Freedom Fighters

The feel, the atmosphere, everything is just right.

Played only briefly, as I didn't really want to start a new game tonight. I just wanted to see how well it worked. I was a little surprised when I started the game and found that it seemed to work in a 32:9 aspect (5120x1440). Midway through the intro though, it became clear that it did so by zooming way too closely. Unfortunately it just didn't really work, and I had to restart in 16:9. From what little I played, it seemed to run well enough though. Having not played the original, I'm not sure what it's supposed to look like, but I look forward to actually playing this game this weekend.

-This is a fun 3rd-person squad-based tactical shooter from 2003 about the Soviet Union invading USA and you have to fight on the US side with guerilla tactics; basically its the game version of the Red Dawn movie. -The flexibity of the squad commands are nice. Some possible ways to play: (1) you can command individual squad members to different locations to cover each other's flanks, (2) or move together as a single unit for more firepower, (3) or just treat your squad members as cannon fodder and send them all to attack at once. -There's a satisfying RPG-like progression where successful completion of tasks also you to recruit more squad members. -It is nicely non-linear; you pick and choose missions between interconnected levels, such as blowing up helicopters in one level so that they don't attack you in a second level, but not before you get the bombs to do so in a third level. -The sounds are also quite epic and make the missions seem more serious than they really are. -There are also some flaws, but nothing game-breaking: (1) The indoor sections are not well suited to the main style of the game, and highlights some camera problems when you are aiming while standing close to a wall. (2) The level designs are also kind of restrictive where a lot of times, if you took a wrong turn, there are no alternative paths to the correct destination, and you end up having to backtrack long paths. (3) If you are playing the game blind, the interconnectedness of the levels may not be obvious, and may result in frustration, where parts become overly difficult. So some kind of guide online would be recommended reference material for this game.

I played through this game the first time on easy... A look in the manual reveals why the "secret" level is mostly secret...As this is a older game, this game has two easy modes instead of two variants of hard...So most people propably played this once on Easy without realizing and thus haven´t unlocked the level after completing the game...So with that knowledge i played the game on hard which was also fun, though doing it for the secret level isn´t really worth it as its basically just killing enemy waves that get increasingly harder the nearer you draw to the statue of liberty. It´s a 5-10 minute challenge level and thats it. Don´t expect anything crazy with playing on hard as well, you don´t really need to get more tactical...Just push your squad less headfirsst into fights...Though what you will quickly realize is that killing enemies really eats your ammo as their health pool gets larger and they hit harder which just means letting your squad defend a good spot for longer instead of helping them with the weaker enemies.

The game runs greeat on modern hardware. Only thing I wish we had was support for higher refresh rates (the game is locked at 62fps, propbably an engine thing) and when adjusting the speed of the mouse in the controls it controls both the mouse and the camera speed. That isnly normally a problem however the mouse cursor is much slower than the camera so you have to get used to that. Game wise: amazing stuff, definitely a bright light for my nostalgia. PC port wise: its fine, it runs, happy to at least have that much.