When it comes to virtual plumbers, PlayStation has forever been in the shadow of Nintendo and a certain big-boned Italian. Yet for one glorious moment in late 2003, PS2 was treated to a toilet jockey who could not only rub shoulders with Mario, but who’d happily kickstart a bloody Mushroom King coup. Meet Ch𝐆ris Stone and Freedom Fighters – a badass resistance leader in an equally badass squad shooter.
Now, a swift look at IO Interactive’s CV will quickly reveal a résumé heavily focused on chrome dome contract killing. Any output from the Danish dev that doesn’t revolve around Agent 47 has usually been a bit, well... bobbins. It’s at this point the prosecution would kindly point the jury towards Kane & Lynch. But when the studio partnered with EA on an alternate reality, squad-based shooter, all that changed.
Set in a world in which the Soviet Union won World War II by dropping an A-bomb on Berlin, the game🅠 opens with d♓astardly Russian forces invading New York. Within the space of five minutes, you’re whisked away from unclogging crappers on a routine plumbing job to start ducking for cover, as shots ring out on the streets of Manhattan and dozens of New Yorkers scurry past in terror. As a way of contrasting the banal with the bombastic, it’s a superb opening statement full of intent.
Originally envisioned as a quasi-turn-based strategy, IO thankf🔯ully saw sense and used its Glacier Engine to develop a third-person blaster focusing on hefty shooting. Much may be made of the impact Resident Evil 4’s brilliant gunplay had on the industry, but Freedom Fighters was proudly rocking a competent over-the-shoulder aiming system a full year before Leon S Kennedy’s Spanish horror show.
It’s unlikely, of course, that Freedom Fighters would still stoke those nostalgic fires so fiercely if it was just a solid early noughties shooter – no offence, Conflict: Desert Storm 2. As♛ Chris evolves from plunger ninja to the Freedom Phantom, he learns to lead a ragtag bunch of civilian-turned-guerrilla-warriors. Commanding troops to attack Soviet forces or provide cover-fire is both elegant and effective – this in an era when most console sh🥂ooters were terrified of tactics.
Freedom Fighters proved the studio could also pace a more structured adventure than Hitman with great assurance. With different seasons shifting from baking Big Apple afternoons to frigid firefights in Times Square, there’s a real sense of time🧸 elapsed. And once you storm Governors Island in a swirling blizzard, the thumping strings of Jesper Kyd’s score fuelling your efforts to liberate New York, it&rsqu꧙o;s hard not to be taken in by the spectacle.
Sadly, Freedom Fighters sold like diamond-studded tiaras at an anti-gentrification rally, with Chris and his rebellion shifting just over half a million copies on PS2 worldwide. IO had planned a sequel, but it was shelved to focus on Kane & Lynch (boo!), then later Hitman: Blood Money, Absolution, and Hitman 2016. The developer has since said it only has the resources to work on games starring Agent 47, which is a crying shame. With seemingly little hope of a Freedom Fighters 2, we’d settle for the excellent original finding a spruced-up home on PS4 to join the ever-growing ranks of emulated PS2 hits. C’mon Sony, don’t let the resistance be futile.
