Parents' Guide to Homefront The Revolution PEGI 18
In collaboration with the Games Rating Authority, here’s our parent’s guide to Homefront: The Revolution, PEGI 18.
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1. Genre
Homefront the Revolution is a shooting game set in an alternative future where North Korea has invaded America.
The game is played from a first person perspective and is set in an open world version of Philadelphia, which under occupation is divided into three zones. As well as a single player campaign the game also has a four-player online cooperative multiplayer ‘Resistance’ mode.
Homefront: The Revolution’s setting of a broken-down US city draws comparisons to the recent The Division, although the mission-based campaign in a large open world is reminiscent of Dying Light.
2. PEGI Rating
In the UK and Europe, PEGI rates Homefront: The Revolution PEGI 18, suitable for adults only, due to violence against vulnerable and defenceless people and strong language.
The Games Rating Authority expand on its PEGI details by saying that the game opens with two fellow resistance members being executed by being tied to chairs then ‘shot in the head’ and ‘hit around the head several times with a hammer, killing him bloodily’. The game dialogue uses the words ‘fuck’ and ‘motherfucker’.
3. Story
Homefront: the Revolution is set in Philadelphia, USA in 2029. America is controlled by the Korean People’s Army and the player takes the role of Ethan Brady, who joins the resistance and the struggle to liberate the city from the KPA.
4. Developer
Dambuster Studios is a British developer formed by publisher Deep Silver to develop Homefront: the Revolution from mainly ex-staff of Free Radical Design, known for the Timesplitters series.
5. Format
Homefront the Revolution is available for PS4, XBox One and PC for around £40 or $60. More expensive special editions include an expansion pass for downloadable content and collectibles like a model and art book. Downloadable content, both paid and free, will be available over the year following the game’s release and in-game items can be purchased using real money. A PlayStation Plus or Xbox Live Gold account is required for console multiplayer.
6. Duration and Difficulty
Dambuster have described the single player campaign as having over 30 hours of play, dependent on ability, and the co-op missions and free DLC should add many more hours after release.
7. Themes
Homefront: the Revolution’s storyline is a hot mess of first world anxiety, with the USA brought low by a North Korean regime that sold America high tech weapons then switched them off. While a repressive regime like North Korea is a legitimate target for criticism, the storyline is also uncomfortably reminiscent of 90s paranoia about rising Asian economies in films and books like Rising Sun, as well as older cliches about invasion from the East.
It’s also either deeply ironic or completely tone-deaf to cast America as the plucky oppressed underdog with ragtag freedom fighters striking trying to drive out a far more powerful, drone-supported force of ‘peace-keepers’ sent in to stabilise a failed state. How seriously you take all this may depend on exactly where in the world you’re sitting.
8. Why people play:
Homefront: the Revolution promises a sense of unease as you explore an American city rendered unfamiliar and eerie by occupation, and the prospect of a long single player campaign where resistance activities like sabotage and assassination raise the profile and membership of the resistance movement itself, turning the tide against the occupying KPA. Regardless of the weirdness of the story premise, the appeal of this kind of game lies in taking the western world, then seeing it vicariously laid to waste and rise from the ashes.
