Freeman: Guerrilla Warfare
KK Game Studio
KK Game Studio’s Freeman: Guerrilla Warfare game had an interesting concept when I first spied it back in early 2018. Although it was still in Steam’s Early Access program, you could not only manage modern-day mercenaries from a top-down strategic point-of-view, when things went hot you could zoom down to a boots-on-the-ground perspective and get your first-person shooting on.
Freeman: Guerrilla Warfare has been widely compared to Mount & Blade Warband, but I think it’s more like a combination of that 2010 game and the Jagged Alliance franchise. You can outfit your various mercenaries with pieces of equipment and weapons, such as helmets, body armor, pistols, and assault rifles—pretty much the typical sorts of gear you’ll find in any modern shooter these days. The fun part is after you’ve equipped them and you get to see how their individual builds function in combat.
You begin as a relatively broke mercenary leader who has formed his own private mercenary company, or PMC. You’ll have to gradually recruit mercenaries to fight for your cause, keep them healthy (through multiple trips to the local hospital), and buy and sell equipment for them.
All the while, you’ll have to avoid conflicts with the more capable mercenary groups and take on the less powerful ones. Once you’ve dispatched a group of enemies, you’re free to pillage whatever gear they took into battle, which can save you lots of money.
Although the overhead, strategic map reminded me vaguely of Arma 3, being able to plot out strategies on it is something unique to Freeman: Guerrilla Warfare. Planning an assault out carefully and watching your troops carry out your orders can be a real blast, especially when you personally get to join in on the action as well.
Freeman: Guerrilla Warfare features some pretty detailed graphics, considering its massive scale. You play each game across a procedurally-generated map with clear markers where every faction has set up. The voice and weapons sounds are also well done, and a typical battle will include the loud staccatos of assault rifles, the booming sounds of rocket launchers, and shrill cries of mercenaries as they bite the dust.
Apparently, more features were expected to be included in the base game when Freeman: Guerrilla Warfare exited Early Access a couple of weeks ago, including vehicles. It would be great for the devs to continue to add more content in future updates. But for now, it’s a very fun synthesis of genres that works quite well and will be occupying my gaming library for some time to come.
SCORE: 81%
Freeman: Guerrilla Warfare has some pretty nice looking graphics that make its mercenary-based gameplay truly shine. However, you want to have a pretty beefy gaming PC or gaming laptop in order to play it at a decent framerate. So, you may just want to invest in a decent gaming rig:
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