Graphics: While Freedom Force doesn’t sport any fancy, cutting-edge features like pixel shading or bump mapping, the graphics are of the highest quality and fit in perfectly with the comic book theme. The high point of the graphics in Freedom Force is certainly the inventive character designs: Each has been lovingly crafted with bold colors and imaginative costume designs. The shining armor of the hero Bullet and the villain Timemaster are particularly nice. All of the characters have a wide variety of expressive animations matching their personality as well. For example, Minuteman runs with a jaunty step, while Man-Bot plods around with arms hanging down mournfully.

Nice visual touches are everywhere you look in Freedom Force. One of the most authentic traces of the title’s comic book origins comes in the small “talk bubbles” that pop-up when you hit an enemy. For instance, El Diablo’s “Tongue of Flame” attack shoots a stream of fire towards an enemy. When it connects, a Batman-esque “Foosh!” appears above the enemy’s head. Freedom Force also contains ambient graphics to help flesh out the environments. Though the city levels are rather small and can be repetitive, they are always filled with everyday pedestrians and traffic going about their usual business. Levels in the park feature trees with butterflies and wildlife flitting in and out of their brances; small touches like these all increase the believability of the environment.

Interface: The Freedom Force interface does many things right. For starters, camera control is a breeze. All you have to do to change camera position is hold down the Alt key and move the mouse around. The camera can zoom out for a large field of view, or stay tight to the ground to watch battles in all their detail. The team even threw in an associated “swoosh” sound that plays when you alter the camera position, adding to the superhero feel. The interface goes a long way towards drawing you into the game’s setting, mainly by using a standard comic book style font, complete with overdone, tongue-in-cheek descriptions of objects and people. For example, mouse over a trash dumpster and see a description pop up in the status bar reading “Contains the refuse of a productive society.”

The interface also allows access to all necessary information easily and quickly. Character portraits appear in the bottom left corner of the screen, offering instant assessment of your team’s health and energy levels. The right click menus that show all available actions are highly readable and intuitive. Each type of attack or defensive power has an icon associated with it to let you know just what type of power it is. So if you’re unsure of what the Alche-Miss’s “Aloft” ability does, the icon tells you instantly whether it’s offensive, defensive, or status-changing. A more detailed description of powers (and just about every other facet of the interface) is available simply by mousing over it.

The problems arise in controlling your team members: Freedom Force borrows heavily from real-time strategy interface design for control, such as the ability to drag a selection box to grab multiple heroes. Unfortunately, it leaves out some RTS essentials like formations and grouping that would have been invaluable in Freedom Force. As it stands, it’s nearly impossible to keep your heroes together in any sort of cohesive unit. Fast characters always run far ahead of slow ones, and the only thing you can do to compensate is wait for them to catch up. Locked formations that move only as fast as the slowest unit would have solved this. Also, grouping would have been nice since on more than one occasion your heroes have to split up across a map. As it stands, you can double-click on a hero’s portrait to snap the camera to their position, but I missed the ability to select and snap to a group of heroes.

Gameplay: Combat is the meat of gameplay in Freedom Force, and never gets boring. The powers for each character come in such variety that similar situations almost never play out in the exact same way. The strategic options are near endless. You’ll find yourself debating over whether or not to use Liberty Lad’s stun grenades to disable a group, or send Mentor in to turn them against one another. In fact, with such a large pool of interesting characters to draw from before you even start creating your own, deciding which four heroes to take on any given mission is almost a moral dilemma.

The destructible environments add a lot to the entire experience, and not only in terms of the fun of causing mayhem. They also add strategic options for both you and your enemies. For instance, often thugs with machine guns will take refuge at the tops of buildings, firing on anyone who comes near. Should you send a hero who can jump high or fly up to take them out, most likely getting your hero injured in the process, or should you take a Prestige hit by destroying the building and laugh as the thug and building collapse into a heap? Taking out a group of enemies with a swing of a lightpost or by throwing an explosive barrel into their midst is an intensely satisfying experience as well.

The ability to create new heroes from scratch is one of Freedom Force‘s most endearing aspects. While the heroes provided are all exceptionally well done, there’s nothing quite like taking a hero you’ve raised from the ground up on a mission. The entire process is very balanced through the use of Prestige points, ensuring that no one creates an instant uber-character to wreak havoc upon enemies. I’ve nearly spent as much time mucking about in the character creation tools, building my own heroes and strange powers and attributes, as I have in the single-player campaign, and I’ve enjoyed both tremendously.

