Freedom Fighters

"Terrific on almost every level!"

GRAPHICS 10/10
Freedom Fighters uses the same engine as the Hitman engine. Everything from the characters to the environments are extremely well done. While character uniforms and appearances are detailed and have a slightly cartoonish feel to them, environments are massive and sprawling, yet there is not a single loading time in between missions. The animation is some of the best ever in a video game, featuring rag doll physics. NPCs can be seen shifting weight on their legs, hiding behind cover and peeking out, and so on. Each level is also huge, rendering entire skyscrapers without having any huge slowdowns. Various buildings can be entered and exited seamlessly without loading times too. There are also various weather effects that add to the visually impressive look of the game, such as a moving sky, rain and snow. Many of the missions take place in urban environments, and that means there's vehicles, roadblocks and plenty of americans and soviets doing battle amidst your mission. Its amazing how IO has made such an impressive looking game that doesn't require a powerhouse to play. The only flaw to the graphics is that various NPCs don't move their mouths when they speak, but, as you can tell by now this isn't even a problem. Graphics are overall, perfect.

SOUND: 8/10
Freedom Fighters sounds good too. Almost everything is spot on though there are some oddities. Voices are mostly good, especially the little black kid who magically happens to be at every location you're at. The voices of your fellow freedom fighters is also authentically well done, with spot on expressions in their tone of voice. The russian voices too are good, and you will see this mostly in the form of the reporter on the news channel and the soviet leader. Explosions are loud and have an earthquake sound to them, and you can hear dirt and concrete kick up when an explosion goes off. Weapon sounds are mostly well done, with the exception of the AK47 which sounds a little muted for a gun of its calibre. The music is done by the same people who did Hitman 2's, so it is a full orchestra, and turns out to be quite good to listen to as opposed to other game music that sounds too ambient. Overall sounds is great.

GAMEPLAY 9/10
Freedom Fighters is an excellent, excellent squad based game. You take control of a plumber turned freedom fighter, and take on various missions that involve liberating key soviet controlled structures. The game is divided into chapters and each chapter contains two to four missions. An interesting and realistic idea FF uses is that your accomplishments in a mission carry over into the next. For instance, in one mission you can sidetrack from your main objective to blow up a Hind helipad. In the next missions in the chapter you will not encounter a Hind, though you would had you not blown up the helipad in the previous mission.(A hind is a real soviet gunship by the way)Also during missions you can access the game's save game checkpoints in the form of sewer manholes. With the manholes you either quicksave or you can access the sewers, leave the mission and move to another. FF gives you the freedom to move in an out of missions at your pleasure with no penalization, and this idea really helps make it a different kind of game. During gameplay you will come across fellow freedom fighters. Depending on your charisma level, you can recruit up to 12 soldiers to join you. This leads to another great part of FF: the NPCs and their AI. Unlike many games that involve similair NPC interaction, FF's AI is very good. Your soldiers rarely get stuck in obscure places and will stick with you whenever you tell them all the time. You can issue three orders only, but they're enough to get the job done. They are follow, attack and defend. Issuing the attack command will make your soldiers charge at whatever enemy you directed the order at. But your soldiers won't charge mindlessly at them. They will move towards the enemy, take cover, attack, and move up to take cover again and attack. In defend, you can issue soldiers to hold their position. Soldiers will find the nearest form of cover if you didn't specifically target a place to defend and will peak out from time to time to see if any enemies are approaching. This excellent display of well programmed AI shows that FF is a game that gets it all right. The enemy AI is not bad too. Like your soldiers, the russian troops will take cover and lean out to shoot. They will use grenades to flush you out if you're in a tight spot, and they also use MG turrets whenever they can (your soldiers can do this too). They are obviously not as smart as your team AI because you're going to be fighting hundreds and hundreds of them, and it would be way too difficult if they were any smarter or accurate than they were. The one main flaw of the game is that you can't give orders to specific soldiers. If you press defend once, a soldier will defend. Press it again, and the next soldier in line will defend. It goes in a cycle, so every soldier takes turns one by one to follow the order you give. (Unless you hold down the order button in which all soldiers will comply)This proves to be limiting because you cannot give two consecutive orders to the same soldier. Still, the game's greatness in gameplay overshadows this flaw somewhat and the game still shines in its fun factor. The greatest part of this game is how most of it takes place in the cities, and not in some underground base. The missions are very open ended, giving you a lot of choice in how you plan your approach instead of following a linear path. All these great elements make Freedom Fighters a truly great game.

STORY 8/10
Unlike IO's previous game, Hitman 2, FF has an easy to follow, yet interesting plot that uses a 'what if' situation to concoct a story where Russia takes over the US. The game progresses the story in the form of russian news bulletins featuring a very well animated reporter, and in the news is shown in CNN style with the scrolling text at the bottom and all that. The story has a couple of twists though they can be predicted somewhat, but overall for a game like this its surprising that the story is solid, if simple.

REPLAYABILITY 7/10
The game is fairly lengthy compared to many games today. Each missions should last you half an hour average, and if you're a veteren with this sort of game you should get through it in say, 14 hours. After that you can play all the missions again, but with a full squad of 12 people. Instead of having to gain charisma like you did on your first time through. Replayability doesn't offer much but the game is so good I wouldn't mind playing the missions again, and with a full squad too. Its a tremendous shame the game doesn't have multiplayer in the form of co op, because it has all the factors and assets to do so!

BUY OR RENT?
This is a very fine game, but it lacks multiplayer. If you can bear with that, this is a very very solid single player game and you should BUY IT. And, just as it is with any game you burn, its illegal.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/27/03