Game Review: Freedom Force vs the 3rd Reich

[lonnarin]

Another recent game put out by Sierra, this one apparantly has been a standing series before I bought this one. The premise is that you are a superhero member of Freedom Force, a golden age era Marvel 60s type of group protecting the world from supervillains, nazis and the communists, all in the name of Patriot City! It's campy cheese factor is TREMENDOUS, with tons of comic-still sequences instead of full videos, alien invasions, Giant Cloned T Rexes rampaging, and cliche sappy heroes that make you snicker all the way.

The graphics and interface are incredible. It seems to follow the same top-down view neverwinter has, with a 360 degree rotational camera with a zoom to give you all the best comic fighting scenes. ZAM! BIFF! POW! The 70s batman clouds are all there, making crazy phenomes you never thought existed. Missions typically are similar to warcraft III missions, where you have about 4 characters invading a stronghold of baddies/protecting a city with hotspots to reach/conquer to progress the storyline. The goal seems to be the direct opposite of Evil Genius, another great recent Sierra game, in which one builds a stronghold with traps and guards to fight off superheroes.

The storyline campaign is a bit rigid, and the game has no where near the scenario customization freedom that NWN has, though Multiplayer is apparantly possible on it. I tried logging in through gamespy, but not many people have decent servers up yet. Also, it doesnt appear as though there is any way to talk between heroes in multiplayer... which is rather troublesome. As far as the plot and story go... they are cheesy but hilariously over the top.

The hero customizer if pretty fun. If you are decent at making texture skins for characters in other multiplayer games, you can feasibly stick in any REAL Marvel character or custom superhero you want. Until then, you can select any of the models in the game and use them as skin. Right now my custom ones are Squatch: the Abomidable snowman with 10/10 str who topples buildings and freezes people, Lucio Calzone, a mafia crimelord who walks around with a fully loaded machine gun and bribes foes to turn around and fight for him, and Hitler's Brain in a Jar... which floats around and zaps things up like a cross between a beholder and an illithid. (and yes, if you get too close to him, he does eat your brain in one short melee gulp) The power and stat assignment for the heroes is VERY versatile, even moreso than selecting spells in shadowrun. You have like 12-14 types of damage and resistances, stat effects, teleports, etc... and you can set the strength and magnitude, range, arc of the swing, practically EVERY game mechanic you can think ofd for a spell/power. You even get to assign custom animations for the powers as they are used, so squatch sprints on an ice slide, Calzone showers dollar signs on people, Hitler-Jar sends wicked red beams n such. The sky is the limit with the customizer, really.

I give this game 8/10, which would have been higher had they made it easier for persistant worlds and multiplayer teamwork. Everything else about it has me glued to the screen.