I awoke to a loud pounding upon my bedroom door. Or is it my apartment? Who would have been able to tell in this economy? Even before North Korea attacked things were in a sorry shape. A hundred bucks to fill up your car with gas will force you to sacrifice things you never thought you’d sacrifice before. I couldn’t even afford the luxury of a bathroom. Just this shit hole with paint peeling from the walls and unwashed clothes piled across the floor. Nevertheless, it’s good to even have a home.

For now. The pounding on my door continues as a thick Korean accent begins demanding I open the door. That’s it, then. Freedom is done. Over. I’m gonna be taken away as some kind of slave or to be shot or something. No one really knows. No one really cares, either. We’re all too scared for ourselves to give a damn about anyone else’s problems.

“We know you’re in there!” the voice cries out. I know it is only a matter of time before they use force, breaking my door down and apprehending me. I could go peacefully. I could. Instead I notice my window. It’s open, and outside the lawn and streets look clear. One might even call it a beautiful day. I think I can survive the second story drop, maybe even climb down, making my escape with no worse than a limp. I leap up onto the windowsill and…

I leap onto the windowsill and…

I can’t leap onto the windowsill. The damn game has a window that’s low enough that I should be capable of jumping through it, but it won’t allow me to jump through. The developer is rail-roading me into how they want the story to go. At the very least the window could be closed, barred, or the height could clearly be enough to kill me. Or how about allowing me to leap out the window only to be surrounded and chased down by the soldiers? I thought I had an option or choice in the very first room, but I was kept right where the designer wanted me with an invisible wall.

This is pretty much the summary of Homefront. There’s a lot of ideas that start out well, but somewhere along the line it became half-assed and incomplete. It checks off all the bare minimums to be considered a good game.

At the same time, it feels like the best damn sequel to Modern Warfare to hit the market. It achieves the feeling of suburban America being invaded a Hell of a lot better than Modern Warfare 2 had, and the setting is actually pretty damn decent. Not necessarily the story, but the setting has had a lot of care taken by John Milius. On the surface Homefront is a crazy Tea-Party fanatic’s wet dream about America being invaded and its citizens getting the chance to kick some ass.

The newspaper clippings scattered throughout the levels tell a bit of a different story, though. I wouldn’t call the future likely, and some of it seems taken to an extreme, but it isn’t implausible. Some of the stories even exhibit a good deal of research and knowledge into native Korean culture and mentality, something that I wouldn’t even have known about were it not for my brother, currently living in South Korea, teaching and describing to me.

While it is interesting to read about the events that brought us to a war on our own front, the story of the war going on is…well, it’s not actually as clear. I think John Milius had a lot of story he wanted to tell, but there was a clash with the medium he is used to (film) and game development. In fact, I’d imagine he had to cut and condense a lot of story down into fewer levels than he originally projected. This is all conjecture, of course, but knowing the game development process it wouldn’t at all surprise me.

One minute you’re following a guy who has some secret plan. This secret plan leads to bombing a parking lot of enemies, but wait, that’s not it. The real secret plan is to tag those gas trucks. Okay, now we need to find and follow those trucks. Why? I don’t know, but once we get that Helicopter we’ll be good! Now we got the trucks and…oh, the whole purpose was to deliver fuel to the American military? I didn’t know they were still around. That’s good to know, I guess.

Granted plenty of films have been built off of premises no simpler than this. I mean, Children of Men is all about escorting a pregnant teenager out of the country or something, and that’s it. The journey is supposed to be what matters.

Which is where genres clash. I don’t think John Milius knew how to make that journey matter in the context of a video game. There are some nice touches, such as having a lead character of Korean ethnicity who is mistrusted by a lot of American citizens for obvious reasons. There’s an attempt to give some sense of life to the setting. It just fails to give life to the characters, and without that strength to play off of you just have a generic plot about dragging a hero from one set piece to the next.

Those set pieces happen to be worth it, though. At least, if you’re not sick of the modern shooter or are a connoisseur of such titles. I’ve skipped out on the latest Medal of Honor and Battlefield, so I was able to sit down and appreciate what the game managed. The folks at Kaos Studios understood that it’s not just about dropping cover into a flat map and throwing the enemies in. They took some notes from Infinity Ward, learning when to have foes that are a threat to your objective rather than you yourself. Machine gun nests and rocket launchers on top of buildings may not be aiming for you, but they’ll be aiming for something you need. Or you’ll find yourself having to stealthily crawl through an enemy habitat without being spotted, and later snipe foes so your pals can progress forward while avoiding detection.

In other words, while you’re always shooting someone, the circumstances change as to give the illusion of change and variety. Every once in a while explosions will go off and you’ll find yourself in a thrilling first-person cinematic. It’s all pretty good stuff.

Not perfect, though. The above mentioned news clippings and setting documentation are scattered throughout levels, and sometimes thrown into areas where you’re too busy shooting down enemies to even think of searching for collectibles. Its material that is definitely worth grabbing, but they make it a bitch to do so. It works best when you are left with a moment of calm, allowing you to explore the environment and take in this amazing, horrifying version of America.

Exploration isn’t exactly encouraged, however. Aside from the A.I. constantly chirping in your ear to follow them or keep going, you’ll find yourself running into invisible walls frequently. They are everywhere, even when they make no sense. Alleyways will end in a very clear dead end, yet halfway down you’ll find yourself unable to move forward as an unseen obstacle prevents you from seeing what is at the end.

It isn’t simply a problem with exploration, either. I have a feeling how the level editor handles visible geometry is a bit screwed and half-assed. Foes that are completely visible are guarded by force fields projecting from busted up cars and debris, the bullets sparking and ricocheting off of thin air. Other moments the enemy will seem to be capable of seeing through walls and then shooting through them. I don’t mean to say certain objects can be shot through as in Counter-Strike or Modern Warfare, either. I mean objects that should be solid and opaque are simply not there for the computer.

It is in this manner that Homefront cannot escape feeling like a budget title, a game developed with little money to be sold for $30, only in truth it costs $60. Maybe if they weren’t busy packing an imitation multiplayer mode they’d have had the time and man hours to build a much better campaign, but then again the demographic this game is meant to appeal to probably skipped the campaign altogether. Apparently the multiplayer is a lot of fun! When it is working, at least.

What really sets the game apart is simply a story and a short campaign that has the decency to not force you to play any longer than needed. Hell, if you like this sort of game the campaign may even be worth playing through a second time (or even third!). There’s just not enough here to really set it apart as an excellent game. Just a pretty good imitation.