Freedom Fighters

The Good
This is one of the better games I've played, even though I finished it within a day. Maybe I'll play through it again tomorrow?

Freedom Fighters has an interesting storyline that I'm surprised hasn't been done before. Russians have taken over America and it's up to a growing group of rebels known as the Freedom Phantom to take it back! Or at least take back New York, in which the game is set.

The controls are simple and it works great. You control yourself, and command a number of squadmates through each mission. The view is third person, similar to Hitman (Freedom Fighters uses the same and is developed by the same people), which is perfect for most of the situations you get in to. By clicking the right mouse button, you "aim", in which the camera zooms in to a closer angle so you can get the best shot possible. You only have three commands at your disposal to command your squad with; follow; attack; and guard, but it works marvelously and doesn't tire itself from overly complicated leadership.

The AI is supurb. Your squad and enemies alike will find suitable cover and seldom will they just hang around in the battlefield waiting to get shot a la Rainbow Six. Tell them to guard an area, and they'll find cover, man a gun turret, duck behind walls or dive into a trench, whatever they can find, shooting down any enemies they see.

Every level has several ways of completing it. You could just storm the entire level and hope for the best, or you could do it the very tactful method. Or you might find a passage to a top of a building, allowing you to fire down upon the enemy. One particular level, I told all but one of my troops to charge down a street, while I took an alleyway that lead me to the same area. I was able to sneak into a building, kill the snipers on the top floor and cover my men as well as issue orders to them from that position. It was executed perfectly. There are just so many ways to go about doing any given task in almost every level, that alone makes up for the shortness of the game.

The levels are also action-packed and varied. One level requires you (well, doesn't require you to, but it's a good idea) to progress through it using stealth techniques, another level you find yourself amongst ruined helicopters and floating platforms of ice, some levels are just charging through abandoned city streets. Each one has its own uniqueness to it and each one has many ways of beating it.

The cutscenes and acting are very good, as well.

The Bad
It's short! Very short. There are only like eight levels. And while you usually have a selection of what level you want to play through, it's much more linear than it pretends it is. For instance, you might have a selection of four levels...but due to a helicopter making the levels almost impossible, you must destroy the helipad in one level first. But to get there, you must get some C4 in another level before that. So really you have to do those levels in order, unless you want to deal with a helicopter ruining your day (though, the very last level is a hilarious sight of destruction if you choose to attempt that before you do all the other levels in the area first.) I did like the strategic element of destroying obsticals that would get in your way in other levels, but you don't really have much of a choice.

Graphics aren't photo-realistic or anything.

At the end of the game, I was commanding a squad of ten men. When you're ordering around ten of them, planning strategies becomes much more difficult and at times futile. After that point, I pretty much just told them all to storm an area and hoped for the best.

The Bottom Line
A fantastic game. One of my all-time favorites. The ending sort of leaves room for a sequel or an expansion, and I hope they do one, because this game is simply much too short. If you're looking for a fun game with great AI and simple squad-based gameplay, Freedom Fighters gets my highest recommendation!

The Good
Like most GameCube games there is a very entertaining multiplayer mode. Freedom Fighter's multiplayer has up to four players playing as either the Rebels or the Soviets (no real differences aside from the starting weapons) and capturing a control point in the center of the map. Once taken over the timer will start to run and the team who's timer is down to zero first wins. Most of the time however, we decided to ignore the flag and just enjoy the fighting that works the same as in the singleplayer except you have to take over bases to recruit more soldiers.

The auto-aim works pretty well, meaning that it's both functional and it doesn't make the game too easy. It's easy to go wrong with such a dangerous feature, but Io interactive pulled it off nicely. The idea is that you can shoot without aiming, the character will do that for you, but you can only hit one enemy at a time, so you will have to make the most out of taking cover and ordering soldiers around.

Commanding your men is also a lot easier then it could have been, by pressing the A-button you will tell them to follow you. You can also press X to make them defend a location or Y to make them attack. Most of the time they will figure out on their own where to defend and which enemy to attack, but if you want to control everything, there is also the option to aim your orders (aim your gun at the location/enemy).

The story mode is so fun that I used to play through it once a day back when I was younger, the story is your standard Cold War goes wrong scenario in which you play as a New York plumber caught in the middle of the conflict. You gather up a small army of allies and take on missions that involve sneaking into Russian bases and ruining their day behind the front-lines. It tells a pretty decent story within cut-scenes and it can be finished within a day (which is perfect for me). It's also accompanied by a soundtrack that mostly features well-times dramatic and heroic orchestra music.

I really liked the fact that there is a small chance that friendly soldiers will get wounded when shot, instead of just dying instantly. Are you going to run back and help a fallen comrade or are you going to save what you have left and hope a new batch of recruits is somewhere around the corner. I have also seen moments in the multiplayer where the more passionate players refused to let a certain soldier die even if it meant wasting all their health-packages on slowly dragging him out of a sniper invested area.

