials, medicine, and other supplies. The implication is that a lot of people were trying to leave the country--and this is all before the GKR fried almost every non-hardened piece of electronic hardware in North America with an EMP.
    • But turning a dirt poor Soviet Nation into a modern powerhouse nation in just a year is impossible. It would have been more realistic had it been decades. As it stands now North Korea is surrounded by nations that could wipe them off the Earth in a heartbeat. But, even a severely weakened US would still have enough power to atomize North Korea.
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