"The best superhero game to date"

Freedom Force takes place in Liberty City during the early 1960's. Many people may be completely turned off by the whole cheesy superhero setting, but believe me, this game is great with or without all of the superheros. Can this review be telling an honest opinion about the game? Stay tuned to find out!

You start with Minuteman. He's the shoot first, ask questions later kind of superhero. All of his missions are really just tutorials, introducing you to the game. You move your characters by the point and click interface. When you click on an enemy your avatar automatically uses his/her default attack. All default attacks can be easily changed in the menu. When you right click, the game pauses, and then a menu pops showing all of your available commands you can use. It matters what you right click on, for example lets say you were using the superhero Man-Bot, if you clicked on the ground, your options would be ''move there'', or ''focus''. Focus is a long-ranged attack. If you clicked on an object like a car, your options would be ''move there'', ''focus'', ''wallop'', and ''disruption''. Wallop is Man-bot's basic default punch attack and disruption is a long-ranged attack that blows up parts of the environment, like cars. When you have more than 1 superhero in your party, that’s when the real fun starts. When you are faced against alot of enemies at once and you have a party of more than 1 , you can hit spacebar and pause the whole game. This gives you a minute to relax and also gives the option of issueing your superheros some commands. Things can get really tactical in most situations. Suppose you’re in a situation where one badguy is trying to pick you off with his gun, do you use Man-bot's long-ranged disruption attack to blow up a car that’s parked right beside the Villain, Harming the villain but not completely disposing of him, and then you use El-Diablo's devastating Inferno to finish him off? The strategies are limitless. The rpg aspects in Freedom Force are rather weak and too thin to really be a major slice in the game. For doing the main objectives you gain experience to level up your superhero after every level. Most of the time you have can choose to do secondary objectives that are worth extra experience that goes toward leveling up your character. Each building you destroy, or each civilian you harm/kill subtracts experience. Everything that you do right gives you prestige that you use to recruit new superheros when they are available, after every level. The environment is very interactive, you can pick up cars, destroy buildings, pick up lamp posts, etc. This brings some new elements to gameplay.

The story is neatly and creatively presented. Whenever you acquire a new superhero you get to see the '' The Origin of *insert superhero name here*'', explaining how the superhero was created. The movies are presented like comic books which are creative and fun to watch. All of it is cheesy but it is meant to be like that and it really makes the superhero theme come alive. Some of the story is told by a good Narrator, which trys to leave you in suspense at parts, and from what I've seen he's accomplished everything he set out for. The story itself is pretty straight forward, but what did you expect from a game that is based on Superheros?

The voices of the superheros are, again cheesy, but they are meant to be. All of the voices match their character's personality pretty well. Take Microwave for example, he’s an alien from outer space and wears a helmet. His voice is monotone and he acts like a robot. I think his voice matches his character well.

All of the sound effects are pretty good. Each time you hear your superhero punch a bad guy it has that cheesy punch sound. After destroying a building you hear a satisfying crumbling sound.

The music is great. It gets you pumped for a fight ahead. It also makes 60's atmosphere come alive. You can really tell that this game is set in the 60's mostly because of the great music.

Freedom Force's graphics will be the first thing you notice when you first fire it up, because they are fantastic! Each superhero is modeled very well and has a comic book look to it. Whenever you first see one of your superheros make a building crumble, you will say ''awesome!'' in your mind because It looks so good, it makes you feel very destructive. I will always remember me sending badguys flying in the air after I use Minuteman's ''Strike for Freedom'' or El Diablo's ''Inferno'' attack that sends ever enemy in its radius flying way up in the air ko-ed. All of these experiences will be memorable because of how great they looked. Overall the graphics very good.

Freedom force is a great game for anyone. If you are looking for a good real-time tactical rpg-wait let me rephrase that, if you are looking for a very fun game that anyone can enjoy, then get Freedom Force my friend!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/03/03, Updated 06/03/03