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Freedom Force Review
Chris Leyton
00/12/0000
Freedom Force provides one odf the best comic book translations ever...
Set amidst a camp, nostalgic 60ās comic book universe, Freedom Force is a unique tactical RPG that comes off well in the main with a few little niggles that fortunately donāt distract too much from the overall enjoyment.
In a world of the evil communists, players take control of a variety of hammy comic-book super heroes, in homage to the glory days of the comic book universe. From the cheesy dialogue, voice acting and scripting you can tell straight away that this isnāt going to be a serious affair, however youāll certainly need to keep your brain in-tow if you want to succeed in this fun action/strategy title.
Told through static comic book cut-scenes, the story focuses on Energy-X, a mysterious substance that is behind the power of an evil empire that has conquered the entire universe except for one planetā¦ the planet Earth. Deciding that simply destroying Earth would not provide any entertainment, the evil dictator plans to give the power Energy-X to the most evil people on Earth, in the hope that their greed will eventually lead to Earthās destruction by itās own people. Upon hearing this a member of his race, decides to thwart his evil plan by stealing the Energy-X and sets out to the planet Earth. Unfortunately his ship is shot down and Energy-X is spilt across the globe, witness a selection of newly created super heroes each with a selection of varying super-human skills and attributes.
Which is where you come in, the gameplay is squad based mixing up turn-based combat and real-time action. By clicking on any objects in the level, a dialogue box will pop up, freezing the action and allowing you to select a variety of actions depending on the object, so you can fire weapons, select a special power, pick-up objects, etcā¦ Itās a system that works very well, eliminating the tedious nature of turn-based combat whilst being more accessible then real-time titles. At times, in particular when youāre commanding three or more characters it can become a little confusing, but on the whole itās one of the best systems Iāve seen employed in this type of title.
Another neat area is the solid 3D engine, whilst not being overly impressive in terms of detail or trickery it is very robust allowing you to interact with virtually every object and features a very sound physics engine. Lampposts can be ripped up and swung as weapons, cars and even buildings can be picked up by the strongest of super-heroes giving a very comic-book feeling to the whole proceedings.
Of course being a super-hero itās your job to be nice to people, however you donāt necessarily have to. The score system after each level takes into accounts all of the good things youāve done and weighs it against the bad things. So saving a women from a bunch of thugs will give you prestige points, however knock down a block of flats with an ill-timed swing of the lamppost and youāll soon see those points knocked back down. Itās nice having such an open-ended approach to the game design, allowing you to do exactly what you want to and not the fixed routines of most strategy titles.
Because of the open-ended game design the levels themselves are actually quite small, however youāll still find yourself desperately trying to locate your teammates, which makes the omission of a map in any shape of form questionable.
Having completed a level you can then move onto the character development section, which is surprisingly detailed. This area allows you to enhance your cast of characters attributes and skills, whilst also being able to buy new power-ups and weapons with your prestige points.
Visually Freedom Force is slightly disappointing, whilst thereās nothing wrong with the title, thereās nothing that really grabs you. The animation perfectly suits the camp OTT nature, however the models donāt feature that much detail, whilst the lack of lighting effects is disturbing.
