If you liked the first one, you’ll like this one since it seems more like an add-on than a stand alone game. For those who haven’t played Freedom Force its a squad based superhero strategy game set in the 50’s. Like the first, both games have a cheesy comic book feel that only adds to the appeal. You start with a few heros and as the game progresses more join you, you also gain prestige points you can use to “buy” additional heros that aren’t part of the main story. The hero’s can be “levelled” up as they earn experience adding to their powers and purchasing select new ones, I say select because the pre-made hero’s have a selected set of abilities you can buy so they don’t deviate from their “character”. For newer strategy players (which I doubt we have on HF) it’s fairly intuitive, and has a walkthrough that’s helpful and is the beginning of the story rather than just some side thing that everyone skips. For the hardcore strategy players I’d recommend the higher difficulty levels, the standard level is a bit light. You can also create your own heros, with the hero builder tools although this is where I was disappointed there are very few original skins aside from the ones already used in the game and there is no easy customizing tool. Also its too easy to make an overpowered superhero that can breeze through the game solo leaving the other characters behind. For this reason I’d recommend sticking with the pre-made heros, there are quite a few in addition to the main story characters and they do add a bit to the story dialogue (rather than just being backdrop). There is a large modding community from the first game so it won’t be long until this game gets it as well, skins, campaigns, etc.
If you like superhero, or strategy games you really can’t go wrong with this one (although the cheesy banter might annoy some of the younger set) and it’s not $50 like everything else on the game shelf, most of which sucks but I’ll save that for another post.