YMMV / Homefront

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Although in the game it was developed and built by the KPA, the Goliath is based on an American unmanned combat ground vehicle called the Crusher. It was built back in 2006 for DARPA, and like the Goliath, can be remote-controlled.
• Americans Hate Tingle: Aside from the obvious ban in Korea, the game is horribly unpopular in East Asia, and it's not too hard to see why.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: The idea of North Korea invading and occupying over half of the United States, which is only modestly compensated by the real-life elements incorporated into the game's backstory. The original premise involved China being the one doing the invasion which is more believable, but this was changed to avoid Banned in China. The game tries to justify this premise by having North Korea put on a Nice Guy act and having God knows how many South Korean elites in on the plan to subjugate East Asia, but even then players found the story too far fetched.
• Base-Breaking Character: Connor. You either agree with him in taking down the North Korean forces by any means necessary, especially once the atrocities the KPA have been committing are demonstrated to both him and the player, or you're frustrated with him being an overzealous Military Maverick that is so caught up in killing the enemy that he completely fails to take into account the safety of fellow Americans or ethical boundaries in the process.
• Critic-Proof: 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), topped the UK charts until Crysis 2 came out and is still in the top ten, and eventually surpassed one million units in sales worldwide (all in one week). However due to cost it didn't make that much in terms of net profit.
• Follow the Leader: The single-player campaign is a linear No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom spectacle shooter in the same vein as the Call of Duty or Battlefield single player campaigns, only with a much lower budget than either mega franchise.
• Game-Breaker: At the time of release, sniper rifles, which have very little sway and very high damage.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Despite its rather unusual premise (to put it mildly), the game has become chillingly prophetic thanks to several real-life events in the coming years happening very similarly to the backstory.
  • 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"
  • In the storyline, Kim Jong-il dies on January 2nd, 2012. The real life Kim Jong-il died December 17th, 2011, nine months after the game's release and two weeks before that actual date. Sounds creepy enough…
  • The Arab Spring, picking up when the game was released, has resulted in 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. The world even came close to a war between America and Iran after the death of Qassim Suleimani with Donald Trump almost ordering airstrikes on radar and missile facilities until he backed off at the last minute.
  • The plot of the story has North Korea becoming more aggressive after Kim Jong-Un takes power. Given that recently, the North Koreans stepped up their aggressive rhetoric, going so far as to release (laughably) bad propaganda movies…
  • Hopper mentions that anyone who looked even slightly Asian had been getting lynched when he left Oakland, and he was "lucky" to only have his home burnt down. While there have been no confirmed reports of lynching or towns being burned down, there has been an uptick in xenophobia and racism against East Asian and Southeast Asian individuals (including people of East Asian or Southeast Asian descent) during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Incidentally, diplomatic relations between Japan and South Korea, while already very poor, have worsened due to the aforementioned pandemic.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The writers of Homefront actually predicted the actual cause as well as the time of Kim Jong-Il's death more or less right (arguably they were only off by a couple of weeks). So far they were wrong about Kim Jong-Un being a dangerously competent and charismatic Evil Genius, but the decade is still young. They were also right in predicting Kim Jong-Un's ability to manhandle the Generals opposed to him and more or less re-assert his control over the previously dysfunctional and uncontrollable military.
  • Willy Pete.
  • Randy's Donuts being featured in a level that is not in LA. Now it's adding a new location in 2017, albeit still in LA.
  • One of the collectible newspaper articles dated September 13, 2018 mentions Mahathir Mohamad as the Prime Minister of Malaysia. When the game was released in 2011, Mahathir had retired from being prime minister for eight years. Fast forward to 2018 in real-life, Mahathir is once again prime minister after winning the general election.
• Inferred Holocaust: Judging by some of the gameplay videos, backstory, and trailers, it appears that the Greater Korean Republic army kills everyone indiscriminately when they invaded the United States. Their occupied Asian states like Japan probably suffered the same fate as well. Of course, like the Imperial Japan expansion, there are going to be quislings in the occupied United States who want to save their own asses or get themselves out of the bad economic situation.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: Many reviewers voiced complaints about the short length of the campaign, with five hours being the common number.
• Memetic Mutation: Since Japan is replacing every reference to Korea with a "Northern Country", Canada is apparently the greatest threat in the known world.
  • Or the true enemies of the game are doors.
• Moral Event Horizon: Anything the North Koreans do. It's pretty much made clear that the player feel zero pity for them.
  • The Survivalists cross it within minutes of meeting you.
  • If you had any sympathy for the North Koreans after the opening level (which was almost none to begin with), it was completely 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, and the KPA kill everyone in the town.
• Narm: The random Hooters product placement, in the middle of a gun fight no less.
• 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.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: The uproar over the game's supposedly racist themes and subject matter (as well as a botched marketing campaign that involved dumping ten-thousand balloons in the San Francisco Bay) are easily the most well-known aspect of the game. The fact it's otherwise So Okay, It's Average means that the only way the game really sticks out is the controversy.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Crosses over a bit with Hilarious in Hindsight, as the game came out first, but this game could easily pass for an adaptation of Red Dawn (2012). It also helps that the writer John Milius also contributed to the game.
• 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 Call of Duty-style gameplay and game mechanics, putting the campaign into So Okay, It's Average territory. They were much more positive about the multiplayer, though. It becomes an even more egregious offense with the release of Homefront: The Revolution, which sees a complete Continuity Reboot of the game instead of a proper sequel to the original story and goes for a Far Cry-styled direction.

---