Review: Homefront's (Multi) single-player campaign

This is essentially a single-player review of Homefront, but in a non-traditional format. I cannot review the game completely, as I have only played the single-player and currently don't have the opportunity to touch the multiplayer. How this review is non-traditional is that I am essentially writing in a bullet point style, with some very specific details and yes, potential spoilers. With all that said, let the "review" commence and be very afraid of spoiling your breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner.

I was disappointed from minute one. -- The game starts off in an apartment with a radio spouting off jibber jabber. That was perfectly fine, but in mere moments, a few Korean troops come a knockin'. They ask Jacobs [you] to open the door, quickly become impatient, and say, "open this door or we will be forced to break it down." I thought to myself, "well, isn't this cool. I could have opened it for them, but now they are going to break it down and likely be rather angry too." But, that isn't what happened. I stood there for five minutes and listened to an endless loop until eventually giving in to their requests. They seemed pissed when I opened the door, but apparently no time would have angered them enough to actually break it down.

He would sure feel at home in Homefront.

Invisible walls galore. -- This game has some of the most offensive invisible walls I have seen in recent memory. They block areas for seemingly no reason—such as a pool in a back yard, when a tall fence would have made a much more practical wall—and this only adds to the linear feeling.

Children look like dwarfs. -- This is not meant to be funny in any way, but the children look like dwarfs ["little people"]. I may be looking too far into this, but I have a hard time being emotionally affected by a scenario involving a child when I believe said child looks like a dwarf. It may just be me, but their anatomy was not proportionally accurate and it figuratively drove me insane.

Lack of interaction. -- This is a general annoyance in a game that obviously wants me engrossed in its fiction. I see a young boy—what I would call an adult dwarf—swinging on a swing, but I cannot give him a push. Does this really matter? Of course not, but that doesn't mean it didn't completely take me out of the experience. I look at this world and see how the developers continuously try to elicit an emotional reaction and every time I try to dive in, I end up in shallow water.

You can't go through an opening until after an AI. -- This is yet another trivial annoyance. I see a hole in a wall and know it's where I must go; however, I am incapable of passing until my uninteresting teammates move first. I understand that the developers don't want me getting ahead of myself, but don't put me in a room with an open door if you don't want me to walk through it.

This is actually a better stealth option than what you'll see in Homefront.

Most pathetic excuse for a stealth mission. -- This is an absolute embarrassment and quite possibly the worst "stealth" mission I have ever played. There is no stealth; there is only, "Follow me. Stop. Follow me." The entire mission takes place during a bright, sunny day and only an institution of idiots could somehow miss this unquestionably apparent anomaly of a squad.

• Positives (Surprised?):

Ladders. -- I know this is trivial (again) and not something to single out, but it just so happens to be one of the few surprising positives. Why do I enjoy ladders in Homefront? It's because I hate dealing with the magical floating I often associate with first-person ladders. In Homefront, you only need to press a button and I admire this seemingly unimportant function.

The Goliath. -- I'm sure everyone has heard about the little—it is actually quite large and most definitely in charge—drone of destruction, but that won't stop me from breaking a few records. My only joy during the entire single-player campaign was when I had control of the Goliath. The Goliath is an over-powered wrecking machine—which made the game much easier regardless of difficulty—but it won't be forgotten.

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Final words: I legitimately hate Homefront's single-player and wish I had the time to try the multiplayer—it was a Redbox rental and I had/have no desire to spend an extra two smackaroos just to see if the multiplayer was something other than an abomination.