Freedom Force (2002 video game)

Freedom Force is a real-time tactical role-playing game  developed by Irrational Games and published by Electronic Arts and Crave Entertainment in 2002. The player guides a team of superheroes as they defend Patriot City from a variety of villains, monsters, and other menaces. The game's budget was around $2 million. A sequel, Freedom Force vs The 3rd Reich, was self-published in early March 2005. The games were made available on Steam on May 29, 2009.

Setting
Players control the character Mentor across a series of locations and time periods in pursuit of and in contest with the game's primary antagonist, Lord Dominion. The game begins with a fight between Lord Dominion and Mentor resulting in the latter's ship exploding, releasing a substance named "Energy X" over the game's primary setting, Patriot City. The substance acts as a context specific agent that grants an individual superpowers based upon their personality or the environment wherein they made contact with the substance. This substance, "Energy X" acts as the driving plot device for the game as it generates allies for Mentor along with new environments for the player to pursue and fight Lord Dominion. Mentor's first ally and the first playable hero is Minuteman a.k.a. Frank Stiles, who seeks to protect the city from the Red Menace before becoming involved in the real plot.

Development
The game used the NetImmerse game engine.

Comic book tie-in
From January to June 2005, the story of the first Freedom Force game was retold in a six-issue comic book miniseries published by Image Comics. This series was scripted by Eric Dieter and featured Jack Kirby -influenced artwork by Tom Scioli. Dieter also wrote the series "Bible" and served as community manager for the official website's forum, "Freedom Fans".

Reception
The game received "universal acclaim" according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. GameSpot named it the best computer game of March 2002.

Freedom Force won Computer Gaming World's 2002 "Strategy Game of the Year" award. The editors of Computer Games Magazine named it the ninth-best computer game of 2002 and called it "the superhero game fans have been waiting for". It also received the magazine's "Best Voice Acting" award. GameSpot presented it with its annual "Best Story on PC" prize. Freedom Force was also nominated for PC Gamer USs "2002 Best Roleplaying Game", The Electric Playgrounds 2002 "Best Strategy Game for PC" and GameSpot's "Best Music on PC", "Biggest Surprise on PC" and "Best Graphics (Artistic) on PC" awards. During the 6th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, Freedom Force was nominated for "Computer Role-Playing Game of the Year" by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences.

Sequel
Freedom Force was followed by a sequel, Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich, which released three years after the original game.