Review by Nick H.Welcome to a futuristic world, where being born is a crime. Sometimes speaking is a crime. At other times not speaking is also a crime. What do these crimes amount to?

Ever since it came out in Japan earlier this year, Freedom Wars has been high on my list of anticipated releases. Being from the illustrious SCE.

Having your punishment further extended. You are born a sinner, because your very existence is a drain on the resources of your society. There are only two classes of people - sinners and citizens. Sinners must atone for their existence and their choices that are deemed a drain on society.

Only once they have atoned can they be citizens. The going cost of being born? One million years of imprisonment.The premise is actually quite fascinating. The only way to chisel away at that penalty is by engaging in a war and fighting for your panopticon so that resources can be gathered for their citizens. This theme of resource gathering shows up because in this very distant future, resources are beyond scarce.

That's why it's a crime to simply be born - in doing so you are inadvertently risking the health and cohesion of the society around you. This serves as the backbone for the mission-based gameplay that Freedom Wars has to offer. In this society where someone always seems to know what someone else is doing, which means that people behave as though and indiscretions, no matter how private, will be seen and punished.

This is a play on the concept and philosophy of the panotpicon prison; a concept designed by Jeremy Bentham that states that argues that the assumption that you're being watched by the institutional forces is as powerful in moderating behaviour as actual surveillance. The social structures of Freedom Wars very much works like Bentham's panopticon prison; between missions your character resides in a tiny room that affords little privacy.

There is a strange, watery window that occupies most of one of the walls. It always feels as though you are being watched even if you're not sure if you are being watched at any given moment in time.Within this structure there are other parallels to the dystopian story Nineteen Eighty-Four (Orwell found the panipticon a fascinating concept when applied to the wider world), and generally speaking there is the makings for a brilliant narrative. Unfortunately in Freedom Wars the developers do tend to take things too far and lose much of the story's impact by how being silly with how overtly despotic the society is (such as being penalised one million years because I was hurt and lost my memory). On the plus side, the narrative is at least consistent, and over time the extreme penalties start to make sense. Ultimately Freedom Wars asks interesting question about whether or not personal liberty should be placed above the health of society. It's just a pity that you'll need to overcome the initial impression that the narrative is too silly for its own good.Whittling away your sentence can be an exhausting job, but not just because of the ludicrous number of hours you are assigned right off of the bat.

It is the rate at which the sentence is reduced that leads to a pacing problem (completing the narrative takes around two dozen hours. At that time I still had over 750,000 hours of my sentence left). That is one of the issues. I do not have a problem with grinding in a video game - in fact I usually enjoy it. There is a tangible reward at the end that makes the repetition worth it. Usually this reward comes in the form of levels or useful items.

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Here there are some milestones along the way, but the rewards are so inconsequential and the pacing so out of tune with the game's story that what starts as the driving force for your character's actions means very little by the end of the game. It would help if your actions had more of an impact on the world or society around you, but outside of a handful of personal interactions along the way, your character's victories really do not seem to matter that much in the grand scheme of things. While the concept of the panopticon should feel unfair (because it is. It was always designed as a tool for crushing the spirit of individuality within a person), there are times where, in the context of a game, it's difficult to stomach. For example at times my character was punished for sleeping.

When there is no other course of action open to him or her at that time. These punishments are not terribly severe - usually only amounting in five or ten year chunks, but they often made me roll my eyes at the arbitrary punishments (if the Vita had seen me, I am pretty sure I would have been sentenced to fifteen more years).It is a shame that the storyline winds up feeling as though it goes nowhere, because the idea behind it had a great deal of potential.

I am all for some good dialogue and backstory, but the walls of text really do not by default create an interesting tale or deep interaction with other characters, and Freedom Wars isn't written with the same quality of a game like Danganronpa. There are a handful of excellent interactions I will not spoil, but they are too far and few between and like the story feel as though a amount of narrative potential was left on the table.Looking at the game itself, plays well. The combat is fast-paced, and the focus on teamwork is interesting (though more fun when playing with others online than making use of the occasionally spotty AI). The best part of combat is the use of the thorn, which I could use to propel myself around the place and gave me some nice Bionic Commando flashbacks. Characters look amazing and their movements are fluid as combat rolls along at an excellent framerate.

There are no technical hiccups that pull the player out of the immersion. The smaller missions feel right on the Vita - at least early on. They do however, become repetitive in nature. More variety, more quests tied to a stronger narrative would have made the quests more compelling. Missions take place in attractive but heavily reused areas that are represented by a series of linked rooms. Sometimes these areas can be quite small and other times the regions are very expansive.

