Homefront Campaign Beaten in 5 Hours by “Experts”

THQ has been really pushing Homefront as the next great FPS. The genre needs something new as Halo and Call of Duty have dominated the landscape. The franchise is so well thought of internally, that a sequel is already greenlit and allotted funding. The game’s release draws near and early reviewers are getting a crack at it. Word is, the campaign can be beaten in 5 hours. Um, what?

The developers of the game, Kaos Studios, have already responded to what is surely disheartening news for a game that has a lot of promise. The trailers have looked stunning and the concept is new and fresh. Still, 5 hours? Really? When asked, this was Kaos’ response:

We’ve done a lot of focus testing on the game… We’ve seen really expert players race through it pretty quickly – five hours, a little less. We’ve seen players take eight to 10 hours to play it. So it’s a range, there. It depends who you ask.

The gaming world is full of expert FPS players. Full. I can see disputes on campaign timing when it comes to RPG type games as you can steamroll through dialogue and side quests and just focus on the main story arc. However, FPS games are almost entirely mission based and wholly linear. Therefore, if you can beat a game in 5 hours, you likely found it way too easy or the game was way too short. Let’s not jump to conclusions just yet as maybe the game is closer to the respectable and expected 10 hour length on hopefully the second hardest difficulty setting, but if people can beat this is a Sunday afternoon, consider this franchise dead before it really began.