For Freedom!

I was a big fan of the PC RPG/strategy hybrid Freedom Force. It had some issues, but overall I thought it was a great game. I have two requirements for any game that claims to simulate superheroes, and FF actually fulfilled two of them.

First, the surroundings have to be breakable. As a hero, I want to be able to knock holes in walls, topple buildings, and generally reshape the terrain by force.

Second, my character should be able to tear up chunks of scenery and use them to pummel bad guys.

Third, my character should be able to knock bad guys through scenery. If I can't knock some blockhead through a building, it's not a superhero game.

So, if I can't tear a street light out of the ground and use it to whack some bad guy through a building, it's not a real superhero game. To date, there have been no real superhero games available on the PC. FF has come the closest. It does let me destroy the scenery, and use chunks of it to pummel bad guys.

Anyway, ever since I played FF, I've been looking forward to a sequel. It appears that I won't have to wait much longer, because you can already pre-order Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich. I haven't pre-ordered it, because I'm not usually a pre-order kind of guy. What is neat about this is how developer Irrational Games paid for the project.

I think it's really cool that they're self-funded. Having worked for both a self-funded publisher and a company that relies on publishers to pay for everything, I can say that from a worker-bee's perspective self funding is much nicer. The big issue for me is having creative control. If you are self funded, you don't have a publisher telling you that they just played Tetris, and they want some of that falling brick action in your RPG, or worse yet they decide your RPG won't sell because RPGs aren't hot right now, and can't you just turn it into a Starcraft clone? But don't forget the falling bricks.