To the Secret Preview Headquarters!
For those of you who have never heard of Freedom Force, the concept is pretty easy to grasp. Just imagine every comic book superhero you ever read about, from the obvious Superman and Phantom through to the less popular (but still having a massive cult following) Green Lantern and Captain America. Now roll all them up, throw them in a blender and re-mould them into new superheroes and you get the characters in Freedom Force.
There’s a vast array of superheroes and super villains on offer here who all hark back to the comic’s golden 1930’s and 40’s era. Right when there was a spate of superheroes filling the shelves, like The Shield, The Hour-man, Dr. Fate, The Hawkman… the list goes on and on. One thing that bound them all was their very specific super powers, it was what made each character unique. And what about the costumes? Superman was instantly recognisable by his blue all in one body stocking and external red y-fronts. Batman was originally dressed in a pale grey version with black undies, the kinky devil. But what you’ve got here is a whole wealth of inspiration to draw from for new superheroes, and that’s exactly what Digital Jesters have done with the Freedom Force series.
Underlying most of the comic book heroes and villains of the era was a general trend of tongue-in-cheek humour, sometimes very subtle and sometimes more blatant than a swift frying pan to the face. DJ have captured this perfectly with a lot of the dialogue sounding as if it’s being read straight from a comic. Harkening back to the days when the chance of a little self-righteous pontification was never missed, the characters ramble on about freedom and the American way. But trust me, as cheesy as it sounds, and as cheesy as it actually DOES sound, you can be sure that FFvTTR has its tongue VERY firmly in its cheek. So far in its cheek it could practically lick its own ear.
