Jolt Country

Freedom Force is a game that recently had its editor made public. While we've been able to place new characters in the game for quite some time now, we're now starting to see some new missions as well.

This: http://www.harlor.net/ is a site that is a kind of portal to the different mods and missions that are being created. One thing that would grate with the original (unmodified) game is that you really saw a lot of the same "bad guys" over and over again. They bring 'em all back in the last mission as you skate through time or whatnot. The first batch of game mods that came out had to use the built-in villains, so you saw them again for another go around. There's only so many times you can be pumped to fight dinosaurs and ants. The new mods offer up some wholly original content. The fans are going to be able to make that elusive "Fantastic Four" game and so forth. And should the fanbase succeed where so often companies like Acclaim have failed, well... that's pretty cool.

I played the Fantastic Four mod briefly. Nice stuff. The custom voices walk a fine line between "D.I.Y. nifty" and "distractingly unprofessional", and the missions themselves are fairly small compared to the official stuff, but hey it's good for amateur stuff and chucking Skrulls up into the air as the Thing takes quite a while to get old.

That it is. It's far beyond where most first-gen mods are for games, I think. (Though I am drawing off Duke Nukem 3D experience, I guess, as it's been a while since I've been so into a game that I was downloading the mods and levels as soon as they were written.)

I feel for those guys when it comes to voice acting. It's tough because you want to have a bunch of different voices and (especially regarding the Fantastic Four) those voices are quite diverse. You have Reed, who is one of the older super-heroes, the Thing who has that thick NYC (Brooklyn to be specific, right? I can't recall exactly) thing going on, and then Johnny who is, I guess, the All-American guy. Plus, everyone who plays it has what they think the voices sound like "in their head."

I will give them credit for not asking an insane Austrailian to play the voice of the Invisible Girl, like how an insane Austrailian played Wolverine in that one X-Men cartoon a few years back.


Spoiler alert for the mod:

When I played through, I didn't get a chance to fight the Super Skrull at first. But then, those Skrullian bastards had knocked out the Human Torch early on, so I'm not sure if I could have fought with him if he was awake. (I presume his taking of the Thing was hard-coded.)

Hopefully I'll be able to try out the Power Man and Iron Fist one this week. That's got potential, and features two guys who would probably never have their own video game otherwise.

If you haven't touched it yet, try the new "Great Hunt" mod. Second level Minuteman, Martian Manhunter, Wolverine, and either Dr. Midnight or a custom character of your choice battle

Soloman Grundy
Catwoman
Shocker
Predator
Scorpion
Electro

and probably some others who I missed in a giant melee while the Human Torch flies around running interference.

The only downside is that all the villains seem to have some sort of powerful defense that blocks half your shots (tre annoying when my custom character levels a city block with his area attack and all the badguys emerge more or less unscathed), and you have to defeat them while preventing some school from being destroyed. Oh, and none of the game's included heroes other than Minuteman have default attacks that don't take energy, so you wind up with Wolverine running around in circles waiting for his bar to refill so you can slash the villains a few more times.

But hey, custom voices again, and pretty good ones this time.

The only downside is that all the villains seem to have some sort of powerful defense that blocks half your shots...

Huh. I can buy that for Solomon Grundy or Electro, I guess, but Catwoman? I guess she traded in her leather jumpsuit for vibranium mesh or something.

Oh, and none of the game's included heroes other than Minuteman have default attacks that don't take energy, so you wind up with Wolverine running around in circles waiting for his bar to refill so you can slash the villains a few more times.

That does suck, but Freedom Force seems to be pretty good about regenerating energy. I remember playing that old "X-Men: Madness in Murderworld" game where it took energy to use mutant powers and the energy never fricking replenished by itself, you had to go find power crystals or something.

But yeah. Wolverine should be able to punch somebody in the face without a risk of fainting. I mean, hell, he's the best at what he does. And what he does is not very nice.

The patch is out. Looks like they added an official skirmish mode and fixed a host of scripting bugs... more info tomorrow when I get a chance to take a look at it, but www.freedomforcecenter.com has the patch and details in the meantime.

