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You can’t turn around these days without bumping into something super-hero related. They’ve taken over our cinemas and have recently made a big move into the MMORPG market with City of Heroes. However, CoH is one of the few properties that have taken the brave move of using completely original characters. In a market were licensing deals equals money (quite often regardless of quality), this is a brave move. Fortunately, they knew that the market existed, and that a well-made game about original superheroes could succeed; the success of the original Freedom Force proved that. It was a superb game from which a huge online fan base grew. It was only a matter of time before a sequel was released and the good news is that sequel is on its way, and this time you get to fight Nazi’s.
Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich is the sequel to one of the best games on the PC in recent years. It was a game that was hard to categorize; in some ways it was an RTS, in others a lot more like an RPG. It really gave us something refreshing and new. FFvsTTR continues this tradition and promises to deliver more of the same and even expand on areas that Irrational felt were lacking in the original game, particularly the multi-player.
The basic story of the new game is that the Nazis have somehow dabbled with history and the world of our heroes has been over-run by super powered Nazis. Yikes. With little options open to them, our heroes travel back in time to team up with some Golden Age heroes, hoping to stop this problem at the source. Yeah, it’s another corny storyline to be honest, but in this game that’s precisely what we want. The demo we played places you in the middle of that corny storyline; Villagers under Nazi control are burning important works of literature, so someone has to do something about it.
The game itself looks great. In terms of gameplay, not much has changed, though this is far from a criticism as the original worked perfectly. More noticeable changes come from the graphics engine, which just looks superb. The new lighting and engine effects are very noticeable and it really helps the colourful Freedom Force world come to life; you really do feel like you’re in a larger than life comic book. The over-the-top voices are back too and they always bring a smile to the face; Black Jacks British accent, in particular, is excellent. Though, they key here is Irrationals ability to merge all these elements together, creating a solid and humorous game world.
Unfortunately, we did not get the opportunity to try the new Story-based multiplayer mode, which has really piqued our interest. The basic idea here is that a group of players can get together as a co-op team and fight their way through a structured story: Like a comic mini-series, if you will. It sounds like a tremendous idea to us and with the inclusion of a toolkit that will allow you to create your own missions, FFvsTTR could create as fevered an online community as its predecessor.
Well, so far, so good. We haven’t seen anything particularly new at this stage, but it’s still an extremely polished and enjoyable game that deserves to sell in droves. Also, if the multiplayer lives up to its promise we could be seeing the dawn of a truly unique online experience. Roll on the 8th of April.
