17 Years Later, Freedom Fighters Is Back

IO has re-released Freedom Fighters.The Hitman developer’s third-person shooter, which originally launched in 2003 for PC, Xbox, GameCube and PlayStation 2, returns 17 years later in working order on Windows 10 via GOG.com, the Epic Games Store and Steam.

Freedom Fighters is set in an alternate history where the Soviet Union has invaded and occupied New York City. You play a plumber turned resistance fighter who ends up leading the fightback.

Ex-Eurogamer editor Tom Bramwell reviewed Freedom Fighters, giving it a 7/10. “… it’s not too hard, it has a certain charm, it lets you take things on in your own way (as a commander or a commando), and it isn’t afraid of pushing the old-fashioned arcade challenge of getting through a level without hitting F6 every ten seconds,” Bramwell said. “Fun, frivolous and worth a look…”

Will Porter then penned a Freedom Fighters retrospective for Eurogamer back in November 2012. “Freedom Fighters was a slice of alterno-history mayhem,” Porter wrote. “It’s the tale of a New York plumber (no, not that New York plumber) who becomes a modern resistance hero as Soviet forces hunker down in Brooklyn. It’s a scenario well covered before and since, most recently in Modern Warfare 3, but IO’s matter-of-fact approach and sincere love of cultural stereotyping still makes Freedom Fighters sing.”