Score
Gameplay:	8
Graphics:	8
Sound:	9
FunFactor:	7
PlasmaFactor:	9
Overall:	8.2

Freedom Fighters Review
October 10, 2003 by Jody

by Jody - October 10, 2003

What if JFK didn�t have the guts to stand his ground during the Bay of Pigs crisis? Could history have taken a different turn? Could the soviets have gone on to rule the world, or would some other greater power stop them from rising? What about everything else that happened around or after this event? Would that have happened also? The story of Freedom Fighters uses this very idea.

Russians are everywhere!

In Freedom Fighters, the Soviet Union won the Cold War and soon after, the Russians approached and invaded the Big Apple! The game begins with a huge Soviet submarine emerging from the waters around the Ellis Island, just in front of the Statue of Liberty. Under the pretense of "liberating the American Continent from its invaders," and backed up by wacky theories that the people of the USSR are related to Native Americans, The Soviet Union has launched a full scale occupation of the United States. They're out to destroy the American way of life. Instead of eating at the drive-thru New Yorkers will be waiting in long bread lines and organizing "youth festivals" for their great leaders. The Statue of Liberty will be painted red! Thinking back to the real world, I�m sort of glad that video games are not real. If this would have happened, what kind of PC would I be using!? I don�t even want to think about using NetBSD.
 

Okay, back to the game.

Around this part, we needed a

Mario

, but since he was on vacation, so we had to take on the role of Christopher Stone. Players evolve from an average New Yorker into a fearless patriot who recruits and leads an army of freedom fighters in the streets of New York City. It will be your duty to liberate New York from the Soviet invaders and restore freedom to the ruined Freedom Fighters�s city.

On the surface Freedom Fighters is all about simplistic console-friendly gameplay (this is a multi-platform title), but to anyone who knows anything about gaming it will be apparent there is more to it than that. True enough; the main premise behind the game is its focus on the simplicity and smoothness of the interface and gameplay mechanics in general, but that's like saying cars are simple because you only have to put your foot on the gas pedal and steer a bit. It's what's under the hood that counts. In Freedom Fighters the straightforward action gameplay where you run around the streets of New York City, leading your squad mates against the Soviet oppressors is backed up by some of the most amazing AI work and intelligent game design solutions I've seen in an action game.

The game lets you lead up to twelve freedom fighters and you do that with the press of three simple buttons. One stands for "regroup," two for "scout/attack" and three for "guard." Aside from the regular WASD setup there are basically three more keys that you'll use and that's it. By pressing the right mouse button the view switches from a third-person perspective to a semi-first-person perspective a la Splinter Cell. The great part about this secondary perspective is that you can simply point your gun at any location you like and order your troops to scout or defend that area. Quickly tapping on the order keys selects individual freedom fighters, whereas holding the order keys for a second longer will issue the order to your whole team. The concept may sound a bit more involving when I put it on paper like this, but believe me when I tell you that it's as seamless as they get. The gameplay mechanics are so fluid you'll rarely think about how it all works. Instead, your attention will be focused solely on the mission objectives and the Soviet forces. The game starts out rather slow, in a sense that you'll lead no more than two or three fighters at any given time, but as you progress further your charisma levels will increase and you'll get to lead more and more of them. The number of charisma points you get is directly proportional to the number of secondary objectives you can achieve in the game, the time it takes you to finish the mission or the number of quick saves you've used.

What's very important to stress here is that, although Freedom Fighters may appear mostly linear at first, closer observation of the game will reveal certain nonlinear qualities to it. The campaign is divided into chapters. These chapters usually consist of several missions each. For one, you can pick and choose which missions you want to take. Secondly, by using the game's sewer system (used for quick saving missions and getting back to the main base), you are allowed to finish secondary objectives in a particular mission and then go back to the rebel base to select a different mission to play. The benefit of this is that the accomplished secondary objective from the mission you have exited can have a bearing on the newly selected mission. In practice, this means that you'll be able to destroy a helipad in one mission (which would be the secondary objective in that mission), only to go back to the rebel base and take on a different mission where you won't have to deal with Soviet choppers anymore (as you've destroyed the helipad in the mission you left unfinished). Usually it's best to select missions in certain order so that the toughest mission in the chapter has fewer obstacles to deal with, but it's really up to you to decide how you want to do this.

Good for XBOX; haven't tried it anywhere else.

Given what this game is trying to do, the graphics are pretty impressive. Moving from indoor to outdoor environments and back again is very smooth even if the free camera exposes a lot of ugly little things about Freedom Fighters. Just because we have control of the camera doesn't mean that we should be able to jam it up into corner and catch all kinds of clipping and seams whenever we want. The system is very similar to the one found in Hitman 2 and unfortunately presents the same sort of problems.

The environments are very well done in that much of what you can see, you can reach on foot. Balconies, blown-out buildings, warehouse catwalks are all fair game in FF and will be put to good use by the Soviets and the Americans at every chance. If you're sniping from a window, enemies can infiltrate the structure and will try to sneak up on you because they can get up there the same way you did. Piles of garbage or scrap metal, not to mention stairs, can be climbed by any character in the game.

The lighting is also very good. Flickering flames, muzzle flashes and time of day all throw dynamic lighting effects on everything in the game world. The colors in the game are sharp and crisp without being too bright. This is an occupied New York City we're talking about here. The subtle differences like cold weather clothing and the leaves changing color also help convey the mood of the changing seasons in the city as well.

Wow, a shooter with nice voice acting,

The sound-effects, voice-overs and background music in Freedom Fighters are also very good. All story-related characters have appropriate voice-overs, and thankfully the accents all sound American, even if the game was developed in Denmark. The soundtrack is quite varied, and extremely well done. Some of the tracks reminded me of the Fight Club soundtrack, a movie with an atmosphere comparable with Freedom Fighters. Other tracks have a bit of 80s synth-pop in them, mixed with a bit of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Jesper Kyd, the man behind the soundtracks used in games like Brute Force, Hitman 1-2, and Messiah composed and performed � along with the Hungarian Radio Choir. The entire soundtrack has over an hour of original music, and at least in my experience it was very hard to dislike it even after hours of playing.

I need a mouse and keyboard!

The controls are much easier on the PC version � especially when aiming manually, but it doesn�t seem like the AI is too sensitive, so you can usually sneak up and take your time when aiming. Auto-aim is used when running around normally, but unlike for instance Die Hard Vendetta on the Gamecube you�ll at least have to do most of the aiming yourself, and the game will do its best to fine-tune the shots.

Multiplayer fun!

One thing that I love about this game the most is the split-screen multiplayer action. Up to four players may join as either the Russian or the American side, select a deathmatch-like map, and duke it out. It�s interesting because throughout the maps you�ll find huge containers with fresh recruits and mounted guns on top, so it�s smart to dominate as many containers as possible, so the opponent(s) can�t build up a gang and put up a fight. Multiplayer really is tons of fun, but the more people who join you the better.

 

If you're not into war games, give it a rent.

It is true many promises remained unfulfilled and because of certain reasons the producers changed its name twice from Freedom: The Battle for Liberty Island to Freedom: Soldiers of Liberty and only then Freedom Fighters. If this game were polished a little bit more, we would have got in our hands the best game of the year until now, despite its simple gameplay. Unfortunately, Freedom Fighter is just a game very well done but which doesn't impose any new standards. Even so, you shouldn't miss it. Anyway, the story leaves plenty of room for a sequel but I�d bet the next main character will not be Christopher Stone anymore but the beautiful Isabella Angelina.