Multiplayer:
The only multiplayer option available for Freedom Force is a standard deathmatch-type scenario where up to four players can each take four heroes into battle against the other teams. Despite the limited multiplayer options, playing through GameSpy Arcade or a LAN is a very enjoyable affair. GameSpy Arcade does its job as a matchmaking service admirably as always, offering easy, quick access to matches. You never know just what sort of new tricks the other people you’re playing against are going to pull out from under their sleeves. The endless variety of options for characters and powers ensures things never get tedious. Still, I feel that the inclusion of a few more multiplayer modes such as simple Capture the Flag or perhaps a mission-based level or two would have done wonders for variety.

Sound FX:

The voices of Freedom Force are among the best ever recorded for a PC title. Characters are voiced with every bit of campy 60′s sentiment the actors could muster. The firmly placed tongue-in-cheek voice acting is hilarious, and gives each character a ton of personality. My personal favorite is the alien being Mentor, whose flat voice had me shaking with laughter when he tried to give urgent warnings. The voices also come into play during combat, as heroes yell out epithets like, “Try this on for size!” as they smash each other about.

Other sound effects are admirably done as well. The sound of punches falling on enemies in combat is realistic, as are the more esoteric sounds like energy beams and mind control powers. Ambient sounds are well done and not overused, contributing to the believability of the environment. Finally, the sound effects associated with things like beating enemies with poles and cars are enough to make any fan of wanton destruction giggle with glee.

Musical Score:
The music of Freedom Force is appropriate to the 60′s era from which its inspiration comes. Most missions utilize a rollicking funky track like out of a campy 60′s spy movie. Other levels go with more subdued orchestral sounds, but still fit the theme with throbbing, ominous vocals. This is most evident in the levels where you are chasing Nuclear Winter, as bass voices boom out “Nuclear Winter! Nuclear Winter!” as part of the music. The score is varied enough to not be repetitive most of the time, although I felt some of the tracks venture too far into the funky stylizings of the superhero theme, far enough to become distracting to the actual gameplay.

Intelligence & Difficulty: The intelligence of your own superheroes is where Freedom Force falters, mainly due to an annoying bug. At random, but not infrequent, intervals my characters choose to completely ignore my orders until I issue them a second time. It’s a highly frustrating bug, especially in hectic battles where quick action is needed to protect characters near death. Since your characters don’t have any AI other than to defend themselves when attacked, it’s essential that they respond to orders.

Despite this annoyance, the AI for enemy characters is surprisingly skilled. Enemies will flee when their health drops too low, and react intelligently to attacks. For example, one level features evil police officers who have been mutated by Energy-X. In one battle, I sent in Liberty Lad to throw out some punches against an evil cop. Liberty Lad ran over, landed a punch, and then the cop simply up and flew away. Liberty Lad can’t fly, so he was rendered helpless while the cop shot at him from midair. Luckily, I had other heroes with ranged attacks who took him out, but the intelligent reaction really caught me with my guard down.

Overall: Freedom Force is one of the most fun games I’ve had the pleasure of trying out in a long time. It’s all in the presentation: Everything about Freedom Force is set up to draw you into the campy, exciting world of Patriot City. Though the title is strictly linear, each level feels like a mini-world in itself. The more I played, the more attachment I felt to the city and its citizens and buildings. The people walking around, cars skidding to a stop as you leap in front of them, and screams of terror when the enemies show up all add to the feeling of really being a superhero saving an actual city from evildoers.

Freedom Force oozes polish and personality from every pixel. Even if you’re not a comic book fan, you’ll find yourself enjoying the game immensely. It stays true to its roots, but it’s not ashamed at poking fun at itself either. The gameplay is highly accessible and a ton of fun. The myriad of possibilities for custom-designed heroes, fully destructible environments, and engaging storyline and characters all make for a release that stands out from the crowd. Problems in the areas of interface and artificial intelligence keep it from being an instant classic, but in spite of that, it is still one of the best games released this year. The title takes great pains in the area to provide an experience that doesn’t lose its luster a second or third time around. Even the most jaded gamers will find something to smile about in Freedom Force.