If there were one character mentioned in the manual to the old text adventure "Guild of Thieves" that best sums up the two minutes I spent with Freedom Force after installing the patch, it would in fact be, Waldo McAaaarrrgghh.

I saw a note about this on the FF forae, and I verified it on my system -- one thing they will now let you do is go through the game without having to necessarily take any built-in characters. I was pumped! I loaded up one of the later missions, unchecked Eve and El Diablo, and made up a quick squad of Havoc, Blue Beetle, Ice and a character of my own creation.

Unfortunately, with Eve and El Diablo out, it didn't place the last two heroes in the group. So it was just Havoc and Blue Beetle out there. They kind of awkwardly shook hands and began the misison, but it was obvious that they were concerned with where the hell the other two members are.

So, that kind of sucked. I definitely didn't dislike the built-in FF heroes so much where I'd rather not have them around at all, even if it meant that I used a squad of just two guys.

There may be a workaround to this; I'm not sure. Plus, I think the skirmish mode has no restrictions on the make up of a party. Further bulletins as events warrant, etc.

So yeah, I've been playing this (i guess just for the last day, although it feels like it's been longer than that). I'm about a third of the way through, level-wise (just beat the 'nick of time' boards), but I really do feel like I'm pretty bad at this, especially with how many times I had to replay some boards that the walkthroughs on gamefaqs.com (which pretty much suck so it's not like they're any sort of help at all) said were really easy.

My favorite part so far was the board where the goons run to the guardhouses to sound the alarm, as just destroying the guard houses seemed to be a pretty good deterrent (and since it's not a civilian building, I don't think it hurt my score at all). Take THAT, walkthroughs that didn't even think of that!

I'm not playing with any of my own characters. I guess, right now, the most important thing is to go along with whatever story they have so it doesn't really matter. I've got three superheroes I could recruit now, though. Is that pretty much a must-do thing to win the game? Despite the fact that I can recruit them, even if I do, I won't ever see Man-o-war and the sea urchin again in a movie, will I (just making sure there aren't bonus movies ahead if you recruit the right people)?

Roody_Yogurt wrote:So yeah, I've been playing this (i guess just for the last day, although it feels like it's been longer than that). I'm about a third of the way through, level-wise (just beat the 'nick of time' boards), but I really do feel like I'm pretty bad at this, especially with how many times I had to replay some boards that the walkthroughs on gamefaqs.com (which pretty much suck so it's not like they're any sort of help at all) said were really easy.

The only levels I remember being really difficult were the underground ones (where you fight the supermodel). Those robed dudes had vicious, vicious attacks. The key, I found out on my second playthrough, was ranged, radiation-based attacks (get Mentor's beam attack, basically). But I don't think you've gotten that far yet, it sounds like. The last two Nuklear Winter levels were a bit tougher than average too, so maybe that's where you're coming from.

My favorite part so far was the board where the goons run to the guardhouses to sound the alarm, as just destroying the guard houses seemed to be a pretty good deterrent (and since it's not a civilian building, I don't think it hurt my score at all). Take THAT, walkthroughs that didn't even think of that!

How did you get them destroyed fast enough?

I'm not playing with any of my own characters. I guess, right now, the most important thing is to go along with whatever story they have so it doesn't really matter. I've got three superheroes I could recruit now, though. Is that pretty much a must-do thing to win the game? Despite the fact that I can recruit them, even if I do, I won't ever see Man-o-war and the sea urchin again in a movie, will I (just making sure there aren't bonus movies ahead if you recruit the right people)?

I wound up recruiting all the optional characters by the end of the game, and I think I remember seeing Man-o-War in like a single cutscene once. So, no, you're not missing any story without them. And they're not really "necessary" for play. But Man-o-War and (later) Bullet are two of the game's more useful characters.

Even though the Nuclear Winter boards were a little frustrating, the one that made me want to punch my monitor was El Diablo's solo thing in the 'nick of time' boards (at the starlight cinema). I probably would do better at it now that I've figured out that his punch attack, while it takes forever to KO someone, also means that the thug won't hurt you that much. But yeah, it was annoying.

