Homefront

Overview

Homefront is a first-person shooter that takes place in a United States ravaged by war against the North Koreans. North Korea, led by Kim-Jong-Il's son, has taken over the United States and it is up to freedom fighters to take it back. The game aims to make players think about what it would be like to have the United States invaded by North Korea. Throughout the campaign players will be allowed to use near-future weapons such as the Goliath rocket launcher. While Kaos Studios handled the console versions of Homefront, Digital Extremes developed the PC port.

Story

Background

By the year 2027, when the game starts, North Korea has built up an empire after a unification with South Korea. Along with South Korea, other Asian countries such as Japan enter the federation led by Kim-Jong-Il's son. The federation makes a partial occupation of the United States in key cities, such as San Francisco. The game starts two years after this with freedom fighters attempting to fight back against the occupation.

Timeline

• 2011: "North Korea's weapons program continues to intensify...has surpassed 1000 missiles" This shows that North Korea is arming itself. Some countries also want the UN to put severe sanctions against North Korea.
• 2012: "This morning comes the news of Kim Jong Il's death" Kim Jong has died. "North Korea greets there new leader son of Kim Jong Ils son Kim Jong-un".
• 2013: "Kim Jong-un has united north and south Korea" This now forms the Greater Korean Republic.
• 2015: "Costs at the pump are ready to break the $20 price" This forces America to become destabilized.
• 2017: "Civil unrest has intensified with the demise of the US dollar" There are a lot of riots in America and the military has started to pull out of Asia and other countries.
• 2018: "Under threat of annihilation by the Greater Korean Republic...Japan has surrendered" Japan now joins the Greater Korean Republic. Riots continue during 2018-2022.
• 2022: "The president ordered a freeze on bank withdraws." The US economy has completely failed.
• 2024: "Korean annexation continues to spread" Korea takes over many Asian countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar.
• 2025: "The Greater Korean Republic has launched its latest communication satellite claiming it will bring a message of peace" This satellite is really a EMP that knocks out near all electronics in America. The Greater Korean Republic begin the invasion. Greater Korean Republic takes over Hawaii and San Francisco.
• 2026: "US military scattered" This is due to communications being down and the surprise of the attack.

Plot

The game opens up with a montage leading up to present day events. Using stock footage and CG, this cutscene shows that following Kim Jong-un's rise to power, North Korea has taken over most of Asia, getting more and more powerful while the US crumble due to some unfortunate circumstances (financial crisis, swine flu, famines, rise of communism to name a few). North Korea decides to launch an EMP, crippling the US's power grid, taking the west coast and most of mid-western America.

The game starts out in a small town in Colorado. Players control Robert Jacobs, a pilot who has lost everything. The North Korean army has asked to recruit him but because he never answered the call, he's deported. During his deportation however, a local resistance force intervenes (Rianna and Connor) and bring him to their hideout called Oasis where they meet with resistance's chief, Boone.

The resistance has heard a fuel convoy is going to make its way through the area. They plan to hijack the convoy and bring it to the struggling American troops outside of San Francisco. To get to the convoy, they plan to steal beacons that they will stick onto the trucks and then follow the trucks by helicopter before finally hijacking them.

Connor, Rianna and Jacobs infiltrate a local work camp to get the beacons, where they are betrayed by their inside man. They manage to grab the beacons but stumble across a baseball field where the Koreans are dumping American bodies into a ditch. Connor loses it and the group is forced to kill everyone there. However, they don't manage to escape before the reinforcements arrive and are forced to hide with the bodies in the ditch.

Despite their close call, the team makes it back to base and together they go to a super market where the convoy is refueling. They stick the beacons onto the convoys and escape. Upon making it back to Oasis, they find in horror that it has been destroyed with Boone hung on a swing set, brutally murdered. Despite this setback, Connor decides to stick to the plan. They escape by blowing up the city's front gate and go into the unoccupied hinterland filled with violent hicks who brutally slaughter any North Korean they come across. The resistance meets up with their contact who attempts to molest Rianna at which point the group opens fire resulting in a violent firefight between Americans.

After killing most of the survivalists, the team makes it to the helicopter and catch up to the convoy, which they hijack. From Fresno, they head to the Golden Gate Bridge, to one of the last remaining US army bases. The fuel is much appreciated as it gets US jets in the air and together, US troops manage to take back the Golden Gate bridge despite Connor sacrificing himself for a missile strike. The game ends with the words "Home Is Where The War Is" and the credits flash on the screen.

Multiplayer

The Multiplayer is set during the american occupation after an EMP and cyber attack the remnants of the US military are trying to fight back the Korean invasion, being set in America the locales are based off of familiar scenery such as suburban culdesacs, apartment stores and a highway interchange. The game features dedicated servers for all platforms and support up to 32 players on consoles, 64 players on PC.

Like Kaos' first game Frontlines: Fuel of War, Homefront's multiplayer features large scale warfare with vehicles. Homefront's mutiplayer uses a battle points system, where taking objectives and getting kills gives the player points. Some of the items that players can purchase vary, from weapons and vehicles including helicopters, tanks and drones.

