Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich
November 27, 2006 - Games - Reviews
Freedom Force is a hybrid RPG and RTS, a squad-based strategic comic book story of sorts. While its presentation and voice acting is certainly over-the-top, it's intentionally so, and I enjoyed the game more than I thought I would.
The heroes in the game are Golden Age types, such as Sky King and Minuteman, and each has an animated origin story which you can view should you chose. The game's storyline is that of a comic book which might have been written during comics' Golden Age: a bad guy goes back in time and gives the Nazis "Energy X", with which they win the war. The heroes must now do what they can to correct the time stream and defeat the Third Reich.
The game takes place from a 3D top-down view, which can be rotated and zoomed at will. The view never became annoying or difficult to adjust, as happens sometimes in other 3D games. You control between one and four heroes which you can select before each mission. Each hero will have a number of powers, which can range from punches and bodyslams to fireballs and the ability to change enemies into toads or potted plants. There are probably about 20 heroes in the game which become available throughout the story, but you can also create your own, which I did towards the end of the game. My character was "The Mage", and I gave him a bullet-deflecting shield, "magic missile" ray, a slow spell, ball lightning, and a kick-ass fireball. He ended up being fairly effective, but I had to test him out a number of times to tweak the abilities and rule out certain others than ended up being ineffective.
The game uses a good mix of enemy grunts and bosses, and drops in "secrets" such as hidden healing cannisters and prestige or experience point cannisters.
Healing is actually a power that doesn't exist in the game - I imagine it would have thrown off the game's balance. Instead, when a hero is killed, he has a number of "heroic revivals", each of which will bring him back. When those are gone, you lose.
The game is simple, but fun. The next time I play through this game, I'll be creating many more of my own unique heroes, and recruiting others that I didn't try the first time through.
These games are among the few in my collection that I've actually finished, and I finished both very quickly (FFvTTR took me less than a week, which is entirely unheard of).
Freedom Force proved that superhero games for the PC don't have to be giant piles of suck, and FFvTTR continued that tradition. One word of warning, though: I believe that the original Freedom Force must be "hacked" in order to enable free camera rotation. If I recall correctly, it was simply a matter of making a minor edit in an INI file.