You say you want a revolution?

What if WWII didn't end the way it did? What if the Soviet Union brought an end to WWII by dropping an atomic bomb on Berlin? What if the Soviets invaded the United States? What if New York City, as a whole, was invaded? This is how my favorite game of all time, IO Interactive's Freedom Fighters, begins.

Freedom Fighters is a third person shooter, putting you in the hands of a plumber and his group of fellow freedom fighters, as they try to win back NYC and restore peace. The gameplay works in a style vaguely similar to the Battlefield franchise's "Conquest" mode, and gives you a map before each level, showing you the individual buildings that need to be taken back. How and in what order you do this is completely up to you, which is where part of the fun comes in.


Strength in numbers.

Every level has three buildings to take over, and these are placed in a giant chunk of the city, completely open for you. Some buildings may require you to do a separate task first, such as blowing up the foundations of a billboard that two snipers are perched upon. You can also have squadmates that you can command with three buttons: Hold, Attack, and Defend. You can have everyone hold by holding down the hold button, or tap it 6 times to have 6 people hold. Aim at an enemy and hold the attack button down and everyone charges for him, or you can assign an enemy to each squadmate.

Now, this article is about supposed to be about replayability, so let's get to that.

I was 10 when this game was released, so I wasn't very fond of online play, and I didn't have an Xbox. During the summer, I would hang at my grandparents house, while my parents were at work, and play games. Now, my grandmother would watch me play games sometimes, and she didn't approve of my choices too often. When I started playing Freedom Fighters, this changed greatly. I don't know if it was nostalgia from when my grandfather was serving during WWII or if it was just a nice change from the prostitutes in True Crime: Streets of LA. Whenever playing, my grandma would be chanting me on, rallying me to "Kill those damn russians!!"...I often had a fun time playing this game with her around, and she loved watching all the action go down.


The red car: Freedom Fighters version of the explosive barrel.

Now, the real reason that Freedom Fighters was such a favorite of mine, was because of its implementation of something that is far too scarce from modern day gaming: cheat codes.
FF had a great selection of cheats, from "Fast Forward Action", which sped up the entire game by 200%,"Fly-Mo", which caused every death from an explosion to go down in beautiful slow mo while the world around them still moved at a normal speed, "Infinite Ammo" + any of the weapon cheats, "Blind as a Bat", which removed vision from enemies, but still had them fire blindly, or "Nail Gun", which pinned every dead enemy to the walls, in all their ragdoll glory. In fact, I think one of the reasons I latched on to FF so much was because it was one of, if not the first game I played which featured ragdoll support. Did I mention every single cheat code(what is mentioned above isn't all of them, by the way) can be combined for maximum hilarity?


Silent killer.

One of my proudest moments in gaming was sneaking up on top of a fire station behind an enemy with no vision, throwing a grenade by his feet, watching him lift off in super so-mo, then proceeding to raise the American flag on the building(securing that building), running down 14 floors of the building I had previously cleaned of enemies, running out front, and continuing to shoot the same guy who was still falling in so-mo until his body reached the pavement. The reason I am so proud of this moment, is, after witnessing it go down, my grandfather proclaimed, and I shit you not, "Wow...you gotta be proud of that. How did you pull that shit off?" My grandmother then proceeded to say his full name is a angry tone , reminding him that I was not supposed to hear that type of language. A proud moment indeed.


Outside one of the final missions, "The TV Station"

Even without cheat codes, Freedom Fighters is a great game, with a memorable storyline and incredible level design. There is even splitscreen multiplayer, which was a favorite among my friends, and still is, which puts two leaders(the players), each with their own army of around 20 clones, to destroy each other while overrunning vacant buildings.Freedom Fighters has provided over 200 hours of gameplay from me, and is just plain fun. It is a great, underrated title that is always guaranteed to produce a few laughs, and help fight back in the face of boredom. I strongly suggest you pick it up for your Xbox, PS2 or GCN. It is filled with replayability , and it is the reason why my Gamecube, every once and a while, still gets an Instant Replay.