Battle points let players buy what they want when they want, if players are fighting a helicopter and they need a rocket launcher, they can can buy one in the middle the fight.

Classes

• Assault
• SMG
• Heavy
• Sniper
• Tactical
• Stealth

Perks

There are multiple perks that can be equipped during multiplayer in the class customization menu. Each perk costs a certain amount of coin to equip: 1 coin for level 1 perks, 2 coins for level 2 perks and 3 coins for level 3 perks. Coins are handed out once players reach a certain milestone in the level progression; players can only have 3 perks equipped at a time.

Weapons

• M200 Sniper rifle
• M110 Sniper rifle
• M4 Assault rifle
• M16 Assault rifle
• SCAR Assault rifle
• T3AK Assault rifle
• ACR Assault rifle
• XM10 Assault Rifle
• M249 Light Machine Gun
• SCAR-H Light Machine Gun
• PWS Diablo Sub Machine Gun
• Super V Sub Machine Gun
• M9 Pistol
• Combat Knife

Vehicles

Battle Points

Battle Points is a new system developed by KAOS that works as an in-match currency system allowing players to purchase items on the fly. From the player customization screen users can select two items to place into Battle Points slots (mapped to the up and down d-pad functions). Items to purchase with Battle Points include rocket launchers, flak jackets, remote controlled drones (assault helicopter drone, recon drone, tank drone), and airstrikes. The Battle Points system also is the only way to get vehicles in a multiplayer match. From the spawn screen, players can use any Battle Points they have accrued from taking objectives or getting kills to purchase any of the vehicles that have been unlocked (based on the player's rank).

Battle Commander

Battle Commander is a game mode that adds another layer of depth to a typical Ground Control or Team Deathmatch battle. The Battle Commander is an A.I. that watches over each match (one per team) and based on how other players on the enemy team are doing assigns a star ranking to them. The star system goes up to 5 stars and is fairly simple. As a person starts accruing more and more kills, point captures, drone spots, etc. the opposing Battle Commander will begin to give them stars. At one star the enemy Battle Commander will alert a few people on the opposing team that this player has begun to become a threat and will offer those players a Battle Points reward to kill the person along with showing his/her general location on the map. As the player's number of stars increase, so do the number of enemies that know their whereabouts; at five stars the whole team knows the player's exact location. The player gaining the stars gets perk bonuses as he accrues more, however. Things like extra armor and ammo will help that player take on the more and more opposing players trying to kill him. Every player in the match can get any amount of stars at any time, so it is not just one specific player per team.

Soundtrack

Homefront's entire soundtrack is composed by Matthew Harwood and Scott Cresswell contributed to the first track ("Stand Your Ground"). The music is primarily orchestra mixed with electronic elements and Asian percussion instruments like erhu and pipa.

PC Exclusive Features

Digital Extremes (in cooperation with KAOS) has implemented a few extra features for the PC crowd that will not necessarily all appear on console versions of the game, some of these include:

• First Person Vehicle Views including:

Humvee (High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle)

1. Driver
2. Gunner
3. Passenger front
4. Passenger rear left
5. Passenger rear right

LAV (Light Armored Vehicle)

1. Driver
2. Main gunner
3. Passenger 1
4. Passenger 2

M1A3 Tank & Type 99 Tank

1. Driver/Main gunner
2. Secondary gunner

AH-64 Apache Helicopter & Z-10 Helicopter

1. Pilot
2. Gunner

Scout Helicopter

1. Pilot
2. Co-pilot (recon/spot position)

• A practice map - This map will have no Battle Pint restrictions and no vehicle limit. Players may use it to practice controlling all the vehicles.
• Clan support - This includes clan tags (linked to Steam groups), game browser that allows users to sort games based on how many of their clan members are in each match, extensive dedicated server support for clan servers, and a robust demo recording interface for recording matches.
• Statistic Tracking - Including:

1. Time Played
2. Level
3. Kills
4. Deaths
5. Wins
6. Losses
7. Average Life Span
8. Total XP
9. Clan Tag
10. Achievements
11. Challenges
12. Per Weapon Stats
13. Per Vehicle Stats

• In game map - Full map for use in matches.
• Battle Chat - Issuing commands via a radial menu.
• Squad-based VOIP
• Joystick and gamepad support.
• LAN Play / Valve Anti-Cheat / SLI / Crossfire, 3d Vision

PC System Requirements

Minimum

• Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7
• Intel Pentium Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon X2 2.8GHz.
• 2 GB RAM
• Shader Model 3.0 graphics card with 256MB of memory
• NVIDIA GeForce 7900GS or ATI Radeon 1900XT
• 10GB of free hard drive space

Recommended

• Windows Vista or Windows 7
• Quad Core 2 GHz CPU
• 2 GB RAM
• NVidia GeForce 260 or ATI Radeon 4850
• 10 GB of free hard drive space