What's prestige?  It's a measure of how well you do in a mission.  Taking out more bad guys results in more prestige, while letting harm come to civilians or public buildings results in the loss of prestige.  The better you do in the mission, the higher your prestige and the better Freedom Force's reputation in Patriot City.  Prestige is used for more than a rating of a mission's success, it is also used as a currency to 'buy' new heroes.  As you move through the campaign, new heroes are added to your team as you progress through the game's storyline.  However, some heroes appear on the periphery of the story and are not automatically added to the Freedom Force.  These heroes need to be 'convinced' to come on board, and the way to convince them is through the good reputation of your team, i.e. your prestige.  Stronger heroes will require higher prestige points to be made available to you in future missions, so there is an incentive to save up prestige to gain a powerful new hero instead of spending it on the next guy who shows up wearing tights.  However, the really cool thing about prestige points is that they allow you to import your own custom designed heroes into the campaign.  You can use the hero creation feature of the game to build a custom hero and imbue him/her with your own custom set of special powers.  Just don't try to create an uber-mega-super hero, though, or you'll never be able to accumulate the prestige to afford him.  While you must give your new hero one of the game's stock voices, you can provide your own custom skin.  Those who are not artistically inclined will be happy to hear that there is a plethora of player-created skins available for download on the internet.  Chances are that your favorite super hero or heroine has already been turned into a skin for the game, so you can protect Patriot City with the Fantastic Four or the X-Men if you'd like.

After the successful completion of a mission, the game awards experience points to your heroes.  Those directly involved in the mission receive points, but so do those who stayed behind, although less than the participants.  This adds a bit of an RPG element to the game as the heroes accumulate experience points to gain levels, allowing you to add new powers to their arsenal or to upgrade the strength of their existing powers.  There is a limit to the powers available to each hero and to the level to which they can be upgraded., though.

The game is primarily controlled with the mouse - clicking on a location moves the currently selected hero to the spot, and clicking on an enemy will have the hero use his/her default attack.  Other attacks and actions can be selected by right-clicking on the target and selecting from a pop-up menu of available actions.  There are a variety of attacks and abilities in the game, from your basic bashing to energy beams and psionic mind attacks.  Many of the structures and objects in Freedom Force can suffer damage and some can even be wielded as weapons.  Strong characters can rip streetlights out of the ground and use it as a bat to take out a row of enemies.  Even stronger heroes can lift entire cars or huge boulders and fling them at enemies.  All of this mayhem takes place in real-time, but it is all manageable because you can pause the game at any point and issue orders while the game is paused.  The game clock can also be slowed to allow orders to be given during hectic situations without the need to pause the game entirely.

Freedom Force has done an excellent job in breathing life into the superhero characters, imbuing each with a unique personality.  Not only does each super hero have his/her own sayings and quips, they even have their own theme songs.  Each of these fits its character quite well, and will soon have you humming along.  Not to be outdone, the villains have their own songs as well, and trust me, the evil Nuclear Winter's theme song will be playing in your head long after you've brought him to justice.  The voiceovers are top-notch as well - sure the voice actors ham it up a bit, but it fits with the game's setting perfectly and they hardly ever go too far over the top.  Another nice touch is the "secret origin" cinematic for each hero.  It is fun to see what the heroes were like before being hit by Energy X and how their former lives affected the powers they gained.  Sometimes, a big part of the fun in gaining a new hero is getting to watch another secret origin cinematic.

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