As far as we know, it's an unwritten rule of reviewing that the first paragraph of any review should sum up the author's feelings about a product, thereby making the rest of the article generally irrelevant.  Whenever we remember to do it, we've followed that rule to the as far as we know unwritten letter.  Well, gaming friends, that era of clarity is about to end.  This is the first of our new one-minute mystery reviews.  They fall somewhere between the adorable, Boy With Toothache Hummel figurine-like opinions expressed in the short reviews and our epic, rhyming long reviews.  In other words, these new reviews are medium sized.  On most of the other crummy sites you visit, that'd be gimmick enough, because as far as they're concerned, you're just a cog in a machine that manufactures equipment for branding barcodes on your forehead.  They don't care about you, even at Christmas or [Kwanzaa joke].

Our new One Minute Mystery Medium Review reviewing gimmick is this: Unlike every other goddamn site, we're not going to ruin the suspense and tell you right from the very first paragraph how we feel about a game.  Instead, we're going to state a few facts, drop a couple of subtle hints, and then only tell you whether or not we like the game at the very end.  See if you're clever - and brave! - enough to guess our opinion... Before we even express it!

We received a package from Red Storm last week.   Here's a picture I took of its contents with the poor man's digital camera, our scanner:

In case you can't read, it says "Freedom: First Resistance Gold Master".  Sometimes crafty PR people send out finished titles in this format so that reviewers can't sell the publisher's shitty games on EBay.  Note that I'm not implying that Freedom: First Resistance is shitty, I'm just saying in general.  Anyway, Chet was gone, there was some confusion that resulted in me thinking this was actually a pirated beta copy of Freedom Force, and so I installed it more or less by accident.  The first thing I noticed was that Freedom: First Resistance is based on a novel by Anne McCaffery. The second thing I noticed was that this means absolutely fucking nothing to me.  If you're such a big fan of reading, I have a quick suggestion for you: go read a book.  Some research at my local library, or as I know it, the free video store, proves that if you simply choose a book at random, there's about a ninety percent chance it's by Anne McCaffery, so you won't even have to do much deliberate planning to have all your Anne McCaffery story entertainment needs filled for free.  Again, this is no reflection on the quality of the game, I'm just sayin'.

Another thing I noticed is that Freedom is one of those games that likes to drag your monitor through fifteen different video modes every time you play it.  It's like a stress test for your monitor.  Some games do it, some games don't.  I don't know why.  Now don't infer anything about our final opinion from this next observation, but the seventh time I loaded it, Red Storm's Anne McCaffery's Freedom: First Resistance BLEW UP MY MONITOR.  Honest to God, I'm not kidding about this.  Freedom began its normal routine of forcing my monitor to sprint through a video mode obstacle course, only this time my beautiful 19" Hansol 900p made a noise like a bomb going off and died.  The glass front panel didn't shatter, meaning it was a fully-contained internal explosion - which is the worst kind!

At this point, you might be wondering whether my monitor was about to die anyway.  All I can say is that why don't you try using that same logic on the surviving family members of people killed in a plane crash and see how it holds up there.   Freedom: First Resistance BLEW UP MY MONITOR.  I'll repeat that for Red Storm's lawyers: Freedom + monitor = blowed up monitor.  And if you Red Storm people are thinking of suing me, be prepared for the Story of Ricky of courtroom dramas.  Your lawyer will be like "Your Honor, blah blah blah habeus corpus blah blah restraint of trade blah bla-ACK!" because at that point I'll be strangling him with his own intestines.

Here's a financial recap of my experience with Freedom: First Resistance:

Get game for free: +50.00
Game is gold master, unsellable on EBay: -50.00
Game BLOWS UP MY MONITOR: -483.74

Total cost of playing Freedom: First Resistance: 483.74

I still haven't revealed whether Freedom is worth your four hundred and eighy three dollars and sevety four cents, but I would like to request that Red Storm not send us any more "free" copies of their games, especially the ones that BLOW UP YOUR MONITOR.  Furthermore, I'd like to cordially invite Red Storm, its employees and their families to go fuck themselves, Anne McCaffery's Freedom: First Resistance, and Anne McCaffery.  And, before I forget, motherfuck fucking Tom Clancy too.  Way to rip people off with your stupid three level Covert Ops expansion pack.  Here's a picture from it:

And here's some advice to go with the picture: If you're trying to produce a realistic, hardcore anti-terrorist sim, don't have the company making it name themselves "Magic Lantern Playware".  And if that's not possible, don't have the fucking words "Magic Lantern Playware" pop up every time I start the game, because it makes me feel a lot less like a trained killer and a lot more like a fag.   On the other hand, Covert Ops didn't explode my monitor, which in retrospect makes it kind of a rousing success for you idiots.