I still remember seeing Red Dawn for the first time.  I remember thinking that the choices that were made were so foreign, yet so plausible, that it gave me serious pause and made me think “what would I do in that situation? How would I react?”  My school mascot wasn’t the Wolverines, mind you, but it still sounded every bit as defiant if you yelled it the same way.

Enter Homefront – the latest game from THQ, with a story line written by the author of Red Dawn (and Apocalypse Now).  More after the jump.

Step into the shoes of a freedom fighter riding a bus, watching a hostile force invade and begin ‘processing’ the citizens of a once great nation.

It is rare that a video game – especially a violent one – evokes any sense of emotion other than “woo hoo, fragged you.”  Not so with Homefront.  Within the first 2 minutes of the opening scene, I wanted to politely remove every last one of the invading force – with extreme prejudice.  Seriously.  I wont go into specific details here (you don’t want spoilers, trust me) – but suffice it to say it’s one step below real life in Israel at the moment.

I am only 3 levels into the single player, but already I can tell that this game is worth the effort.  Fighting with resistance fighters in the Tiger Direct parking lot, moving through a burning warehouse that looks like your local Best Buy, taking out enemies holed up in a local Hooters, sniping from your next door neighbor kid’s tree house – these guys have really captured the feel of bringing the war home – and it’s not pretty.

Where it falls short as a video game (at least in single player), it more than makes up for it in it’s story line, in it’s ability to grab the participant’s gut and wrench it six ways from Tuesday – not necessarily by graphic violence, but by graphic plausibility.

I just hope that this game isn’t secretly a training ground for the future.

Categories: Video Games, War, War on Terror, Western Civilization

Tags: pwning n00bs, Too Close for Comfort, War at Home