In The Name Of Freedom - Episode 1: Vietnam

Although most video games that involve war allow you to play a part in the conflict using all sorts of weapons, there are also titles that force you to survive without firing a single shot. This can be a great way to keep players immersed and have them focused on the story instead of the shooting, but then again a very responsive set of gameplay mechanics is required for things to work as intended.

In The Name Of Freedom is a third-person adventure game that puts you in the role of an American journalist tasked with documenting the Vietnam War. The game does not feature any combat, but you do have to avoid enemy fire and escape from a variety of dangerous situations by running away and using the environment to your advantage. However, there are some nasty gameplay issues that might make you lose patience.

The story revolves around Anna, an American journalist whose husband is a soldier in the Vietnam War. She decides to use her skills in order to investigate her husband’s disappearance in Vietnam, but she stumbles upon a village ravaged by American troops. Naturally, she is discovered and chased by the soldiers, so you must help her get away and finish her investigation.

One of the first obstacles in your way are the controls, because it’s very difficult to keep moving when your character does not respond smoothly to your input. This is especially annoying when you have to navigate obstacles, because there are times when your character just won’t jump or crouch in time. Thus, you can fall off objects or get stuck, which keeps you from having fun most of the time.

To make things worse, the game also has some performance issues, even if you happen to use a powerful computer. Although the game uses Unreal Engine 4, the graphics are not detailed enough to explain the frame drops, so this is most likely because of bad optimization. On the other hand, some of the environments look pretty nice, even if most of the time you are forced to follow a linear path through the levels.

All things considered, In The Name Of Freedom is a pretty enjoyable project, but at the moment the controls can make the experience extremely frustrating. Thus, we can only hope that future episodes are going to be a lot more polished and refined.