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Comic Book Fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 15 / 17
Date: May 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

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!

Not Enough "Biff" for the Buck!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 16 / 19
Date: April 23, 2005
Author: Amazon User

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.

A 4-Star game, but it loses a star for false advertising

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: July 11, 2005
Author: Amazon User

"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.

Great!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: March 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Freedom Force was a great game on any level: Great strategy, easy to learn, easy to play while still allowing experienced gamers and novices alike a challenge , and a wonderful tribute to the 60's and comic books.
Freedom Force was my favorite game of all time, and I was definitely waiting for this... a year after they thought it would come out. This game went through so many delays and setbacks, I thought it might never come out.
But it has. And its fantastic.
The strategic elements have been streamlined and perfected to a razor edge, with easier methods of attacking and managing power.
Prestige is easier to acquire and use, and it takes advantage of the extremely entertaining character creation system.
The levels are challenging, and it's full of versatile and different opponents-and if they're just too versatile and different for you, you can change the difficulty at any point, although you probably won't have to, because it has helpful footnotes and recommendations for each of it's six difficulties.
The new mod tools are wonderful, usable by anyone with a photo-shop. Each of the mod programs come with extensive documentation.
The strategy is bold, the look comic-booky, the "secret origins" for each superhero are even better than the last ones, and the graphics are rich and excellent even on a machine that can just barely play it. Also, the new multiplayer modes include team based multiplayer, arenas, and many other great modes. You can now create cool stories that go with your game. Also, for those of you who complained about the lack of fairness on the Internet, there is now a cap that doesn't allow really powerful heroes over multiplayer.
Downsides? Not really.
Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich is equally great single player and multiplayer, and it has easily replaced the original as my favorite.

Very Good, but I would still like to have Co-op play

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 18
Date: March 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is pretty much the same as the original Freedom Force. They added new interesting characters, and the graphics are much better. As for Multiplayer there are a several new maps and match modes. I wish they had added Co-op team mode in Multiplayer so friends could play on the same team. We can only hope to see that in the next version or an expansion. A friend and I bought this today and played if for a few hours. We couldn't get over how much it was like the original. We buy multiplayers games at least monthly and we have at least 20 games we play regularly. We were slightly disappointed because no Co-op teaming with your friends against AI heroes is included. Let's face it teaming with your friends on the internet and matching up against AI heroes would be a blast. It is still fun to battle each other, but I'm looking forward to a Co-op player mode. Players of the original will probably still enjoy it because of the upgrades and if you don't have the first one then by all means rush out and buy this one since it is great fun. You will enjoy building heroes and battling your friends on the internet or playing by yourself in single player.

Not enough Freedom Force

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: April 09, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich (FFVTTR) is much like the original Freedom Force game, just souped up somewhat. If you haven't tried the original Freedom Force game, you can still jump right into this one, and you will probably like it even more than players of the original game, though the story won't be quite as clear.

As with the first game, I found the best part of the game to be designing new characters and pitting them against game characters in the danger room. This functionality comes with FFVTTR this time around, unlike the original which required a patch to add these features.

This sequel does make a number of improvements on the original. First, the story is really much better than the original, with a coherent story line that stretches for most of the game. Second, some new powers were added, particularly the cone powers and some new direct powers, that add some nice new options for characters, like effective healers. Third, the graphics and environment are much better than the original, as you would expect with a sequel. Fourth, it allows for custom designed scenarios, which is a great match with custom characters.

The principal problem with Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich is quite simply that the storyline is too short. I would have preferred it to be twice as long as it was.

Another minor problem is that some of the effects that were present for customizing the appearance of powers in the first Freedom Force don't seem to have analogs in FFVTTR, but this will only bother people who really like to make custom characters. I hope that can be expanded in an update by Irrational Games, since it should be a minor fix.

All in all, this a tremendously fun game with tens of hours of playability for anyone, and hundreds of hours of playability if you like to do custom-designed characters or custom-designed levels.

Like the original only better

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: March 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I've just finished Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich, and I can say it's been a long time since I've had so much fun with a game. Yes, it's much like the original, only better. Better graphics, camera movement, effects, writing/voice acting and character control. There are also some new, interesting characters along with all the old favorites.

And, as before, there is a great editor for creating custom characters, and a "rumble room" for testing out characters or just practicing to see what works best.

It should be noted that I'm mostly into the single player aspect of this game as opposed to multiplayer. With this in mind, it's been a long time since I've laughed so hard at the screen. My favorite new character, "Tombstone" (hit with Energy X right when he was electrocuted in the chair), has been given the power of "mind possession" which has to create some of the funniest situations I've ever seen.

The enemies are absolutely hilarious and include WWII Germans, Japanese ("Red Sun"), facist Italians and so on. The byplay between all these people and the Freedom Force is just great. (Nuclear Winter, Timemaster, etc. also come back in a couple of missions to help set up the story).

I can really think of nothing serious to complain about here. It's like heroes from both the Silver Age and Golden Age of comic books brought to life (with three new characters from the earlier era -- Skyking, Black Jack and Tricolour). You're either into this kind of thing or you're not.

My only possible complaint is with the AI. There still is that old problem of characters getting run over by cars and/or running full-on into things (like tanks, trucks, etc.) and taking significant damage. I still don't know whether or not this is on purpose.

This is great, great stuff. Perfectly realized comic book heroes against everybody's favorite bad guys. For those of you who are disappointed, what more did you expect? To me, this stuff can never get old. And, above all, this game has an "open" ending like the first, so there is room for still another Freedom Force in the future.

A Blast Into the Past

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: March 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Those who played the original Freedom Force should prepare themselves for an increasingly growing storyline which takes this orignal comic book world into a class of its own. Those new to the series are in for a real treat.

In many ways this is much like the original. This is in many ways a good thing. Much in terms of custom content can and probably should have been added, but that does not take away from the fact that this game is a blast to play. The single player storyline may be a little hard to pick up for those new to the game, but it will quickly pull you in. One legitimate complaint is that it is both short and easier than the first game, but this fact will only bother fans of the first game, and even then the story and general feel of the game are still well worth it.

If you have a list of new features that you are confident the new game "had to" add, the you will be disappointed. But if you want a well-written, imersive comic book RPG experience, than this is definitely the game for you.

Amazing, but a bit short

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: December 23, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have played the original FF and I must say that that game is probably one of the best games I own. This was a good follow-up effort. I was dissapointed with the new heroes, though. Out of the six new heroes, only Tombstone is any good. He also has the best origin. The modding tools were better on the first game, or at least were easier to understand, anyway. The story and gameplay were great, though I wish the game had been longer. The new villians were probably the coolest aspect.

Good game but way, way too short

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: June 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

If you liked or loved the original Freedom Force but thought it was too short, you'll both love and loath Freedom Force v. the Third Reich.

Essentially, FFVTTR is the same great game as FF but it's hard to justify the $30 price tag for what is essentially a an add on mod. I played FFVTTR four times while playing the original FF in parallel. Then near the end, characters are taken away making it hard to max those characters out.

Wait for it to hit the bargain bin, $10-$12 is an okay price to pay for this very, very short game. I was stunned to come here and find someone thought there was enough of a game to make an official strategy guide.

I really wish game reviewers in magazine would start doing their job and point these things out. Especially magazines that one of the lead designers work for.

But still not as bad as the Steam debacle.

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