Freedom Fighters

"A Painfully Mediocre Action Game"

What went wrong here? “Freedom Fighters” is a game that could have been something great, unfortunately, it’s not. I expected so much more coming from IO Interactive, the masterminds behind the brilliant “Hitman 2: Silent Assassin”. But this is a painfully mediocre and strictly by-the-numbers 3rd person action game, and in some ways, it’s not even that, it’s worse.

“Freedom Fighters” puts you in the role of an average schmuck named “Chris” who gets caught up in a battle for freedom when the Soviet Union invades the United States. The game is pretty much what you’d expect from its genre, you run, shoot, duck, and jump your way through your typical warehouses and docks levels. An element “Freedom Fighters” tries to add to this is the squad-based gameplay, but even that isn’t very well fleshed out. Upon completing certain tasks you gain more karma and as a result can recruit more allies to fight alongside you in the levels.

During the game you’ll run into groups of rebels who you can recruit by pressing a button and then lead them into battle. Yet despite the premise you only have three orders you can give to your squad: attack, defend and regroup. With such shallow orders you never really get the feeling like you’re actually controlling the squad, because you really aren’t, you’re just basically telling them to attack, only thing is, they’ll do that anyways even without your orders.

The action is entertaining at first but grows pretty tiresome. There’s not enough weapon variety, or ammo for that matter, and the majority of the levels basically stink. The missions aren’t very original either; they usually range from either blowing up something or rescuing hostages, that’s about it. In fact probably the only thing the game really has going for it is the thunderous musical score provided the fantastic Jesper Kyd whom also conducted the music for “Hitman 2”. In “Freedom Fighters” he creates a brilliant mix of orchestra and chorus that sets the mood of the game storyline perfectly; too bad it didn’t have a better game to go along with it.

In the end “Freedom Fighters” is a game that really is lacking in energy and originality. The gameplay has been done countless times before and by far superior titles. There’s no co-op or online multiplayer either which really would have given this game a boost it desperately needed. As it stands, “Freedom Fighters” is a rental at best, and even that may be saying too much.

Pros:
+ Superb Music/Atmosphere
+ Some well designed levels

Cons:
- Dull Gameplay
- Shallow Squad Elements
- Repetitive levels and missions
- No co-op or online play
- Awkward Controls
- Just not very fun, period

Graphics- 7.5
Gameplay- 6.0
Sound- 9.5
Overall- 6.0

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/14/03