The Therapist Gamer

Freedom Wars takes place in what appears to be the far distant future where each person belongs to a "panopticon," which is essentially a faction of people competing for the few resources remaining on Earth.  At the start of the game your character is fighting in a battle wherein he gets a head injury and suffers amnesia.  This is seen as a major problem because the panopticon has spent a considerable amount of its limited resources to train you in combat.  As punishment for carelessly losing your memory you are sentenced to one million years of imprisonment.  Yes, one million years.

 

In fact, most everybody starts out sentenced to one million years of incarceration.  The only way to become free is to complete operations for your panopticon, and as a reward for such good behavior you can receive time off of your sentence.  Secured some weapons? Take 20 years off your sentence.  Rescued some kidnapped dignitaries from a rival panopticon?  Maybe 100 years off your sentence.  You can also receive additional time for showing defiance, such as talking with another person or resting.  If you show your devotion to the panopticon through enough service you can earn additional privileges, such as being able to take more than 10 steps at a time.

 

The missions you take on occur in third person and generally involve you shooting a bunch of bad guys and/or large robotic monsters.  They can take as little as five minutes but sometimes as long as 45 minutes.  You play each mission with a few other members of your panopticon - either controlled by AI or other actual human players via WiFi.  In general you try to take down large robots that have a variety of parts that you can collect as you blast them apart.  For example, if a robot has a rocket launcher you can focus your fire there until it breaks loose and then pick it up for yourself.  You technically don't get the parts until the end of the battle, and everything is considered to belong to your panopticon.  However, if you are a high enough level you are allowed to keep the supplies for yourself.  It's a bit of a convoluted system that makes sense in the world of the game, but essentially it just means you need to be a certain level to use certain equipment.  

 

Outside of the battles you will eventually gain the privilege of being able to leave your cell and explore a bit.  This is where more of the story starts to unfold as you learn more about the state of the world and what you might do about it. You can also research new technologies and upgrade your weapons, and there is a sense that everything you do in the missions will contribute to bettering your situation.  It all seems well thought out from a game design perspective.

 

However, the game started to fall apart for me after awhile.  I'm not sure how long I'd played, but it was a good while - probably at least 20 hours or so.  It got to the point where it was simply impossible for me to progress without the assistance of human controlled teammates rather than AI teammates.  The ally AI is just too poor.  For example, when you run out of health you can be revived by a teammate if they resuscitate you soon enough.  If not, you will use up a regeneration token, of which you have a limited amount; I'd be in situations where I was knocked down, the enemy had left, and the AI was standing right next to me but would not resuscitate me.  It was infuriating.  It got to the point where some enemies were so difficult that even after I had upgraded my weapons as much as possible, I simply could not defeat them in the allotted time - which in one case was 45 minutes!  So I'd be battling this huge monster for 45 minutes while my AI companions dork around and don't revive me, and then the time would run out.  I tried two more times but just didn't have it in me to keep going.  It's hard to tell, but I think I was probably about two-fifths of the way through the game, so I figured these problems would only get worse.  And it's a real shame because I think the premise of the game is awesome and the gameplay is pretty good, but the AI just isn't good enough to make the challenges reasonable.

 

All in all, I think Freedom Wars is worth your time - especially if you have a friend to play with - but be aware that you will likely reach a point where the game is almost impossibly difficult.