The Bad
The game is linear, which isn't really a problem, I love linear games, but it tries to hide that fact. It gives the impression that you can do missions out of order, but instead you will end up stuck at one point or another because there is something you had to do in another stage. The very first example is when you can free a Rebel leader at the police station or take down a Russian position in a post office, but the post office is out of reach until you complete the police station mission and you can't make it to the station without blowing up a goal in the post office map with C4 found in the Police map. The game is full of stuff like this and it's just an arbitrary "where to go first" puzzle that often forces you to stop a mission half-way because there is suddenly a helicopter blocking your path.

Some of the power weapons respawn way too fast in the multiplayer, the rocket launcher can take down an entire enemy base in one shot (either killing or severely wounding all the soldiers in one hit), but ammo is everywhere and even if you die and lose it, it will already be back before you die. Turrets are also located everywhere and pointing in every direction, so a clever tactic can easily be ruined by a single soldier.

The game has some huge glitches, the most common of which is related to the multiplayer. The problem is that there is a random chance that soldiers will just randomly disappear, it only happens maybe once in a thirty games, but when it happens you will be left with a soldier slot filled by a soldier who is lodged in a wall somewhere (I actually saw that happen once). It's also pretty common to see a turret with perfect aim or soldiers not firing at enemies.

The Bottom Line
This used to be one of my favorite games for the GameCube when I was a kiddo, but time has moved on since and like almost every other shooter, it didn't get off very well. The glitches are very troublesome and I can't imagine why you would want to give the player a choice when the game requires a strictly linear level progression anyway.

It is still very playable though and the multiplayer is one of my favorites, but you shouldn't go into this game expecting a timeless classic. I recommend this game for both teens and adults, younger kids may find the multiplayer to be somewhat interesting, but they would have problems following the story. God bless America. Casper out.

The Good
"Freedom Fighters" posits a familiar alternate world scenario that remains strangely underutilized by video game designers. The Soviet Union invades the United States, and a scrappy band of Freedom Fighters (naturally) must attempt to eject the evil empire from the land of the free and the apple pie.

Your main character is quickly enlisted in this guerrilla campaign at the start of the game, and you soon learn that on the highest difficulty level (only pussies play on medium!) this is one punishing game. This seems to be a hallmark of IO Interactive design (see "Hitman 2," another game that will make you scream at your television). Unless you can cap their heads, soviet troops require dozens of hits to down. Since most encounters feature you facing off against multiple enemies, this becomes problematic.

Luckily, you gradually gain the ability to command more and more allied fighters who will assist you in your anti-soviet skullduggery. These guys are quite useful, particularly when you can amass more than two or three of them. They're pretty resilient, and they have infinite ammo. You can order them to guard an area, scout an area or eliminate specific enemies with just a few button presses. Plus, if they do down, you just run up to them and bring them back to full life with a medikit. (but save plenty for yourself!)

The interface is well designed for the most part. Ordering your helpers, as mentioned, is very easy. Swapping weapons is also works pretty well, until you need to switch from a gun to your medikits. I accidentally switched to the molotov cocktail (right next to the medikits in the inventory screen) and cooked myself to death several times during the course of the game. Ouch.

The best aspect of the game is that it seemlessly combines first and third person shooting into one package. You play primarily from a third person perspective, but when you need to aim, you snap into first person. From this perspective, you can still creep around, and this sets up the best setpieces of the game. You'll need to use plenty of cover to stay alive, and quickly ducking, popping up, strafing and firing (all the while gauging when to fire blindly and when to pop into first person for precision aiming) is so cinematic that you can't help but be invested into the action.

Your firearm selection is somewhat scanty but sufficient. You get several choices for sidearms, rifles and big guns, but I found that using the standard AK-47 is the only way to go for most of the game because you're guaranteed plentiful ammo from all the soldiers you'll be offing.

There is a token multiplayer mode, but since you only get a few maps, it comes off as being somewhat of an afterthought. Furthermore, the American team is overbalanced because the American player automatically receive the shotgun with full ammo every time he respawns. The poor soviet players can't hope to compete when the AK (for some reason, its power is downgraded considerably in the multiplayer mode) barely scratches other players.

Overall, I found "Freedom Fighters" to be a fun experience with some nagging problems...

The Bad
As mentioned, it's a really difficult game. However, it's also very short, so while you'll struggle to overcome insanely tough levels, there aren't that many of them to begin with. Even on the hardest difficulty level, I finished the game in a week playing only when my schedule allowed.

What's truly unfortunate is that the plot, which has such great promise for high camp, fails to fully deliver. The characters are thin, thin sketches at best, and the main character has almost no personality whatsoever. The bad guys have more personality (thanks in no small part to their accents), but that doesn't excuse sloppy characterization for titular characters.

The Bottom Line
You can probably find this game cheap now, so go pick it up from the bargain bins. It's a quick experience, but you'll definitely enjoy it.