The missions you are given will twist and overlap with one another, so the first mission you will receive will be to rescue Isabella from the police station, when you set off on your way you will find that you will have to dispose of some snipers on the gas station. So you set off on another little crusade to find some explosives to destroy the gas station. After moving to another neighbourhood you will quickly find out that you will have to go back to the place where you first started to pick up the explosive. Then you will have to make your way back to your original second neighbourhood using the map to destroy the gas station. After this is done you should then try to make your way to the police station. This can be a bit tiresome at times but it does keep things interesting.

The game plays in a third person perspective but the controls are much the same as a first person shooter so you will need to use both analogue sticks to control the direction of Chris. Weapons and items are located and used using the shoulder buttons and R1 is used to use an item or fire a weapon. The four buttons on the right side of the control pad are only used when you have a group of people so you can control their actions, such as follow, defend and attack. If you wish to select just one person to follow a certain action this can be done by tapping the relative button to skip through the team or holding down on the button will select the whole team. With up to twelve people joining forces with you simultaneously the controls never get clogged down, unresponsive or confusing.
As mentioned you will be able to control up to 12 other people although after the first stint on your own you will only be given the ability to control another two people. This is based on your charisma rating which increases as you complete various missions. So the ability to command addition rebels is predetermined as your charisma level will only increase after completing missions. A nice touch is the ability to heal fellow rebels, prisoners and civilians.

Thankfully the rebels that join you throughout the game do have very good A.I. you will rarely - if ever - see them get stuck on any of the scenery. The A.I. of the soviet troops is also very good, they will take cover behind objects when you open fire and they will also come out from their cover momentarily to sling a few bullets your way. They also fire from different heights, so you will see troops firing while standing and then they may opt to kneel down and shoot from the ground.

The troops will go pretty easy on you at the beginning of the game they will only be armed with pistols and the occasional assault rifles. As you progress the going will certainly get tougher as you face troops armed with shot guns and machine guns. The troops themselves will also take a little more persuasion to die as they will be wearing flake jackets. The difficulty scale does rise very nicely to a crescendo when you will have to face off against a tank. You will find that Freedom Fighters is a great game but you will also feel a touch cheated as it is quite a short game. The only replay value set is the ability to replay the game with your entire squad. This is not quite enough you should be able to finish the game on the medium difficulty level in about twelve hours.

Graphically Freedom Fighters has a similar look to the sprawling cities of the GTA series with dirty streets and fire. As with most first person shooters on consoles it can be a little difficult to shoot enemies in the distance and Freedom Fighters suffers from the same problem, this is mainly down to the low resolution of consoles more than it is down to the mechanics and look of the game. The troops and rebels all move very nicely thanks to some good animation. Overall Freedom Fighters does look good and you shouldn’t find too much to moan about. Freedom Fighter sounds excellent as the Russians speak Russian and the English voice acting on the whole is also very good. The sounds of war in the background combined with the great music really add to the feeling that the city has become a war ground.

Freedom Fighters could have done with being a bit longer and a couple of other bonuses added on completion might have added to the replay value. Apart from this, Freedom Fighters is an excellent game that brings something quite original to the PS2. The team based system works extremely well, so well in fact that is you haven’t played any team based games before you will not have any problems taking to Freedom Fighters. If you want a great game that brings something different to the third person shooter genre you need to look no further because Freedom Fighters is here.

9.0 out of 10