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		Title	Freedom Force
		Publisher	Electronic Arts	Graphics	A-
		Developer	Irrational Games	Sound	A+
		Released	January 2002	Gameplay	A
		Platform	PC (Windows)	Longevity	A-
	ESRB Information
	Violence
	Full Review

Recently when I was cleaning out my desk (those sour starburst wrappers really start to build up), I came across some games that I haven’t played in far too long. Freedom Force was at the top of the pile, and I decided that for my first published review on Retropixels it would be a good place to start.

The first thing that came to my mind while waiting for the installation to finish was how bad most superhero games are. As a whole, the superhero game genre is littered with bad movie tie-ins and even worse gameplay mechanics…if anyone ever played the Catwoman game for more than five minutes (which would require a high tolerance for pain) you understand the norm for superhero games.

The issue (as I see it) with most superhero games is that they are based on characters that originated elsewhere. Way back in middle school science (or earlier) we were taught about the loss of energy that occurs when energy is transferred (such as when a cow eats grass and humans eat the cow). Most superhero games suffer from such an energy loss…videogames are based on movies which are based on comics, and something is lost in the process. Logically (at least to vegetarians), cutting out the cow (so to speak) and starting at the source would cause the least amount of energy to be lost in transfer. Following that train of thought (the crazy train perhaps) it seems logical that the best games should cut down on the energy transfers by either coming straight from the source (the comic) or by creating a new set of superhero’s specifically for use in the videogame. The latter method is what Irrational Games chose to do in the creation of Freedom Force, and in my opinion it was a wise decision.

Freedom Force is a tactical role playing game based in Patriot City (seemingly based on parts of New York). When firing up the game and starting the campaign, the game starts with (you guessed it) an origin story (it is still a superhero game) that explains the framework of the game. Lord Dominion (an alien with a really big brain) is planning to destroy earth from within by planting Energy-X among the worst people on earth. The Mentor (the first hero introduced) is spying on Lord Dominion, and steals the Energy-X and a spaceship and flies towards earth. He is (of course) found out and shot down, and the Energy-X scatters all over Patriot City. We are then introduced (through an origin story) to the Minuteman (the games primary protagonist). He is an old man who was kicked off the Manhattan Project for trying to oust a communist spy. He sees the man making a deal with a communist in the park, and he is discovered spying on their transaction and is shot. He crawls away and comes to the statue of the Minuteman in the park (which is glowing). As he touches the statue, he becomes younger (Energy-X for the win!) and decidedly more muscular. He vows to protect the country from her enemies (For Freedom!), and thus becomes The Minuteman.

During the introduction to the game, there are two things you’ll immediately notice. The first is that the game (especially its cut-scenes and origin stories) feel very much like a comic book…the animation style involves having images that move over the top of each other and slide in different directions to accomplish the intended effect. The second thing that stands out (over all other games in my opinion) is the quality of the voice acting. From the stentorian voice of Minuteman to the somewhat manic, desperate tones of Mentor, the voice acting is as good as it gets.

The first few levels (as with most games) are geared towards explaining how to play the game. Rather than having a tutorial level per se, the game has floating information bubbles (conveniently being the games logo) placed anywhere and everywhere they could be necessary (they taper off considerably after the first couple of levels). It isn’t even necessary to click on them, and as the information they give is done through a voice over by the narrator rather than the traditional cut-scene there is no gameplay interruption. The first few levels are strictly standard stuff; learning how to play the game. The first thing you’ll notice is that Freedom Force is not an easy game…unless you dumb down the difficulty, you will most likely die on the first level…on NORMAL! There are a range of difficulty modes, from very easy to very hard, and unless you’ve played it before, even the normal difficulty will have you straining to complete some levels (go for easy on the first playthrough).

Although the game is a few years old, there are a couple of things that make it stand out graphically. The first is that every attack has a different animation and comic book style sound bubbles (FWAP, POW, etc.) on landing an attack. It really adds to the comic book feel of the game (and it’s a superhero game, so why not). Graphically speaking, the game engine allows for rotating the camera, zooming in and out, buildings become transparent if in the way, and all the other necessary stuff to allow for a good experience (because nothing is worse than having your view obstructed by a building when you can’t move the camera). While the graphics are obviously not still top of the line, they hold up quite well and stylistically are a perfect fit for the game.

