Long before Christian Bale suited up in black body armor to play Batman, before Frank Miller brought the brooding Dark Knight to the pages of comics, Adam West was the Batman. I always loved this series as a kid, it was so silly and fun and totally whimsical--but alas things got very serious for almost all comics starting sometime around 1980. At any rate Freedom Force versus the 3 rd Reich is a game which pays homage to golden age comic book superheroes. The story and presentation are straight out of a comic book from those days, and the gameplay is a solid RTS-RPG hybrid that's highly entertaining to rumble through. Irrational games has really outdone themselves with this title that's well worth picking up.
We meet our heroes not long after we left them, with the majority of Patriot City 's Freedom Force enjoying some time away from the Freedom Fortress. As such, you start out with a pretty limited selection of heroes from the prior game like Minuteman, Alchemiss and El Diablo. You start off battling some of your old foes from the original—mainly Soviet Communist bad guys--but things will get more complicated in no time and you'll soon find yourself fighting foes from Nazi Germany. In addition to the game's main plot each of the superheroes has a secret origin much in the spirit of old comic books. The character starts off a normal guy but through some fantastical mix of science and the supernatural the character will gain super powers--blasted by cosmic rays, imbued with a divine power, you know: the regular comic book stuff. These side stories provide a nice bit of information about your whole team.
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The gameplay is of course one of the game's real strong points as it mixes conventions from both role-playing games and real-time strategy genres. The game takes place as a series of missions with cut scenes framing them at the beginning and end. You'll start off by choosing a team of heroes from a rather large group and the name of the game is balance having strength, speed, flight, etc., is all necessary as no hero can possibly do everything. Strength comes at the expense of speed and direct attacks at the expense of more tactical moves. One of the more compelling things that Freedom Force adds to the mix is a very interactive environment that helps the game feel like a comic book. If you want to fly from rooftop to rooftop you can. If you want to pick up cars and streetlights and toss them at the enemy or swing them you can do that too. Most problems have a multitude of solutions depending on how you want to approach them. For instance, in one mission I was faced with a tank, so I polymorphed it into a vase of flowers and placed it in between some buildings where I could ignite the buildings with my pyrotechnics hero and do a load of damage to it without taking much damage. I could have done other things but this seemed like the best option.
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"One of the more compelling things that Freedom Force adds to the mix is a very interactive environment that helps the game feel like a comic book." |
| But as I said this isn't strictly speaking just an RTS. There are lots of RPG elements to be had here. For instance characters need be leveled up. The trick here is to buy a new power for your super hero you need to level up a previous power to past level 3 typically. So it becomes a balancing act between purchasing new skills and upgrading what you have. Further party management is really key. If you don't get out on a mission with a well balanced party of a similar level you're going to have characters that are liabilities. A lot of you may be thinking this sounds a lot like the original and that's a fair point. But then again the original was one of the hidden gems of 2002 so more of the same only bigger and better isn't so bad. |  |
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Graphically speaking, this game does a very good job of making the comic-book world it takes place in come alive. The key to this is a nice use of vibrant colors and a cell-shaded look to the game. Everything really looks like a comic book come to life where the good guys are brightly colored and look like good guys whereas the villains are starkly colored with lots of contrast to give them that evil look. This difference is one of the best art tricks used here, but the game itself may not win any awards for technical excellence, as it's not much better looking than the original. |
"Everything really looks like a comic book come to life..."
The audio comes in much along the same lines. The soundtrack fits right in with something similar to the score from the original Superman soundtrack. It's well edited--so it peaks when it should and shuts up when it should. Furthermore, the Sound effects have all the subtlety of the “POW screen” from an old episode of Batman . Probably, the best aspect of the game's sound is the wonderful voice actors that really give a top rate performance. None of the voice actors' names grabbed me for their celebrity but they were all very nicely styled in a way which made me really identify with the voices. Everybody has a voice that fits well with their comic book personality. The Green Genie sounds especially playful, Minuteman and Mentor sound especially serious, and Diablo sounds like a joker and so on and so forwards. The villains all have evil sounding voices, the communists sound like they could be dead ringers for Boris and Natasha, the Nazis have the screeching sound to their voice that Colonel Clink had on Hogan's Heroes. All these very surreal touches lend to the whimsical setting very nicely.
Multiplayer-wise this game is a lot of fun if you can get a game going. It's LAN- or internet-playable for a few players but good luck trying to find anyone actively playing online. Sadly, this game didn't do so hot at the sales desk so it's really LAN-only in most cases as it can be nearly impossible to get a group of people online together to play. That said, the brawl mode is a lot of fun, as who hasn't wanted to toss a car at their friends? Even if you discount the multiplayer, it's no slouch when it comes to bang for your buck. With a long campaign with around twenty-five missions and a huge number of permutations of heroes possible, there is plenty of content here to keep you interested even if you never touch the game's single player mode. Even after finishing the game I hadn't even used all the available superheroes. Further, you can create your own hero if you're so inclined to. Last but not least, there are almost no serious bugs to speak of--which is an accomplishment in and of itself in this release and it runs smoothly on a reasonable PC.
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All in all this was a really exceptional game and it makes me mad as heck that it failed as badly as it did. I'd easily recommend this game for 50 bucks; but unless you just hated the original, there are not many good reasons why I can see to not pay the few bucks that this excellent game will run you. It is stylistically awesome, highly entertaining to play, absorbing--there is also a lot to do--and it's technically polished till it shines. All things considered, one of the best sequels of 2005.
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"All things considered, one of the best sequels of 2005." |
Reviewers System—AMD XP 2500+, 1GB of PC2700 DDR ram, Nvidia GF6600GT and ATI 9800 SE (upgraded in the middle of the game) Nvidia sound onboard
Highs
- Awesome Setting and characters
- Very well produced—no noticeable bugs
- Solid game mechanics
- Highly Stylish and stylized in a world of Drab realistic games
Lows
- Doesn't really break any new ground
- Very Few multiplayer chances
