Freedom Force: The Video Game

[Strict31]

Dogbiter, the official site has tons of links to fansites. And a lot of those fansites have tons of links too...although I don't recall any of the URLs and am too lazy to track them down. Just scan for link and you'll find them.

Novac, among those links should be one or two sites that provide skinning tutorials, so you might find those helpful.

I too found myself using the same pool of five to six characters (pared down for a four person team) over and over again. I had a preference for fliers and speedsters over the heavy hitters. Same goes for the original characters I built. Nothing beats a flier for crossing some of the massive city boards, because even speedsters have to negotiate around buildings and obstacles. As I recall, there is at least one mission where speed is fairly essential. Also, fliers were great when fighting massive enemies whose very footsteps do damage to ground-pounders who get too close.

I'm wondering if I encountered a glitch in the system. I discovered, when Bullet became available (and I could afford him) that he was damned near unstoppable in melee. I found that, if you built a speedster with a knockback element to a melee power, no matter how tough the enemy, the speedster could set up a near endless, irresistible string of attacks. When you suffer knockback, and here I mean just a small amount of knockback, there is a space of time, however brief in which you cannot attack or defend. And the Speedster could just wade in before you recovered and hit you again. And again. And again. I used this tactic unwittingly to have Bullet whup Pan single-handedly over and over. IIRC, even SuperCollider fell to this tactic.

My experience was that this was horribly imbalanced since even the super-tough guys seemed vulnerable to it. I think there was a density based power that could resist knockback, but IIRC, it was dreadfully expensive. And given that the strongsters were usually powerful but slow as hell, it simply didn't pay to rely on them for the heavy-hitting business. I tried to rationalize it in terms of what we see in superhero comics with speedsters like Flash. But, to me, it seemed to discourage any sort of functional variety in character building. My reasoning was, essentially, "it's cool to build a guy with strengths and weaknesses, but it's functional to just build a flier with a ranged attack or a speedster with a knockback melee.

Did anyone else encounter this same thing?

The game did glitch my system with some of the load-ups between missions. That was troublesome, but I rather more blamed my system than the game. Of course, at the time, I didn't have access to other folks' difficulties with the game. Oh! Another glitch I encountered: during the final mission, with all the floating boards, I found it problematic if I knocked an enemy off the board into the temporal void. I found the game would not let me progress to the next stage when I did this. As such, I encountered a drawback to the speedster/knockback combo. Half the time, Bullet's effectiveness actually kept me from going further. Save at every stage (goes without saying, but still). Of course, again, it could have been unique to my system's faults.

But it was, for the most part one of the most enjoyable games I've ever played. With some attention to the bugs, I think the sequel could be damn near perfect. However, I fear the sequel won't be coming out anytime soon. I think City of Heroes will be released before they even begin beta testing on FF2.

City of heroes will be the next big thing, I think. But it may be a disappointment for folks interested in a single player campaign. It seems geared more to the online environment, but I could be wrong. I hope, at the very least, they take a page from Neverwinter Nights and make some sort of effort for the single-player fans. However, like NWN and its mods, CoH hasn't solved the jigglytech problem of flexible capes, so no heroes in CoH will be able to wear capes. Of course, as with NWN, there will probably be some industrious consumers who might provide patches to allow for non flexible capes. It ain't the same, but it's a damned nice gesture.

I hope that provides a decent enough review of the game's(FF) strengths and weaknesses, guys.

Strictly Speaking

[Agun_de_Merak]

i'm in freedom force too but don't know how too beat the shadow and his minion someone can help me ?

[Novac]

i'm in freedom force too but don't know how too beat the shadow and his minion someone can help me ?

Look at the environment, to beat her you have to wreck the place.

[Novac]

Oy Strict, long post.

Lets see, never had problem when I knocked people off the platform. I was a little upset when I accidently did it to one of my heavt hitters. Oops!
I deal with knockback intensive missions (IE: Mr. Mechanical) by having my brick heroes pick up cars and start tossing. The foot step shockwaves he makes irked me. I'm not sure where the problems come from, I have a sickly quick computer with a lot of ram. That might be why I haven't had a glitch, but I have no idea.

[Chris]

i'm in freedom force too but don't know how too beat the shadow and his minion someone can help me ?

Smash the stone columns - daylight will flood the cavern; keep your heroes mobile and fight the darkmen defensively.

[Strict31]

Oy Strict, long post.

Lets see, never had problem when I knocked people off the platform. I was a little upset when I accidently did it to one of my heavt hitters. Oops!
I deal with knockback intensive missions (IE: Mr. Mechanical) by having my brick heroes pick up cars and start tossing. The foot step shockwaves he makes irked me. I'm not sure where the problems come from, I have a sickly quick computer with a lot of ram. That might be why I haven't had a glitch, but I have no idea.

