The storyline introduction will be familiar to anyone who has watched Flash Gordon: the evil alien emperor Lord Dominion contaminates Earth with Energy X, a power source that grants amazing superhuman abilities to anyone who is exposed to its radiation. As Energy X canisters fall over Patriot City, an age of superheroes and villains is born.

In terms of gameplay, Freedom Force features an intuitive and accessible real-time-with-pause system, with a variety of powers at the player's disposal: one can use basic melee attacks, area effects, projectiles and beam attacks, as well as a number of special powers. Each of these came with its own animations and effect bubbles – POW, WHACK, WHOOSH, etc. – making combat a colourful, exciting and instantly gratifying experience.

More than just performing fancy attacks, heroes can also fly, levitate, teleport, jump onto roofs, lift cars and throw them at enemies, etc. “Do whatever a superhero can do” kind of sums up the gameplay.

The game is further enhanced by the addition of the Prestige mechanic – a simple system where doing good deeds and side-objectives like protecting citizens and bringing the guilty to justice earns favour with fellow heroes, allowing the player to recruit a larger roster of superheroes, each with their own unique abilities and uses. There are many little instances of these objectives hidden away on every map, and they add life and depth to the gameplay.

The imperative to protect the city and its inhabitants while pursuing the villains and main objectives also adds a pleasing level of complication and difficulty to the game, with the player having to split up their teams of heroes and oversee different events on different parts of the maps, as well as find the canisters of Energy X that litter the city.