People who loved THQ’s more recent first person shooter Homefront will definitely find a home in the forgotten classic Freedom Fighters. Published by EA Games way back in 2003, Freedom Fighters was a squad shooter that tasked the player in building a guerrilla army to liberate New York City from an invading Soviet Union. The game is designed to be easily accessible, fun, and challenging enough that it keeps you going until the very end.

Freedom Fighters is set in an alternate reality; one where the Soviet Union had never lost the cold war. The new superpower begins its reign of dominance by taking over Mexico, Cuba and other countries worldwide. Players control Christopher Stone, a simple plumber going about his daily life when the Russian invasion of the United States begins. Stone is recruited into a rag-tag freedom fighting outfit and slowly works his way up the ranks until he becomes the hero of the revolution.

Gameplay is fun, exciting, and engaging with smooth controls and an easy-t0-use squad interface. Three buttons are used to control Stone’s freedom fighting squad (recall, attack, and defend). Squad AI was surprisingly smart for its time, as characters never get stuck in the environment or cause any unintentional headaches for Stone. The player can recruit up to 12 soldiers to fight alongside him during most missions (a lot of friendly AI for its time), and firefights feel all the more epic and engaging because of it.

Gunplay is fun and straightforward too. The refined controls make aiming and shooting the various weapons a breeze. The various weaponry (from AK-47′s to RPG’s) are all fun to use, and blowing up targets using C4 and other explosives provide hours of entertainment. There’s no better feeling than mowing down an entire battalion of highly-trained Russian soldiers then blowing up their mobile base with only 12 people and a bunch of salvaged weapons.

The graphics and technical presentation are excellent. This being an IO interactive-developed game, the developer used their Hitman engine and tweaked it, allowing for more action on-screen at once. Draw distances and the beautiful environments really set it apart giving it’s war-torn New York setting an alluring, if destroyed beauty and scale.

If you haven’t played Freedom Fighters, you owe it to yourself to get it on whatever last generation system you have at your disposal. Do not continue to miss one of the most entertaining and engaging squad-based shooters that plays like the video game version of Red Dawn.

Discuss:

Have you ever played Freedom Fighters?