I’ve never understood why there aren’t more superhero games. Comics have everything that (most) gamers want: continuous action, high drama, tight fitting clothes and weird special powers. In comics, good is good, evil is really evil, and everyone has a (not so) secret weakness. Looking back over old superhero games, there have been very few original titles as most have been resigned to woefully inadequate movie / TV show knockoffs and really bad licensed games. With the superheroes of old finally making their way back to the big screen over the past five years, it was perfect timing for someone, anyone, to come out with a really good and unique game.

Thankfully in 2002, Irrational Games answered the call and unleashed “Freedom Force” on the world. It quickly rose to the top of the pile in the Superhero genre, admittedly not a difficult task, and sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Not content to just call it a night, Irrational began work on, and released this year, Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich. (FFvTTR)

The Freedom Force series centers on your typical superhero team, and their struggles to keep Earth safe. An evil space alien lord has been dumping “Energy X” canisters onto the planet in the hopes of creating super villains that would throw the world into chaos and basically make his own invasion and conquering of Earth a lot easier. Little did he know that he had a traitor in his midst, named Mentor, who discovered his maleficent machinations and means to set things right. Mentor distributes his own Energy X to those of good, noble hearts and minds, so that they can combat this Evil Scheme. Patriot Frank Stiles, while tracking a communist spy, stumbles across the Energy X and becomes “Minuteman” and thus the Freedom Force were born.

In this second volume of the series, the vacationing Freedom Force must rapidly reconvene to right another wrong. It seems that some of their old foes escaped their prisons and are cooking up some even larger scheme. Drawing on the staples of science-fiction and all good comic books ever written, the plan involves time travel and, the group destined to be the bad guys in every gaming genre, the Nazis.

Moving to the game-play, you the persistent and plucky player get to control up to four members of your fantastic friends of freedom on a mission at a time. Each mission takes place on a map, similar to most Real-Time Strategy games on the market now, and in fact, the comparison is pretty good all around. The camera can be panned, rotated and zoomed, and quickly centered on any of your heroes by quickly double tapping their assigned hot-key. For the most part, the camera works fine, but suffers from some of the same problems you find in RTS’, such as being blocked by scenery and moving around to see the action. Occasionally you’ll also run into path-finding problems as well, and have to track down and rescue one of your stuck “super” heroes. (Hey, just because you can shoot fireballs from your hand doesn’t mean you’ll stop to ask for directions…)

Continuing with the analogy, you move your heroes around the map by clicking the ground where you want them to go. Actions are done either automatically, based on what you click on, such as always bonk your enemy with your default attack when you click on them, or with a right-click you can bring up a menu of choices. Unfortunately, hurriedly trying to right-click and navigate menus when you are getting thrashed by super villains tends to be a pain, and I screwed up a couple of times by picking the wrong super power because of where I clicked.

Luckily, they included the most powerful key in the game: “the spacebar pause.” Just like in Baldur’s Gate, the spacebar pauses the action, letting you plan your next move. This is CRUCIAL and you’ll soon be pausing the game every other minute so you can give orders to your crew, heal up, or just scroll around the map. Another tip is that whenever you start a level, pause the game and scroll the map around to get the lay of the land. This also helps you find all of the hidden canisters of Energy X so you can pick up health and bonuses as you play.

All missions have a primary objective, and one or more secondary objectives that you have to complete. Often, as the level unfolds, these objectives change, giving you a newly discovered job to do. There will always be a red arrow on your screen, to help point you in the direction of the primary objective, which is helpful because it’s sometimes hard to find the paths on certain levels.

Combat is resolved Diablo style, with each hero using his or her super powers to punch, burn, freeze, or otherwise hurt their opponent. Other abilities can “curse” the dastardly do-gooder, often with entertaining results. For example, Mentor can make enemies angry, and make them fight each other. Quite often a good strategy is to just anger the biggest, baddest enemy in the group, then run while he cleans up the rabble. Come back later when he’s calmed down and he’ll usually be quite a bit weaker and easier to beat.

Of course, heroes and villains alike have their strengths and weaknesses. Ice men don’t like fire, fire heroes don’t like water, and so on. So even if you have great mind-control powers you still have to get them to “stick.” Plus, the more powerful a power is, the more energy it’s going to take to use, and you’ll have to recharge before using it again.

Another useful aspect in combat is that you can pick up or wield a lot of the items in the game, and most items can take damage. A useful method for disrupting a group of bad guys hanging around on a smoke break outside their Fortress of Ineptitude, is to pick up and sling a random parked car at them. And nothing panics a low level thug more than when you rip a lamp post out of the concrete and take a few practice swings at his head. This level of interactivity adds quite a bit to the game, and often gives you more strategy options for getting through a mission. (Yet another reason to pause the mission and get a good look at your environment before you start charging toward your objective.)

Between each mission you’ll see your score (again, very RTS-like) and have the ability to level-up your heroes by spending accumulated character points for new powers or abilities. Powers are “stacked” so that you have to gain a certain number of levels in the preceding power before you can acquire a new one. There aren’t really any other ways to customize your character, such as picking up items to use.

As far as graphics and style are concerned, I’ve never seen any game capture the Golden and Silver age of comics so beautifully. Every detail, from the game manual, through the loading screens, to the fonts, to the cut-scenes and voice-overs is DEAD-ON to the good ole days of reading Jack Kirby titles under the covers with a flashlight. Everything is over the top, campy, and colorful. During the cut-scenes for example, a loud and over-the-top narrator tells you the story, while it unfolds in animated 2D comic book style. Also, while a mission is loading, a comic book cover is displayed, often giving you vital clues about what you’re about to face. The characters look, act, and feel just like your favorites, while still being original and interesting. I just can’t say it enough; Irrational did an OUTSTANDING job making an old-style comic book game look and feel just like its pulp cousins.

That said, I’m a little disappointed in the overall game. While I love the genre, and am glad someone finally made headway in it, I was pretty ambivalent about the game in the end. While I haven’t finished the first Freedom Force, I had played enough of it that the shock-and-awe had already been seen, and the theatrics and amazingly well done comic book style weren’t as exciting the second time around. While I did feel some sense of accomplishment after each level, I really didn’t “zone in” on the game, I was more just grinding through the level to see what was next. It seemed like I was repeating the same actions over and over: pause, make this hero go do his fireball on this ice guy, make this one go fly over here, beat this guy up, and so on, over and over and over. While there is strategy in matching up the right talent to the right weakness, I just didn't feel overly challenged. Overall, it didn’t knock my socks off, but I’d still recommend it to the right gamers.

FFvTTR is a must buy for any fan of the series, or for anyone who loves the campy, over-the-top style of the Golden and Silver age comic books. (Although, if you haven’t played the first FF, I would suggest buying both and starting the story there, as there are spoilers in the second edition.) You’ll click a lot, so get a good mouse pad cushion while you are at the store. If you weren’t too keen about the first Freedom Force, or can’t stand exaggerated voice-overs or comic books, there aren’t any major revolutions in FFvTTR that will make you like it any more. Likewise, if you are somewhere in the middle of these two categories, I’d say pick up the first Freedom Force in the bargain bin and see if you like it, then step up to this version.