Tuesday 20 August 2002

Pic of the day: Screen photo from Freedom Force, from the character generator. The screenshots from the actual game are dark and fuzzy so far.

Freedom Force arrives

Today I bought the game Freedom Force which I mentioned 29 June. I also bought a burger, which I ate.

When I came home, I installed the game and played it. I cannot play it all the time because it is a strain on the hand. I also visited various fan sites. While reading those, I discovered that I was making the sound that the Sim children make when hugging. It's kinda hard to mistake once you notice it.

I intend to cheat, but not just yet. Intriguingly, the engine seems to be the same as in two other favorite games of mine, Morrowind and Dark Age of Camelot. It must be a flexible engine indeed, because the games are all very different, and this one most different of them all. But they are all in full 3D, it's just the realism that differs. In Freedom Force, it is set to look reasonably like a comic book rather than the world. It achieves this well enough, though I'd like to see brighter colors and less shadow in the actual game. It makes for poor screen shots ...

***

Freedom Force is part a tactical game, part role playing game. The first part of the game is fairly linear, as it has to introduce the core characters. For instance I made a character named "Goat Kid" which was available early in the game. The kid had a small energy punch but was mostly useful because of regeneration. I successfully used Goat Kid as a scout and decoy, sniffing out the baddies and luring them into ambush. After resting and healing a little bit, out to do the same again. But suddenly there was only room for the 3 regulars on the next mission. I guessed (correctly) that this meant they were about to discover a 4th member of the team. And given the roster over at their web site, this is likely to happen a lot.

I can see that they want to tell a story ... drama, romance etc, and they need certain characters to do that. We would not want romance in an all-male or all-female team, for instance. Heaven forbid! And telling the story takes precedence. Their story. This is a pretty abrupt change from a real RPG such as Morrowind or Daggerfall, where the player tells his own story, not the story of the game designers. Even a strategy game such as Master of Magic allows you to shape history more than this. Hopefully it lets up a bit later into the game. After all, with all the effort gone into allowing people to make their own heroes, they must have a place in the game, right?

An interesting strategic choice will be whether to make small heroes that are available early, or super heroes that are only available near the end. You see, you build up reputation through your good deeds, and spend it in recruiting heroes. So you can spend it as you go, adding new small heroes every now and then, or save it all up. Heroes who are with you from the start will also get XP (whether or not they actually take part in the fight, but more if they do) and can therefore upgrade their powers at level-up. Still, they will have less power than a more "expensive" hero.

Since there is only one campaign of 23 missions (but most of them, it seems, multi-part) the game should be gradually easier for each time you play it. Sadly, it will also be more boring. There is a modification out that increases the difficulty, but boredom is not a question of difficulty alone. It is also a question of seeing something new.

There should eventually be new user-built scenarios, as the scenario tool was released around the same time as the game. But evidently making a new scenario is quite a bit of work, for few of the fan sites I visited had any such; but of skins there were many. Most of them were DC and the occasional Marvel hero, with only a few that I saw being true originals. But my favorite was Glitch Girl. Perhaps she will show up in a future screenshot, if any. (I have other interests too.) Glitch Girl also had a greet fan fiction site. Yes, there is FF FF. And reading it is easier on the hand too.