Homefront: The Revolution released in the same year that Donald Trump got elected after a year of controversial headlines made him public enemy number one with everyone but his most fervent supporters, where Hillary Clinton said during a speech that young people should "Pokemon GO to the polls" to vote, where outrage content masquerading as commentary proved lucrative on YouTube and No Man's Sky was the most disappointing release of all-time. It's notable for two things: for one, dodgy reception. It was released unfinished and broken, and even if it were playable, it wouldn't have blown anyone's mind. James Stephanie Sterling hated it, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw of Zero Punctuation was less kind, and it practically topped both of their year-end "worst" lists (1) (2). The other thing it's famous for? Having the entirety of TimeSplitters 2 hidden both in its world and behind a combination of buttons so obtuse that the developer who programmed it in there only managed to see other players access it after encouraging them to reverse-engineer the damn thing by forgetting it.

The climate it was released in, its technical polish at release, and nostalgic discussions around TimeSplitters 2 belie what a lot of Homefront: The Revolution's strengths actually are. Once you get past the inherently silly premise of North Korea taking over all of America, it's a fairly immersive title with visuals that hold up pretty well. Combat, while unrefined in some areas and not what you'd expect out of it in others, has some solidly unique twists. Weapon customization, for one, adds a lot of depth. The crazy weapon combinations (like turning a machine gun into a flamethrower) add a lot of character that wouldn't be there if you simply bought the guns you needed from a source and moved on. Jank as it may be, it's not a game made without soul, as reflected in Fluppywhiffle's fantastic review of the game from almost two years ago.

In other words, it would have been the perfect budget game at the time if it didn't cost sixty dollars.

Budget games are a dying breed at this point. They're made to be cheap, easy to consume, and given to children and teenagers alike who won't complain when their mother decides to treat them with a five-dollar PC game she found while walking around Wall-Mart. The main difference between a shovelware game and a budget game is its developer and what their intent is. Shovelware is an unrestrained slew of budget games haphazardly thrown together without thought or care. Think more along the lines of Country Justice than Peggle. In-between both camps is the bargain bin, where uninteresting games live out the rest of their life. Not terrible enough to buy for your friend as a joke nor fascinating enough to buy on your own, these are games that pollute the shelves of your local Goodwill because a nearby Target didn't want them on clearance. Think about twenty-or-so stacks of Guitar Hero: Live on Wii U months after the servers shut down, or in this case, Homefront: The Revolution on either of its targetted platforms.

The thing about games like Homefront is this: they're not great. Kind of hokey, actually. But I'd like to think of it like I thought of Halloween when I first saw it in a film class with my dad a few years ago, but slightly inverse: if it's your first exposure to gaming or one of your first, it's pretty good for what it is. It's only when you start to get into the games that directly inspired it that you realize how derivative it actually is. If its purpose is to sit on a shelf for somebody who's getting into gaming to pick up for five dollars, maybe it's not so bad after all.

Enter Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 , another derivative Open World game that was released for far too much money, was too derivative to be notable for anything other than its shortcomings, was Zero Punctuation's worst game of the year it released, and, as a final round to a Jeopardy question that nobody will ever guess, also ran on Cryengine. AND, both Ghost Warrior 3 and Homefront released within less than a year of each other. With the stop gap between the spitting distance both games had from each other removed, the only thing that differentiates them is intent. Homefront: The Revolution was meant to be a sequel to the game series that would save THQ from bankruptcy, shortly before they filed for bankruptcy. THQ auctioned it off to Deep Silver, who, in collaboration with the Crytek studio formerly known as Free Radical, tried in vain to get something fresh off the ground. After the Crytek office in charge of development neglected to pay their employees, several employees outright refused to continue working on the project, let alone work at all. After folding and being restructured into a studio that Deep Silver could have in its pocket, it was rushed out the door to meet a 2016 release date after a couple of delays. The developers went through hell and back to ensure that it was released at all, and in a sense, I can respect it, even if I don't love it. Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3, on the other hand, was its developer's push from developing shovelware, to budget games, to something that could be considered AAA and Next-Gen.

Part of the reason I've gone on for so long without actually talking about the game I'm writing about is because once you actually get down to it, there's not a lot of nuance to be found. Ghost Warrior 3 is this unholy marriage between Sniper Elite and Far Cry, with none of the touches that makes Far Cry interesting. Up to its release, it was arguably the best game in its series, but that's because the other two games were developed by a company that was moving on from the budget market on PC and trying to find a new home on consoles. The challenge that comes with writing about a game like this comes down to this: how do you even talk about it? Where do you start? If you've played any Open World game released after the year 2010, you've probably played this before, and unlike Homefront, there really is nothing here to differentiate it from the pile of games that influenced it. At most, I can probably write about the story, although that's no Bueno, either. I haven't played enough to gauge whether or not it's bad, but your brother immediately gets kidnapped after the game gives you a quote about being deceived. I bet you five dollars that there's a big bad villain who hunts you throughout the campaign that the game screams isn't your brother, only to scream that it is last second.

However, however... this still isn't bad as a bargain bin game. If you paid five dollars for this and you'd played nothing else like it, then this was probably not a bad game for you. While all of its systems and mechanics just kind of blend into each to the point where I didn't know I was picking up materials for crafting until the game told me I could craft ammunition, the first word of its title, being a sniper, is actually kind of fun—sort of. It has a lot more depth than, 'point gun at head, shoot, guy dead.' You have to account for the height you're aiming at and from, as well as the direction and velocity of the wind to land your shots. On paper, this is pretty neat and leads to some satisfying kills. In execution, you're either left to figure out how to land shots through trial-and-error because the game never adequately explains its mechanics to you, or you're left to play on easy mode where the intended trajectory for your shots is always shown to you. However, whether or not you have that blow softened for you, there's still a lot of fun to be had in finding the exact spots to take aim, watching your targets from afar, and then taking the shot when the time is right. There's a slow-motion bullet cam in here that's somewhat reminiscent of what's been in the Sniper Elite games since V2 , minus the X-Ray cams that let you see Hitler's testicles explode. Replacing that is a gloriously silly ragdoll system that doesn't feel entirely out of place, but isn't crutched on so much that it loses its novelty after five minutes. And then there's the art style which is surprisingly solid. It's not the prettiest game I've ever played, but the developer's use of Cryengine stands out, and as a result, there's the occasional sight or two in here that makes me want to keep playing just so I can see more of it. The use of puddles in certain areas is a pretty neat touch that grounds the setting in a way that the flimsy dialog and hit-and-miss shooting mechanics outside of sniping do.

In truth, I don't hate games like this and Homefront. I sure don't love them, but if enough people who would have had no exposure to gaming prior to them pick up on one of my favorite hobbies because of them, then I don't mind checking out the same game but with a different coat of paint every now and then. As a celebration of the bargain bin game, I am proudly giving Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 my highest honor:

Two stars.