Understood. See, my computer was top of the line...for about thirty-three seconds after I ordered it. Also, I have technology problems. Not that I don't know how to use technology per se...things tend to break down or function poorly in my presence. The more complex the item, the more poorly it performs. Today, I caused the vacuum cleaner to cease functioning. And then, the hose snapped completely off. I chalk it up to the entropy field that surrounds me. I can't turn the bloody thing off, but I never got any points back when I got the power...

Strictly Speaking

[Zixar]

I only got about 1/3 of the way into it when it came out, but I started over last Saturday and am having an absolute blast playing FF. It really puts you in the middle of an old Lee/Kirby comic.

The advice about the speedster is 100% spot-on. Build your own speedster for about 6000 prestige points or so, and recruit him instead of Man O' War or Sea Urchin when they come up for recruitment. All you have to do is give him a SPD of 9 or 10, and an AGL of around 4 or so, then set all his other stats to the 3-4 level. Take Blitzkrieg and Fast Healer advantages, then make one good Melee attack with high damage and low energy cost. Give him a Beam attack too, for the fliers. I turned off the Knockback and Stun on the Melee attack and cranked the speed up to Very Fast. He can then run in and beat the living crap out of just about anyone. I think I gave him the Fancy Footwork passive defense as well. Came out about 6100 prestige.

When Bullet comes up for recruitment, take him too. With Minuteman, Bullet, and your speedster, you can just about tackle anything that comes up quickly. You can use the 4th slot for a mission-specific hero. With two speedsters, the difficult Mr. Mechanical scenario becomes quite manageable, running all over the map before the robots can destroy the buildings. Man-Bot just sits on the corner of the tower waiting for something to come his way.

This was easily worth the $40 I paid for it last year, and with all the mods it takes on a life of its own. The sounds and music are campy, but not TOO corny. You can hit ESC to bypass the cutscenes if they're too over-the-top for your tastes.

Much fun, highly recommended.

[SmokestackJones]

Hey there,

Okay guys, ya got me intrigued, especially with the low price. Now, since this is a somewhat "older" game, I'm assuming I have a better than even chance of running it on my 3-year-old PII, 400 mHz, 196MB RAM, 10G HD Sony machine, yes? No? I figure if I can run the first Oddworld game, make WSAR reports, run PSP and Office on this thing, I could run Freedom Force, right?

(frantically sweating) RIGHT?

-SJ

[Novac]

Hey there,

Okay guys, ya got me intrigued, especially with the low price. Now, since this is a somewhat "older" game, I'm assuming I have a better than even chance of running it on my 3-year-old PII, 400 mHz, 196MB RAM, 10G HD Sony machine, yes? No? I figure if I can run the first Oddworld game, make WSAR reports, run PSP and Office on this thing, I could run Freedom Force, right?

(frantically sweating) RIGHT?

-SJ

I'd think you'd be good to go, aside from mental burn out

[Daywalker]

You should be good to go, those were the specs on my old machine before I upgraded and I had very little problems.

[Chris]

Smokestack!

Minimum specs for the game are:

300Mhz
96MB RAM
31MB Hard drive space
4 x CD Speed
16MB AGP/PCI Graphics card with Direct 3D (You may have a problem with this)
Direct X v8.1

And you will need the two patches for it too - you need BOTH, install them in order of release.

Patch 1.1
http://www.irrational-games.com/modforc ... 0Patch.exe

Patch 1.2
http://www.fileplanet.com/files/110000/110878.shtml
http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=352
http://www.3dgamers.com/dl/games/freedo ... 2.exe.html
http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php ... ord%20er=0

Also, here are my personal links for the game:

http://www.irrational-games.com/modforce
http://www.irrationalgames.com/ff/
http://www.ultimatetopsites.com/games/Gummo/
http://members.shaw.ca/drmanbot/dmb_home.html
http://www.freedomfans.com/modscenter/index.html
http://members.shaw.ca/ajhopkins/skins.html
http://www.myfreedomforce.com/index_ff1.html
http://www.alexff.com/goodies.htm
http://www.alexff.com/links.htm
http://www.geocities.com/jasonrpg/FF.html
http://www.irrationalgames.com/ff/
http://www.stkp.com/FF/
http://www.chynaman.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/FF/FF.html
http://hem.fyristorg.com/furfreedom/index.html
http://www.freedommods.com/
http://cs-people.bu.edu/colstad/freedomforce/skins.html
http://www.emeralddawn.com/items/skins/skins.htm