As far as the guardhouses go, maybe it's just that I took care of the right areas before even deciding to destroy them, but I found that most of them had a direction I could approach from (on the ground) without being seen and in at least one case, even though I'd have to be seen when approaching the house, I'd have it down before the thug got there.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:Even though the Nuclear Winter boards were a little frustrating, the one that made me want to punch my monitor was El Diablo's solo thing in the 'nick of time' boards (at the starlight cinema). I probably would do better at it now that I've figured out that his punch attack, while it takes forever to KO someone, also means that the thug won't hurt you that much. But yeah, it was annoying.

There's also a water tower on top of the cinema proper you can blat for a massive explosion that takes out the tommy gun guy and everyone on that building, if I recall.

Ah, good to know. I was mainly trying to throw everything at everybody.

This game sounds cool. How do the hero creation go? Can I make myself a Punisher or Bulls Eye type character? Or must they all have powers?

The character creation is EXCELLENT. You can definitely do that, Worm. I had Rorschach in my team (from Watchmen) and all I had him out there with was an approximation of his hook gun. (Actually, I may have just made it a regular gun now that I think about it. It was still great to see him out there. I think I had him on a mission where there were chicks shooting acid arrows and minotaurs running around. So I had Guy Gardner, El Diablo and Booster Gold all trying to take down the heavy hitters, and Rorscach trying to scurry about and talk to the enemies that had surrendered. GOD, THAT'S A GREAT GAME. I need to go play it again for moments like that.)

Punisher would be fine -- there are both Punisher models and skins out there. You can make him as powerful as you like. If you want him to have no ammo problems then you can have his guns fire without it depleting his "energy" reserves. Bullseye is doable as well, since you can control just how accurate your custom characters' attacks are.

Now I need to go down to my local EB! Then I'll notice it is overpriced by 300% and I'll download it. Those fuckers seriously tried to sell me SoF2 for ten bucks more than the price on their site and are still selling The Sims ... yea the first plain one for forty four dollars.

I think you can get it for $15 just about anywhere. It's really a great value at that price point. I paid $40, and definitely got my money's worth. God, I hope somehow they get the go-ahead to make a sequel. EA is getting their ass kicked over the Sims Online, however, so who knows if they are going to take a chance on a niche game like FF2 anytime soon.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: God, I hope somehow they get the go-ahead to make a sequel. EA is getting their ass kicked over the Sims Online, however, so who knows if they are going to take a chance on a niche game like FF2 anytime soon.

I think the original design plan was to do a series, with each new game being chonologically further into the future with regards to the comic culture being portrayed. So you'd go from hokey Silver Age patriotism to... I dunno, I guess more disco oriented comics or something in the second, until eventually El Diablo is reinvented as a brooding anti-hero and Minuteman becomes an ironic emblem of the nation's failing innocence. Or something.

ALL must BOW DOWN before ME!! ARRR!!

Remarkable. It's truly interesting to see that no matter how sincere Jonsey's concern regarding you, Invalid_Session, was, no one has ratted you out.

However...


THERE HE IS JONESYE!!!!

Has anyone tried out the "Danger Room" feature that was included in the last patch? Here's my thing: inspired by the Daredevil movie last night I realized that there are no Daredevil games for the PC. There's one for the Gameboy Advance, but playing a sidescroller isn't what I was in the mood for. Plus, it was like one in the morning, and I couldn't just run out and get the game and a GBA at that hour.

(An aside: you know, if the new Gameboy, the one that came out a few days ago, could function as a phone I would buy that in an instant. But anyway.)

So I loaded Freedom Force, created Daredevil, and tried the "Danger Room' feature. All it does, from what I could see, is teleport a bunch of bad guys from the game into the park or wherever, in "waves." Well, that ain't gonna work. If I never go up against a mini velociraptor again it'll be too soon. I want to take on Doc Ock and frigging Mr. Hyde and Stilt-Man and whatnot! (OK, Stilt Man probably wouldn't work, but still.)

The FF community has been fractured into a million different jealous, bickering city-states. This is unfortunate. I am hoping that someone figured out how to get custom bad guys into the new patch's Danger Room mod.

(Of course, it's also possible that I didn't select the right game mode and all of this message is worthless. I should probably check on that.)