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It is safe to say that many of us
PC game aficionados read comic books in our younger days, or still read comic books.
There is an undeniable lure to comic book superheroes: their hidden identity, their
superpowers, the dastardly villains, and villainous plots that must be undone to
save an unsuspecting populace of certain doom are a few reasons why the appeal of
comic book hero’s has not waned since the silver age of comic books in the 1960’s.
One look at the recent box office bonanza of “spiderman” is justification of the
secure place of superhero’s in the American psyche.
“Freedom Force” is a RPG that creates a team of superhero’s in the mythical city of
patriot city circa 1962. The storyline is based on a superior alien race (of course)
who have released canisters of “energy x” to earth.
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This energy has the ability to infuse
a person with superpowers, and it is the aliens’ diabolical plot to watch earth destroy
itself by having criminals supplement their evil will with awesome new energy x powers.
The only hope for earth is that some of these canisters of energy x fall into the hands
of upstanding citizens, willing to fight for peace, justice and the american way of life.
Leading the charge for the good guys are minuteman, the leader of “Freedom Force” who
fights with a “patriot staff”, and the mysterious “mentor”, a rebel from the alien
race who released “energy x” on earth. Mentor fights with physic powers that cause
foes to attack one another, and he can lift and throw cars with mind power, as well
as blank the minds of his foes, leaving them momentarily stunned.
The RPG format allows gamers to develop characters and earn experience through completion
of increasingly difficult missions. The earned experience points can then be expended in
training sessions to gain additional superpowers or upgrade existing powers. “Freedom Force”
also allows games to stop the action by pressing the space bar at any point during the game.
This is a welcome feature, as issuing orders to 4 different heroes while in combat can
be a daunting task without the pause feature.
Throughout the missions, minuteman and mentor encounter other superheroes imbued with the
power of “energy x” which the player can recruit to fight in the Freedom Force team.
These new heroes include the fiery diablo, the powerful man-bot, and the gruff man
o’war, to name a few. There are 13 distinct heroes available, and each has a cut scene
describing their unique origin and encounter with “energy x”. After these heroes have
been recruited, a squad of up to 4 heroes can be sent out on a mission. Determining the
correct members of the squad is paramount for success, as each hero has specific strengths
and powers. For example, el diablo can fly, man-bot is slow, but powerful and the bullet
is quick, but has weak attacks
Graphics are excellent throughout the entire game. Perspective is top-down, and the camera
can be moved via the mouse for different angles. The fonts and graphics all evoke the
spirit of the silver age of comics, with damage being indicated in colorful “thawk”, “pow”
adjectives, with the games’ narrator describing the action with a campy cadence. The heroes
themselves have catch phrases such as “your evil is unwanted here!” and “for freedom!”
which all add to the kitschy comic book atmosphere of the game. Locales are centered mostly
in the urban confines of patriot city, but some scenes do take place on an aircraft carrier,
city docks and at the empire state building.
Combat is coordinated simply through the mouse. Each character has a pull down menu of available
attacks, and after an attack mode is picked, simply click on an enemy to execute the attack.
Also, city items such as lampposts, barrels, and ever-present boxes of tnt can be thrown or
swung at the evildoers of patriot city.
Complaints with freedom force are minor, but there are a few. First and foremost, with a squad
of more than 3 heroes, it is very difficult to keep track of the characters. Although each
hero can work independent of one another, sending heroes to different locations during the
same mission is difficult because there is no map feature or way of tracking the progress of
an individual hero without scrolling over the entire map. It is a bit frustrating to hear
your hero taking damage and not being able to fight back simply because the hero is lost
somewhere on the map. Another minor complaint is that the bosses are a bit easy to defeat,
and the city landscapes become a bit repetitive after a while.
The real appeal of “Freedom Force” is the obvious level-of-effort and care the designers took
in re-creating the look, feel, and atmosphere of the great comic books of the 1960’s.
Irrational Games, developers of Freedom Force, should be highly lauded for developing not
only an original game concept, but a game that is flat out fun, easy to learn, and addictive
to play.
As jumping out an office window in a spandex suit with hopes of saving a damsel in distress
with flashy superpowers seems a bit unrealistic (Toby Maguire excluded), playing “Freedom Force”
is the closest us mere mortals can hope to get to being a superhero...for now.
Yacka's Rating:
4 out of 5 Planets
Talk about
Freedom Force>> |
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Buy it @
amazon.com |
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