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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Comic Book Fun, May 28, 2005
If you're a fan of comic books, Freedom Force Vs. The Third Reich is just brilliant. The graphics are gorgeous, and the dialogue is extremely funny. One complaint - it's too short.
First, the gameplay. This is actually Freedom Force 2, and gives you a little intro sequence to catch you up on what has happened if you didn't play the first game. In essence you are one of a team of classic super-heroes. Each has of course a hokey reason for having the powers and a distinct personality. Your aim is to save the world, including being sent back to WWII.
You're launched into the game with either a standard or custom character. The graphics in here are just beautiful - it's like playing in a real cartoon comic series. If we had shown this game to people back in the 70s, they would never have believed that a "computer game" could look like this. The streetlights cast soft glows on the landscape, the character movement is very natural.
You follow the arrows and hints on a given map to determine where to go and what to do. There is a lot of BASH! CRASH! style combat, as well as the typical witty / cliche dialogue that you find in comic books. Sometimes you roll your eyes, and sometimes you burst out laughing.
You don't have to take on the enemies alone. You're usually working with a squad of friends, using your various skills to blast, bash, fireball or scare off your enemies. When you finish missions, you can upgrade your skills before you move on again.
A main complaint is that the game is relatively short. You can finish it in a few days if you're good with point-and-click. Sure, you can replay it with different custom characters, or of course kick the difficulty level up. But I do wish the main campaign was longer.
Other than that, it's a fun game for comic book fans!
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A 4-Star game, but it loses a star for false advertising, July 10, 2005
"Freedom Force Vs. The 3rd Reich" is the sequel to the original "Freedom Force" released in 2002. In fact, this game is almost identical to the original -- the story is different, and the graphics are a little better, but other than that, it's the same. But that's not a bad thing -- the original was a great game, and so is this. The characters, the voice acting, the story line -- several times while playing I've said "Just one more level" because I had to know what was coming next. And after that level would end, I'd say "Just one more level" again! The game really captures the fun of 1960's comic books (I used to collect comics in the 80's, but stopped when I realized that I had begun collecting for profit instead of fun). The game also has low system requirements, which is nice.
I do however have two gripes with this game. The first is that the game is advertised as having "Story-Based Multiplayer." To me, this implies that you can play a series of missions in multiplayer, possibly cooperatively. In actuality, for this game, it means neither. The "Story-Based Multiplayer" in this game is a NORMAL multiplayer game, with a "story" description which you can give it, and an optional picture that you can assign to it. That's it! There's no "story" per se, no sequence of missions, and no cooperative play.
The other gripe I have is with the game's "amazing hero editor". This is how it's described on the box, featuring a graphic of a group of heroes from the game standing together. But surprise, that picture isn't the hero editor, it's just an in-game shot. The actual hero editor is identical to what was included in the first game: you can pick a good amount of skills and powers for your character, but they only provide 4 sample "skins", which determine what your hero looks like. So if you want to create more than 4 new characters, some will look alike -- unless you also download the 20MB mod kit, which includes a character editor...sort of. The "Character Tool 2" program allows you to copy skins and "meshes" (the wireframe model which determines the size and shape of a character) and edit skins using an existing graphics program on your PC. Editing skins can be a painstaking process using a paint program because the skin appears as a flattened, disjointed version of the character. There may be an easier method of editing skins, but unfortunately, if there is, I'm not aware of it. I've edited several skins for the original game, and each one usually took about an hour. I would love to get some sort of 3D modelling program, maybe that would allow editing of the skin on a wireframe, but why should you have to purchase something additional to do what the game implies that IT will allow you to do? This is in stark contrast to a game like "The Sims 2", which includes a character editor which allows you to customize your characters in almost any way imaginable -- you can easily create characters in "The Sims 2" which look like people you know. I realize that this game's developer, "Irrational Games", probably doesn't have the resources to put towards an effort like that, but how about SOME sort of skin editor -- perhaps a utility that would allow you to choose from various pre-defined faces and costume types, allow you to set the colors, and then generate a skin file on the fly?
Those misgivings aside, this is a great game. But they do mislead you with the claims made on the packaging.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not Enough "Biff" for the Buck!, April 23, 2005
As of late, there have not been enough standout squad-based games for the PC. Sadly, Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich (FFVTR)did not live up to expectations. To be direct about it, the game, which is based on the juicy premise of sending the original FF members back in time to battle energy-x powered nazis, suffers from the same problems that plauged the original FF plus a plot and character development sceme that seems rushed and ill-concieved.
Most of the problems with the game revolve around the fact that the game is far too short. I didn't count how many missions there were, but I finished it in less than a week (playing about 2-hrs/day). The abruptness of the missions do not allow the plot of the game to become as immersive as many classic squad based games, like Desperados and ST: Away Team. Furthermore, while there are many new "superheros" to choose from, the fact that there are so few missions means that you will never get a chance to recruit and experiment with all of them. The original FF, while still not being a "long" game had at least 20 missions, and was slightly better in this regard.
A second problem is an obvious lack of necessity to use any other strategy than to follow the arrows and beat the hell out of the AI opponents (who are not that intimidating). Stealth, long and short-range attacks, and positioning of squad members all seem less relevant that how long your characters can simply stand toe-to-toe with enemies. This might fair well with the 12 year old playstation geeks, but certainly not with a Fallout vet!
Third, the AI opponents are really not that great (character-wise or strength-wise), with the only real exception being an Ice Giant version of Nuclear Winter, who you enconter early in the game. On this note, I wanted to give this game a fair review, so I played it twice; once in "Hard" mode and the other time in "very hard" mode and found the lack of challenging AI rather disturbing. This problem of retarded AI becomes tenfold if you just create your custom superhero who can bash the crap out of everyone all by himself without the help of any built-in superheroes!
Anyway, on the positive side, the graphics and interface are superb. The interface is even smoother than the original FF and you shouldn't have any problem with crashes or lockups unless you're using an antiquated system. Also, the "character origin" stories are really nice and thoughtfully rendered. Unfortuntely, these features just made me more dissapointed at the abbreviated gameplay.
As far as the multiplayer mode goes, I can't comment as I do not play multiplayer games.
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