f13.net forums - Freedom Fighters - IO Interactive A/S

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April 26, 2024, 09:01:55 PM

we're back, baby

Sent in by Azazel.

So, we have here a 3rd-person shooter on the PS2. I'm usually not down with using the thumbsticks to aim, but I thought I'd give this a shot anyway.

The story is really quite amusing - it's essentially a Red Dawn NYC thing they have going, replete with bad overacting which I hope was deliberate.

Despite my dislike for thumbstick controls, I found was that the game was actually reasonably fun. Aiming in general, even with the PS2 helping me by default was awkward as all hell, and the "aim" function was even more awkward since it's neither as fast nor as precise as a mouse, but I guess console shooter fans have gotten used to this over time. Big firefights were also very awkward, mostly due to the dual-thumbstick controls.

Interestingly, standing right next to a pair of exploding cars will only stun a committed soldier of the Soviet Union for a few seconds, before they get up again and start to shoot at you some more.

One mechanic which I found rather annoying was that after the introductory hand-holding mission the first "real" mission was split between two locations - A Post Office and a Police Station. The game required me pretty much from the start to go back and forth between the two to achieve different objectives. To do this you have to run back to the starting "safe zone" of your map and select "use sewers" then choose where you want to go, then run from the "safe zone" of the other map, whack some foozles achieve a sub-objective (Ie: blow something up) then run your little butt back to the sewers and back to the other map. This aspect felt really weak, like grind for the sake of stretching out the gameplay time.

Graphically, it looks quite decent for a 2003 game on the PS2. Although I won't play it any further on console, I did enjoy the experience enough to have made me decide to hunt down a cheap PC copy if I see one about to get past the awkward controls, and play through it some more.

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Rent it.

This was one of my favorite PC games of 2003, but it was completely under the radar. Never heard anyone else talking about it. The plot was fun and the mechanics were crisp. I'm trying to think of a FPS I've ever enjoyed more, and I'm failing.

yeah, I found the PS2 thumbstick controls really awkward as I do in most 1st or 3rd person shooting games (beatemups are ok) but the game was fun enough that I wanted to play it more. Just not on PS2. I also had a 10-minute go with 007: Everything or Nothing the other day and found the 3rd person thumbstick shooting to not be frustrating. I may BiiF it at some stage..

I've got FF incoming for the PC now, as well as that 007 game on X-Box since it seems to support 480p and Widescreen better than the PS2. Hope they show up next week!

Loved this when it game out. The missions were well done and they did a good job of level design as well.
I could definitely see this getting a sequel or revisited in another location.

As a follow-up, I got my PC copy of this game in the post yesterday from the UK. Installed it just now. Had a hard freeze crash on the EA games splash screen (challenge everything!). Rebooted, tried it again, same deal.

Looked around on the interwebs, and found this little gem on the NVNews forums:

Quote

Re: Summary of 8800 Game Issues
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I would also like to add that Freedom Fighters does not work at all with any G80 driver.

Hoo-Fucking-Ray.

I played this on the XBOX and was really into it. The main game was fun and as you got further and accomplished side quests you would get more recruits to join the fight with you. I thought it had a pretty fun group/ squad game play that worked well in the single player and multiplayer, which, if you didn't play it was really really fun.