Once upon a time, comic books used to be fun. Before they went all socially relevant in the '70s, filled with existential angst in the '80s, and became a collectable soap opera in the '90s, comic books were a four-color window into a world where the good guys were virtuous, bad guys always lost, and fighting for "Truth, Justice and the American Way" was considered a good thing. Nowadays, though, comic-book fans who don't want to pony up the hundreds of dollars needed to pick up rare collectables from the Golden and Silver Age of comic books have an alternative -- Irrational Games' incredibly enjoyable (though often criminally overlooked) Freedom Force series. When the intrepid adventurers here at GameSpy recently got their hands on a preview build of the sequel, Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich, I schemed and clawed in a manner befitting Doctor Doom to get my hands on it.

The first thing I noticed when I booted up the preview is that the signature art style from the previous games is back with a vengeance. Irrational Games' decision to drop its own engine in favor of one taken from Gamebryo looks to have paid off. The detail level of the cityscapes and battlefields in Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich is extraordinary. While the game has always drawn heavily from the classic Silver Age comic-book style of Jack Kirby, his influence is even more distinct in the sequel. Instead of being confined to the flat loading screens, the solid colors, square shapes, and thick black outlines of Kirby's work now suffuse the entire 3D world. The effect is simply uncanny -- no matter when I paused the game the result was a frozen panel that could have come from any X-Men comic from the mid-'60s.


The benefits of the Gamebryo engines also became abundantly clear when I jumped into my first battle against super villainy. Everything you can see in the game is a real object, able to be manipulated, moved, and picked up or destroyed using much more realistic (well, comic-book realistic anyway) physics. If someone picks up a car and throws it at an enemy, the resulting bounce may take down a hanging sign, destroy a phone booth, or even knock down part of a building, injuring any innocent bystanders unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity. During my first battle against Entropy (the game's main villain), my super team ended up demolishing an entire city block. Sometimes it was even an accident. Fortunately, the "Prestige" penalties for urban destruction aren't as severe as they were in the first game. Somebody at Irrational must have realized that knocking down buildings should be part of every superhero game.

The next thing I noticed is that Irrational hasn't lost its touch with either storyline or dialogue. Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich's storyline is insane, and I mean that in the best way possible. It seems that a new enemy is menacing the peaceful citizens of Patriot City. In the '60s, Entropy, a woman with the ability to travel in and out of reality, she's poking holes in the fabric of the cosmos. In addition to that, back in the early '40s, the Nazis have managed to harness the power of Energy-X and have used it to win World War II. Now the Freedom Force has to travel back in time and dish out a heapin' helpin' of good ol'-fashioned superhero whoop ass. How those two storylines will fit together I have no idea, but I can't wait to find out.