While the game's single-player campaign chronicles guerilla warrior Ethan Brady's efforts to undermine our bellicose overlords across a set piece-driven story that reportedly spans dozens of hours, publisher Deep Silver has now unveiled Resistance Mode, a separate cooperative campaign that takes places in the same universe but stars custom characters fighting their own distinct battles (i.e. experience, gear, and other unlocks don't carry over between the two modes).
 
Though Resistance Mode exists apart from the single-player campaign, the two still share quite a bit in common. Both take place in and around post-invasion Philadelphia. Both focus on scrappy survivors cobbling together weaponry as they cautiously explore vast, open world maps. And both feature nearly insurmountable odds, at least according to the development team. Dambuster Studios' CJ Kershner even referred to Homefront: The Revolution as the "Dark Souls of Shooters." His statement may have been hyperbolic, but after spending an hour with the game, it's clear that team tactics are crucial to surviving Resistance Mode's discrete, story-driven missions.
 
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Resistance missions are essentially tough, tactical sandboxes dotted with sequential objectives that you and up to three friends can tackle however you see fit. If you creep through bombed-out buildings and keep your kills discrete, you can delay open conflict until it's absolutely necessary--which is a smart way to preserve your decidedly limited supply of ammo and items. You can also have every player blitz the enemy simultaneously, send one player ahead as a scout while the others flank from multiple sides, or any other strategy that makes sense to you. As long as you complete your objective--like taking out a specific target or collecting a specific item--the game won't stop you.
 
Word of advice, though: make sure your squad is balanced. Resistance Mode's character customization tools don't seem to force players into preset classes, but according to Kershner, you will be able to mold your built-from-scratch resistance fighter to suit your particular play style.  
 
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Outside of battle, you can spend currency you earn during missions on "resistance crates," which provide randomly generated loot that matches the type of crate you purchased: gear, attachment, ordinance, or weapon. It's important to note this is the only way you can acquire new weapons. If you don't randomly receive a shotgun from a crate, you can't simply go buy a shotgun from some other source. It's also worth noting Homefront will let you spend real money to buy crates, though crates purchased through microtransactions will contain exactly the same loot you'd find in loot drops purchased with in-game currency, according to Kershner.
 
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The final count may change, but there should be roughly 18 co-op missions in a variety of settings and scenarios when the game launches on May 17, with as many as 18 more added for free within a year of release. Players will also enjoy free guns, mods, skins, and more for one full year, according to Kershner. This free DLC--combined with the replayability provided by the various difficulty settings, randomized enemy spawn locations, and myriad side objectives--should make Resistance Mode a major part of Homefront: The Revolution's overall appeal once the game finally hits store shelves.
 

 
Homefront se jouant comme la quasi totalité des FPS actuels, la surprise aurait pu éventuellement venir du côté open world mis en avant pour la partie solo. On se rend pourtant vite compte que les missions coop suivront un fil bien défini, jusqu'à contraindre le petit groupe à fuir jusqu'à la prochaine balise quand les chars ennemis pilonnent la zone de conflit. L'ouverture côté gameplay se limite à prendre les ennemis à revers, du moins quand ils ne "poppent" pas sous vos yeux à cause du code réseau encore en rodage, et à éventuellement s'accrocher aux rebords pour atteindre une planque en hauteur. Cette première mission introduisait néanmoins quelques motos pour rallier un point de la map en se jouant des escouades en chemin, même si la prise en main extrêmement basique de l'engin, sans la moindre inertie, évoque plus le bicross qu'autre chose.
 
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Le passage d'infiltration qui précédait était peut-être le plus intéressant de cette session : plongé dans la nuit, il fallait se jouer des miradors pour percer le campement du KPA, soit en contournant les murs, soit en passant par un sous-sol dérobé, le moyen le plus sûr de frapper la base ennemie en plein coeur. Multi oblige, l'ensemble sera régi par un système d'expérience partagée, avec le désormais incontournable arbre de compétences à plusieurs branches - Cerveau, Muscles, Combat, Survie - et les équipements cappés en niveau. Des casques et des gilets que l'on débloque une fois encore avec des caisses d'armement plus ou moins bien dotées, à débloquer en jouant normalement, ou en poussant les micro transactions pour accélérer l'obtention d'upgrades "mais-ce-n'est-pas-obligatoire". Le coup classique. Distinctes de l'expérience solo, les capacités permettent de relever plus rapidement un équipier tombé au combat, de tromper plus longuement la vigilance des gardes symbolisée par un cône de vision, de booster les attaques au corps à corps ou bien de réaliser des modifications d'armes en toute discrétion, sans alerter l'ennemi.
 

 
Homefront: The Revolution isn't a sequel to THQ and Kaos' scrappy 2011 first person shooter, choosing instead to borrow the name and premise to do something very different. Set in a series of open-world maps strung together with more linear levels, it's a shooter with an emphasis on canny survival rather than cinematic excess, where you're fighting with homespun weaponry and scarce resources against a technologically superior enemy.There's something of Far Cry in the improvisation implicit in its open world warfare, something of Half-Life 2's City 17 in the bombed out beauty of Philadelphia, but when I got to play its campaign last August I was impressed with how it felt very much like its own thing; a shooter with identity and purpose alongside a suite of neat ideas.
 
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Dambusters is trying something different again: a collection of co-operative missions with their own persistent levelling, running deep with role-playing systems. It might come as a disappointment to anyone who remembers the quick-fire deathmatch brilliance of TimeSplitters, the work of Dambuster Studios' past incarnation Free Radical Design, but it's an interesting concept delivered with some conviction.
 
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Team dynamics are slow to reveal themselves - especially if, like me, you're stuck with a team that's frustratingly mute - but as the skill-tree slowly branches, it creates little meshes between each player's particular talents. After a couple of matches I was able to effortlessly tag enemy patrols and vehicles, marking them up for the entire team, while another player was able to scavenge more ammo. I'd even got a special new beanie hat, and felt far better equipped for the battles ahead.
 
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Once you get past its slightly generic aesthetic, Homefront: The Revolution proposes one of the more interesting shooters in some time, and it's the first chance we'll get to play a full-fledged game from the team once known as Free Radical since 2008's troubled Haze. Despite some worrying signs towards the end of coming up to five years of development, I remain cautiously optimistic that this strange reboot will do better justice to the talents of the noted Nottingham developer.