It"s possible that the word "action" was used to describe Freedom because you control the characters in real time from a third-person perspective, as in Tomb Raider. If so, point taken. Unfortunately, that"s the only extent to which the actual meaning of the word "action" could apply to the game. It"s true that Freedom has a lot of combat sequences, but it also has perhaps the worst fighting system of any game this year. Unarmed combat is a matter of pointing your character in the general direction of an enemy and then pounding the attack key as fast as possible so that your character keeps swinging. The timing between attacks - both yours and those of your enemies - is inconsistent. Winning or losing often simply seems like a matter of luck.

Armed combat is just as bad. There is no targeting reticle. You turn your body more or less toward an enemy, at which point the game aims for you and waits for you to pull the trigger. Once you start shooting, you just keep pressing the shoot button until either you or your opponent dies. In general, the game"s combat is clumsy, simple, and arbitrary, all of which contribute to making it thoroughly and completely unsatisfying. The uniformly bland animation doesn"t make it any better, either.

The adventure portion of Freedom consists of wandering around its big, dark levels while looking for keys. Instead of thinking up some new types of brainteasers or even attempting to cleverly disguise the key hunts, the developers have simply concocted really elaborate unlocking puzzles. Freedom contains some of the most baroque locks ever devised by humankind - or alien, in this case. In some missions, you control up to three characters at once, and you can switch between them at will. This feature has little effect on gameplay other than to permit the inclusion of locks that can be bypassed by only three people standing in the correct positions.

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