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July 19, 2010

Had I only KNOWN I coulda had super powers ...

This is the Minuteman statue in Lexington, MA. I used to work about 50 yards from it.

This is Freedom Force, a game from 2002 I happened to buy with its sequel, Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich, this weekend for $7.49.
I love this game because the gameplay reminds me of the original Grand Theft Auto - overhead camera slinking you through the crime-riddled streets of a generic metropolis in which you bust punks by wielding whatever weapons you have at your disposal - taxi cabs, garbage disposals, random barrels of toxic waste ... what have you. Initially, an appropriately overacted narrator guides you through the basics, and with the volume cranked my wife (from across the room) now knows the appropriate manner in which you can remove a streetlight from its concrete base and smack some ass.
The main character, Minuteman, received his powers from touching the base of the Minuteman statue which was infused with Energy X. The "park" in which the statue resides looks nothing like Lexington's Battle Green in real life, but that's a minor gripe considering I worked my butt off for three solid years in its neighborhood never knowing I just needed to touch John Parker's tush to inherit otherworldly superpowers, largely channeled through my giant scepter with Sam the Eagle on the end.
The game itself is pretty straightforward - follow the instructions and defeat the commies who are being helped along in their quest for world dominance by some alien technology (Energy X) that was placed here for the sole purpose of providing aliens with some good live programming on TV. (But if Contact taught us anything, it's that in space the aliens have access to every transmission that ever came from Earth - like a permanent Nick at Nite but not all the shows feature Valerie Bertanelli. It also taught us that priests who look like Matthew McConaughey get to visit the White House a lot and don't need security clearance ever to visit the super-secret multinational trillion-dollar device that the aliens will teach us how to make.)
So yeah ... Freedom Force. An artful melding of the best things about comic books and video games that doesn't take itself too seriously in theme and story, but very seriously in scope, scale and experience. I love that the characters actually follow the instructions you give them - tell Mentor to wait in the alley and he'll bide his time until the very moment when his mind-control will benefit the attack. The old-school comic book vibe given to the proceedings seems straight out of Jack Kirby's brain, which I think is in a jar somewhere at the Irrational Games studio for anyone to reference at any given time.
Switching between attacks with the F1, F2 .... keys, then switching characters with the number keys is bound to get confusing. So far it's just Minuteman and Mentor but I'm sure this is going to get crazy quickly.
At the Lexington Minuteman my only superpower was being able to get a newspaper out on time each week. Had I known the ability boost that lurked in the national monument just outside my window, I surely would have taken it and used it to fight evil.
Then I would demand payment from the police department for doing their jobs for them (With overtime, these guys clear $140,000 a year at least). Easy money - I'm surprised other comic book heroes never thought of that.

Oh. Right. That whole ethics thing.

Stupid ethics.

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