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Long before the Dark Knight returned, well before the Hulk became smart (and then stupid and then smart again), and ages before comics cost upward of $2.50 a pop, there was the golden era of Silver Age superheroes: the 1960s.
Freedom Force, a superhero tactical RPG from Irrational Games, is a fond tribute to this bygone time. Tickets
Where Freedom Force succeeds is in the unabashed joy of its execution. This game was clearly crafted by fans who adore comics, and it’s a gloriously on-target homage to the cheesiness and earnestness of Vietnam-era comic book creations.
Set in 1962, in the bustling meat-and-potatoes metropolis of Patriot City — a place where ladies still wear dainty pink Jackie Kennedy pillbox hats — Freedom Force follows a bold group of accidental heroes forever mutated by the mysterious Energy X.
Starting out with one hero (Minuteman) as you learn the control ropes, you’ll be joined by other heroes over the course of the first few levels. In later missions, after hand-picking a squad of up to four do-gooders from your roster, you enter the fray and orchestrate your team in real time or by pausing the gameplay to set moves in advance. As you complete missions, your heroes gain experience points with which they can purchase new powers or upgrade their existing ones, and the team will gain prestige points with which they can attract and recruit new members.
Excluding the prospect of a soapy She-Hulk/Power Girl rubdown, this game is a comic fan’s wet dream come true. Super-strong characters can handily lift almost any object in their surroundings — cars, telephone booths, dumpsters — and toss them as weapons, or rip lamp posts right out of the ground and swing them like bats. Flying heroes can zip through the sky and attack enemies stationed atop tall buildings. Energy-imbued heroes zap bad guys from afar. Any issue of JLA or X-Men is the only instruction manual you’ll need to manage your roster of costumed crusaders. And yes, strategies vary wildly depending on your unique roster of heroes and power sets.
You know the archetypes well: there’s Minuteman, a star-spangled Captain America type whose booming basso profundo battle cry is “Right makes might!”; Man-Bot, the tragic brooder whose armor-clad body rages with explosive Energy X; Liberty Lad, Minuteman’s obsequious teenage sidekick; and Microwave, an android foe reprogrammed to serve humanity.
Even the era’s quaint notions of ethnicity and feminism get a gentle
ribbing. Flame-slinging Latino heartthrob El Diablo is a fiery hothead with
a salsa beat, and mystic Georgia peach Alche-Miss is a man-handling southern
belle who harbors a mushy crush on shy, secretive Man-Bot.
In all, 14 pre-made heroes can fill your roster (well, only 13 if you count
the body-sharing Law & Order as one hero), each with a unique origin story
melodramatically illustrated with Kirby-esque cinematic sketches and campy narration.
Together, the new heroes form the crimefighting team known as Freedom Force. Throughout the game’s 22 levels, they battle super-powered villains such as temporally displaced dinosaurs, malevolent robots, giant ants, the duplicitous Déjà Vu, the foppish mad god Pan, and an inexorable drove of alien invaders. Classic overblown melodrama accompanies the action: a champion is captured and cloned, an ally seemingly turns traitor, and one of your number may even meet his/her “final fate.”
Combat strategy adheres to superhero logic: for example, frosty commie boss Nuclear Winter is perfectly countered by El Diablo’s heat blasts, and supersonic Bullet is the fleet-footed choice when you need to reprogram multiple enemy turrets in a hurry.
The story is set up like a collection of comic-book issues, complete with an introductory cover to launch each new plot. Missions are a blast: you’ll investigate daring robberies, protect civilians, interrogate bad guys, rescue comrades, and eventually coordinate your team to defeat the supervillain at the heart of the storm.
If the included capes and cowls aren’t enough, make your own. A fully customizable hero-creator is part of the package, letting you configure exclusive champions for recruitment into the single-player game, or be matched against pre-made heroes in multiplay. Hundreds of homemade heroes are already available online (some based on popular licensed characters, who can join Freedom Force only through the miracle of a free download).
In fact, one of the joys of playing this game is anticipating the inevitable avalanche of unofficial mods it’ll likely inspire. Hankering for a WWII-era JSA vs. Avengers mod? You’ll probably get one by the end of the summer.
A big chunk of fun comes from Freedom Force’s powerful NetImmerse graphics engine. Patriot City is alive in lustrous 3D, awash with primary colors that pop off the screen with authentic thick-lined visuals. The overhead camera view is fully controllable, letting you pan around the cityscape or zoom in for heroic close-ups.
Virtually everything in a map is deformable: buildings can be razed, cars crushed, statues toppled. (Destroying city property subtracts from your prestige points, though.) Pausing the game creates a snapshot of the action: you can zoom in closer for peeks at frozen power blasts, or marvel at one of Minuteman’s triumphant poses.
Multiplayer games can be played with up to four players over a LAN, or online through GameSpy. It’s a good thing superhero fans love match-ups — deathmatch is the only mode available. Select one of the eight maps available, buy a team using your allotted points, and then it’s clobberin’ time.
Some small gripes: Why didn’t Irrational include a time/date stamp on saved games, and why have the save titles been categorized in alphabetical order? The developers might’ve figured (rightly) that you’d want to play through the game all in one sitting, but if you don’t, you’d better remember the name of the last level you played. Another quibble — it caused one test machine to crash and reboot twice without warning.
Barring those minor complaints, Freedom Force is the game I didn’t even know I’d been missing until I played it. The PC superhero curse is officially dead. Long live Freedom Force!