The gameplay in Freedom Force is basically a real-time strategy/role playing game with a pause button. It has the standard elements any RPG would be expected to have, including leveling up of heroes and their powers/attributes. Each hero has attacks and defenses that can be improved through going on missions and gaining experience points (smartly, all of the deciding of how to allocate where each characters points go is done between missions, not during). There can also be a lot of strategy involved in playing the game…deciding which character of the 4 (sometimes less) you control has the best attack for the situation can be somewhat difficult to perform in real-time (hence the pause button). It all comes together to be fun, but it can get somewhat frustrating if you start a mission with the wrong mix of hero’s (so save before you choose a team so you can adjust if necessary).

After the initial (introductory) levels what the player can do opens up a bit (attack wise and superhero-wise). Going further through the game, we meet multiple characters that help to advance the game, from El Diablo (a Mexican flier who controls fire) to Man-Bot (a rich guy who gets struck by massive amounts of Energy-X and accidentally kills his scientist brother, forcing him to wear a metal suit) to Law and Order (A combination of a blind woman (Law) and a huge police officer (Order) who have been struck by Energy-X). There is an origin story for each superhero, almost all of which are well thought out, and only one of them makes no sense (Eve…it’s not an origin story because there is little explanation of how she came to be and she was never hit by Energy-X).

The first major foe encountered in Freedom Force is Nuclear Winter. Nuclear Winter was a communist Russian leader who gets frozen in liquid nitrogen, but due to his exposure to Energy-X survives and steals a nuclear warhead. After a fairly lengthy series of ice missions (he’s Nuclear Winter…he froze basically everything) you come to the final ice mission, which gives you the task of disarming the bomb while being attacked by Nuclear Winter and his minions. Luckily MinuteMan helped invent nukes (seems rather convenient does it not?), and can disarm it (and yes, there is a timer countdown on the nuke). Basically your other three characters (Mentor, Man-Bot, and El-Diablo) have to keep enemies away from MinuteMan while he disarms the bomb…if it sounds very MacGyver-esque, it is (but everyone likes MacGyver, right?). The entire plot segment is very familiar feeling, but it is set up very well by the in-game cutscenes so that the plot devices may be obvious, but it’s fun and challenging nonetheless.

After the ice levels, the variety of locations and missions increases dramatically. There are levels involving everything from closing dinosaur-birthing portals, to underground battles with ex-beauty queens who mind control uglies, to battling evil clones of MinuteMan concocted by an enemy known as Déjà Vu (who happens to have a gigantic cloning ray-gun). There is a huge range of missions and objectives from the bizarrely entertaining (Déjà Vu speaks in bad rhymes) to the incredibly difficult (fighting the robots of Mr. Mechanical before they destroy all of Patriot City). Freedom Force is never easy (regardless of difficulty), but the Mr. Mechanical missions may leave you somewhat frustrated if you don’t have the right plan of attack.

The one part of the game where I question the point is towards the end of the game where there is a series of missions involving Eve being mind-controlled by the Greek God Pan (horse legs, man body…think Philoctetes from the Hercules movie). The whole set of missions is kind of a side-ploy to foreshadow the conclusion of the game (Pan is released by the games final antagonist), but it seems unnecessary. These missions all revolve around a character that the player has little reason to like…she has no logical origin story and is basically detached from all the other characters. She is quite simply the only character in the game that the player has no reason to become attached to, so why have 3 or 4 missions predicated on saving her?

Finally, at the end of game comes the understanding of what is really being fought for. Time Master is the games main villain…he can travel forward and backwards in time, and open portals to pull things from anywhere in history (or in the future). Basically he is Dorian Gray without the picture…the only way to keep himself from getting old and dying is stopping the celestial clock and killing everyone else in the process. Evil for the win!

So of course Freedom Force wants to stop Time Master from killing everyone (they are superhero’s after all). In order to keep Freedom Force from dashing his evil plans, Time Master throws wave after wave of enemies Freedom Force has defeated to attack them. After clawing through past enemies, Freedom Force finally faces Time Master on the celestial clock. While I won’t completely throw out the ending for anyone who hasn’t played it, Time Master is defeated and the universe is saved by the sacrifice of one of the members of Freedom Force.

After reading this review it should be obvious that you should go play Freedom Force ASAP. It has all the elements a game needs to become a classic. In my mind, it is easily on my Top-10 games of all time list (FFvTTR is on there as well) and if you play Freedom Force you will understand why. The voice acting is the best in any game you will ever play, the game is fun, and it will leave you wanting more. If you don’t have it, get it…you will not regret it.

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