One of the last great PlayStation Vita games is finally being released from its handheld prison in order to be remastered for PC.

Freedom Wars was the last PS Vita game to be released on another platform. The game will be released on consoles and PCs next year with a remaster, a decade after it was first released. I am excited about this news.

It's a bit like a sci-fi, post-apocalyptic Monster Hunter. Instead of being a respected creature slayer, you're a puny jailbird who has been sentenced to a million years in prison. You spend the majority of your game time completing large-scale missions and defeating massive mechanical weapons called Abductors in order to reduce your time served... but if you take more than 5 steps into your prison cell, it will pile on even more years.

Operation can be played either solo or multiplayer. If the remaster is anything like the original then co-op play will become more and more important as you accumulate hours and the difficulty increases. There's a competitive element, with leaderboards that rank cities around the globe based on their performance. It's a collection of cool concepts that are all under one roof.

According to a release, the Freedom Wars Remaster will feature "4K resolution and upgraded textures on PlayStation and PC. It will also have 60fps performance, an overhauled system for weapon crafting, new difficulty settings, and other game play improvements" while remaining largely faithful to the original Vita version. I hope the difficulty settings will make it easier to grind the game solo, but I'm still excited to take on Abductors with friends.

I'm glad to see that it's no longer exclusive to the PS Vita. I've talked about it a lot to friends over the years, but they never got to play because of its platform. Now I have a perfect excuse to drag them into a long prison sentence with me.

I'm lucky that I won't have to wait too long either. Freedom Wars Remastered is expected to launch on Steam and PlayStation 5 in January 2025. You can bet that I'm on the wishlist.