Freedom Fighters

"Would you like some tactical with your action, sir?"

The Americans are a patriotic bunch. The love the rights granted them by their constitution, especially the rights to freedom and firearms. So just to make sure that they appreciate their rights, The Soviet Union has invaded 'Noo Yawk' via submarines, giving the honest American Joe his chance to exercise his constitutional right to bear arms.

Taking up these arms, from a third-person, controllable camera like that of Hitman 2, can be good fun if you like a side-order of tactical with your action. You start out alone, with nothing but your trusty plumber's wrench, but as the game progresses and your revolutionary reputation increases, you can attract progressively more citizens to fight the good fight. Doing things to further the cause, such as rescuing prisoners or destroying enemy installations, awards you with charisma points, and the more points you gain, the bigger your angry mob can be. Whilst this is an interesting idea, it feels contrived by the limited opportunities to expand your charisma rating. Generally the opportunities for scoring are rare and linked into the main objectives, so it all feels rather inevitable. A more open-ended, rewarding approach to charisma would have added to the experience.

As the thrust is very much more on the action, commanding your rabble is fairly simple; you can order them to hold an area, follow you or attack/scout for the enemy. Each button press will command a single random fighter, and each additional press another, or you can hold the button to command the whole squad. The fighters are generic enough that you never need to worry about individuals, and they're generally smart enough to put up a pretty good fight. In fact, the AI for the friendly and enemy NPCs is well realised overall, and whilst you won't see any really intelligent group behaviour, they make good individual use of cover and terrain.

The game is broken into chapters with a series of ultimate objectives to complete, as well as many secondary ones, and then it's up to you which order to do them in. The theatre of war is usually split into several different neighbourhoods, which allows for non-linear and dynamic battles. This was one of my favourite aspects of the game.

For example, one mission sees you attacking a heavily defended dock. You're welcome to take it head on, but you'd stand a much better chance if you destroyed the nearby helicopter base, or if you demolish the electricity pylons to cut power to the floodlights. If you do both, which do you attack first? This aspect of the game is very involving and allows you to fight the war on your own terms. The actual maps, however, aren't as exciting (more on this later).

The actual maps have a characteristically dark, bold appearance as well as some very solid character models and believable environments. The textures are sharp but not overly detailed, and there’s not much in the way of window-dressing in the often strangely empty battle zones other than a few token craters and burnt out vehicles. The environments tend to fall into an endless series of identical looking fortifications, constructed out of the same green crates and ramparts, and the samey feel wears thin very quickly. Some of the levels are more linear than others, but the biggest disappointment is that even when multiple solutions are given, there isn't a great deal to distinguish the challenge of one path from the other, which makes the choice seem moot. Thus the replay value is severely curtailed, especially since you often have to visit each area more than once in the progress of any one campaign, which doesn't leave much left to explore.

The combat mechanics, which are the meat and potatoes of the game, are simple enough to learn and quite intuitive. You will auto-aim wherever the camera is focused in the normal third-person view, but at anything more than moderate distance it's much more fun to use the aim system, which fixes the camera over your character's right shoulder. The camera recoils and shows up the detail of ejected shell casings very well, and has a sort of TV News quality about it. You have to press in the left stick to aim, which makes you practically immobile - it makes good sense, but it also means that if you're a bit ham-fisted you'll tend to move a little when you're trying to get a crucial shot, which irked me a little.

Last but not least, the musical score is very tasty. Powerful, Soviet-flavoured choral overtures are fused with electro noises to great effect in the sweeping in-game music. It's stirring, epic-flavoured stuff. The sound effects are purely functional and the voice acting is just slightly better than most, though some of the accents left me cold.

It's very engaging to begin with, but it's not a very long game and the relative simplicity of the action robs it further of replay value. And by taking the tactical soul out of a squad-based shooter, what you're left with doesn't quite cut it as a pure shooter, but seems very simplistic compared to more complex examples of the genre like Desert Storm. It makes for a fun night-off from Rainbow Six 3, but if it's pure action you're looking for you might want to rent this out before you buy it.

VERDICT - Solid enough, entertaining, but not outstanding. 6.9 out of ten.

PROS -

* Fluid and action-packed
* A superb musical score
* Much easier to get in to than other squad-based games

CONS -

* Too short
* The maps are too samey, which hurts the replay value
* Might not be meaty enough to satisfy fans of the genre

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/24/04