Red Faction

The Good
Red Faction is pretty much a standard FPS game. Grab guns, kill bad guys, pick up ammo, kill more bad guys, grab more guns, kill harder guys, get bigger guns, so on and so forth until the end. This could be a good or bad thing. Personally, I like this, so I think it's a good thing.

Obviously, the main attraction to this game is the Geo-mod technology, which allows you to blow away just about everything you see, including walls, floors, bridges, etc. Some of the levels provided some of the funnest battles due to the Geo-mod. Imagine barely dodging a rocket that would have blown the ground out right from under you? Or blowing away a bridge causing a small squad of enemies and a vehicle to fall into a chasm? It's awesome.

The graphics are good. Even close-up on the people, the faces look more realistic than most FPS games I've played.

The story is cool. A rebellion on Mars, you have to help the Red Faction escape.

Some people complained this game was short. Short? I didn't think so! I thought it was the perfect length. You travel through the mines under Mars, through underground rivers, into ice caverns, on the surface of Mars, through enemy bases and labs, offices, even go into space! You get to see quite a lot in this game.

You get to drive some vehicles in the game, including a jeep a lot of people seemed to like.

The Bad
Allright, aside from a few moments in this game (blowing away the bridge in the first level and the shuttle blowing up around the middle of the game...that's about it) the game was just awful.

First, the Geo-mod. This is a really, really cool thing. But it's almost completely unused! The only time I remember in which it was ever put to use was the very first level! After that, it was all enemy bases and stuff which had walls you couldn't destroy, and the few times you were in an area where you COULD destroy the walls, it was just eye candy and nothing more. I mean, sure, it was pretty cool to see the wall blast apart with a stray rocket, but there was almost never another opprotunity to USE it to your advantage. You couldn't really blow a hole in the ground to take cover in, and you couldn't knock down a tower onto unsuspecting enemies...you couldn't tunnel through anything. I mean, these things would all be "extra" stuff, but when the main feature of the game IS the Geo-mod, one would think they would feature it all throughout the game and not just the very first level.

The vehicles suck. The submarine was kind of cool, but you only really used it twice and really, you wouldn't want to use it more than that. It's "cool" factor wore off pretty quick. The jeep a lot of people seem to like, but I thought it was too slow and, like most other vehicles in the game, too hard to control. Flying the jet thing was okay, but it was short.

The dialogue - mostly just the main character - is THE worst I've ever heard! I remember one scene in which one of the "big bad bosses" puts up a shield and you shoot him, and it proves ineffective. Then the cutscenes goes on to show your character wasting away all his damn ammo on the shield like an idiot, even though he knows it's not working! Well, you'd have to see it, but it is really funny...unless until that point you were really taking the game seriously, in which it probably will just piss you off.

The ending was disappointing, but expected.

The final boss was stupid.

The two other bosses were stupid. Well, the giant robot was kind of cool, until the bad AI got him stuck in the wall and you couldn't kill him!

Argh...bad, bad game. Didn't live up to the hype at all.

The Bottom Line
Skip it.

The Good
What you get in this game, you'll get a lot of joy out of playing it. There's variety of enemies and the arsenal you carry is just enough to take them out. The length of the game brings absolute hours of thrill, with a fair number of bosses and encounters along the way, not to mention plenty of Martian atmosphere, amplified by the superb soundtrack. The characters in the game are 3-dimensional, both graphically and design-wise.

The stealth missions make for nice change of action in the gameplay. Better still the vehicular driving sequences have free movement and none of that overused rail-shooting feature (except for one mission). No matter the difficulty you choose, the challenge is going to spike up when you meet the mercenaries, who pose a worthy challenge when you've played far in the game.

The Bad
The game isn't perfect with some issues present taking for example the lack of an autosave feature and lack of checkpoints, meaning death forces you to start the game from the beginning. Then there's the tight time limits in missions like "Space Station", which kind of pushes you a bit too hard as you play. What really stinks in the game is the final Master Mind puzzle sequence and you can only use the mouse to click the buttons when the arrow keys would have saved you precious seconds of time.

Weapon selection interface is a little strange with 1 being the basic weapons, 2 being the semi-automatic weapons, 3 being the full-automatic weapons and 4 being the explosive weapons. It can be awkward when you need to do a quick change of weapon in the middle of combat. Nothing truly intolerable present in the game. To be fair Volition had to start somewhere.

The Bottom Line
I cannot pretend that this game isn't unique from other shooters that took place in space and future such as Doom, Alien Trilogy and Star Wars: Dark Forces. It truly rivals the precursor Half-Life. This is not your ordinary, typical, mediocre FPS, Volition really went for something original and one of a kind. You'd be very lucky if this happened to be your very first video game. While not up to date, it may always remain a must play and find a place in your collection of shooter video games.

The Good
Red Faction is a very unique game. It uses GeoMod technology, which allows you to blow apart most areas of the game. This really adds to the overall excitement of it.

Graphics: They are top notch. The characters look crisp, and the levels are sharp. The high resolution textures make the game look more beautiful.

Sound: The sound is good; not great, but good. Each weapon sounds good, and the environmental sounds are equally done. Rock crushers, tumbling rock, whirring machinery...all makes you feel like you are a miner on Mars, as far out as that sounds.

Story: Unlike a lot of FPS games lately, Red Faction has a story, and a good one at that. You are a miner on Mars, and a rebellion takes place. You're caught in the middle. Pick up a gun, and start killing the Ultor guards. Throughout the game, there are numerous dialogue with the main characters of the game, namely Eos and Hendrix.

Acting: Speaking of Eos and Hendrix, they both sound professional and real, and not some corny acting that plagues most games. There are the occasional dialogue foul ups, but otherwise, it's good.

Multiplayer: The multiplayer was awful on the PS2 version, and it's good to see Volition has done some improving. Connecting to and creating servers are easy, and the game is lag free most of the time. On the day Red Faction was released, there was about 60 some-odd servers online, which leads me to believe this game will be around forever.

Vehicles: It's nice to be able to drive the vehicles, including a Jeep and a Submarine. They add to the overall value of the game.

GeoMod: Blowing up stuff is just damn fun.

The Bad
The GeoMod also has it's downsides. For once, there is a limit to how much you can blow up. Once the amount of "debris" has been reached, the game will simply start showing rocks flying all over (little, pebble-like rocks) instead of actually creating holes or bringing down structures.

Multiplayer - Vehicles = Sad. Volition should've included the vehicles in multiplayer mode, or at least the Jeep, which supports a driver and a gunner.

The Bottom Line
If you are a fan of story driven FPS's, then by all means pick up Red Faction. It's single player will get you going, and it's multiplayer will finish you off.