However the general objectives do not change much after a few hours, making this (along with the desire to whittle away at your sentence) a real grind.If I had to sum up my overall impression of Freedom Wars, it is that the game comes so very close to being an amazing experience but the gameplay doesn't quite match with its excellent concept. There is an interesting discussion about society here and there is potential for this to become a franchise that investigates the concept further. But the developers clearly struggled to turn that concept into a compelling game.

For those following its development over the past year or so, the idea of Freedom Wars has been as tantalising as it has been mysterious. The concept seemed so bizarre - what was it all about? Would it be any good? Would it even be released in Western territories?Well, here we are at the tail-end of 2014, and we've finally seen it surface. Now, maybe, we can eventually wrap our heads around it. Forget-ye-notFreedom Wars begins its story, like so many other Japanese games have, with your character in a state of amnesia. But here it actually holds some significance, aside from just being a handy shortcut for reducing a lead character to a position of powerlessness and making tutorials feel more natural.You see, Freedom Wars takes place in a futuristic version of the world, which is governed by an all-controlling and oppressive selection of laws known as The People's Charter.

And, as it turns out, amnesia is about one of the biggest conceivable breaches of said charter.Amnesia, we're told, is the reckless loss of 'state-owned resources that reside within the individual', which is a crime punishable by no less than a million years of penal servitude. Yikes.And so, having named and customised your character, and chosen your Panopticon - essentially the capital city in which you want to be placed - you're immediately lumped in with a group known as 'sinners', who endure 24/7 surveillance and have to fight for every little scrap of freedom.Freedom Wars does a great job of really steeping you in its dystopian world. In the game's opening, you'll find yourself incurring penalties which further your already lengthy sentence in a completely accidental, unthinking way. Pacing your cell incurs a penalty, sprinting around your Panopticon incurs a penalty, and even having the audacity to recline on your bed incurs a penalty.And that's brilliant.

Other than multiplayer, the meat of the game is the Adventure mode, which is ridiculously bare bone. No mission lasts for more than a couple of minutes, and the goals range from the stupidly simple 'Perform the button combinations at the bottom of the screen on the dummies' to the overly repeated 'Defeat the Foot Soldiers in under 30 seconds!' Upon completion, you're awarded tokens that can be used to open up bonus artwork, biographies and other extras. Tmnt mutant melee gameplay. While a fleshed out narrative for each character would be a bit far reaching, what the Adventure mode amounts to is little more than a series of mini-games that are repeated ad nauseam for under an hour per character. Choosing from eventually over 20 characters (due to unlockables), each character goes through a series of simple missions.

Freedom Wars understands what comes naturally to gamers - it understands that you'll want to roam your cell and explore the nooks and crannies, it understands that you'll want to immediately use the sprint button when given half a chance to do so - but it takes these natural instincts and criminalises them. It feels wonderfully unfair, and that's very much the point. Community serviceHowever, should you want to claw back some freedom - and you will, unless you fancy staring at cell walls for countless hours - then you'll have to complete missions for the 'greater good' of your Panopticon.In such missions - known as 'contributions' - you'll usually be teaming up with fellow sinners (AI or human) to free valuable citizens from hostile areas.

Citizens differ from sinners in that they're educated. They provide practical skills for the good of society, outside of simply killing stuff. They're a better class of people, and the game makes no bones about that.Completing contributions will knock years off your sentence, as well as giving you the opportunity to slowly forge a slightly more free existence. Spoilers: you get to sleep lying down.But, as characters in Freedom Wars often say, contributing to your Panopticon is its own reward. And indeed, there is a basic fun to be had here. Sinners are kitted out with both ranged and melee weapons, rapidly switching between rudimentary cover shooting and frantic hack-'n'-slash.Mostly, your ragtag crew will be taking on Abductors - beasts with massive bodies and even bigger health bars, who are out to seize citizens.Taking them down is a real team effort, and a slog which thoroughly tests you as a unit.

And this is where Freedom Wars shows both its worth as a co-op experience, and its limitations in solo play. You can give commands to your AI chums, but you'll often feel like they're simply along for the ride.It feels a little reductive to bring up the game's likeness to Monster Hunter, but it is significant. Just like in that series, which shunned Vita for 3DS, you'll be taking on enemy behemoths, grabbing loot, and upgrading your skills.

Preferably with friends.But, even if you're slogging it alone, it's worth sticking with for the immersive setting and simple, enjoyable feedback loops. It's a long walk to freedom, but ultimately an enjoyable one.