Red Faction II

The Good
As soon as you start blowing chunks out of the scenery with a rocket propelled grenade gun you tell yourself "one day all games will be made this way". The infamous "Geo Mod" engine really is quite remarkable and genuinely adds to the gameplay. I almost wish more had been made of it. Nice bonus missions also.

The Bad
Nothing really new otherwise. Locations tend to be bland and I was left wishing for a few more imaginative elements.

The Bottom Line
An old-fashioned, straight laced, FPS. Fun while it lasts.

The Good
The story isn't too bad - like in the first game, it's not the same cliche'd plot you've seen seven hundred times before. The references to the first game are also interesting. It waas pretty cool seeing what the Red Faction evolved into after the events of the first.

The Geo-Mod thing is cool.

Hey, you get vehicles to putt around in and shoot stuff.

It has a bot-match mode, which is great considering the game doesn't have multiplayer.

The Bad
Red Faction 1 had such potential and had such a great idea. The story was great: escaping from the mines in Mars using explosives to literally blow apart ANY part of the level? It was something that many people were not expecting, and the demo blew me away. However, after playing through the full version, I discovered that every level that followed the demo levels were just one big giant disappointment, and here's the reason why:

The game's #1 feature was that you could "blow apart any part of the level" using the geo-mod technology. But it was barely used at all in the game! Why make a game that puts such emphasis on that, when you're not going to use it at all except in the very first level?!

Well, that is why I don't like Red Faction. It had a great idea, a great first level, but they completely fucked up. They took their idea, shoved it down the toilet and took a big hefty dump on it to make sure nobody would want to play with it.

Now, one would think that with all the same things being said about the first game (I don't think I've ever read a review that didn't complain about the lack of geo-mod explots in the first game), they would fix their errors in the second. Well, these guys must not have Internet access and live in a damn cave, because there's even less geo-mod in the sequel than there was in the first! Most levels take place in indoor areas with almost no destructable objects! And the few objects you CAN destroy have nothing to do with the geo-mod technology! Take for instance this statue in the second or third level. It's a bit stone statue. You'd think you could blow chunks off it and hey, that'd be really cool. But no, instead, you lob a rocket at it and the entire thing just disappears with some piss-poor pebbles falling down around the room. What the hell happened? Did I just teleport it or did it explode?

Now, there are some things you can destroy. A lot of walls are destructable, a lot of doors certainly are. But the problem is, that's small potatoes. In Red Faction 1 you could dig a whole tunnel through the place (like the "Glass House" level in Red Faction 1, which was an awesome idea and even included in the demo of - which, by the way, is also not present in the sequel), you could destroy SO MUCH of the level. It was awesome. At least, in the first level (remember, the rest of the game sucked.)

Also, the story, while not the usual "save the universe" cliche, is still pretty boring. You are a sort of half-robot half-man type thing, which is not really obvious in the game other than the fact that you can take about six hundred bullets to the head without flinching. You are accompanied by a group of idiots who don't help you at all except in cutscenes, and you spend the game going through boring levels which have almost nothing to blow up (but plenty to 'teleport', like that statue I mentioned), killing bad guys that have terrible AI and wondering why you're playing this awful game.

Locations aren't bad. Some levels take place in office building type areas, others are in the streets, some underground, etc. But they're still boring. The game makes up for it slightly by including vehicles. Remember the vehicles in Red Faction? That was certainly a plus for the game, and heck, it even almost made up for the awful levels that followed the first. But in Red Faction 2, you can't pilot them, you can only shoot from them. I guess the guys who made Red Faction 2 sat down and tried to think of every possible way to disappoint people. Shooting is fun, but you could drive AND shoot in the first game.

Is this even the same engine as the first game? I don't know - it's been a while since I played the first game - but I remember the graphics being better and the game running much smoother.

Oh you can't save now, either. Not at all. You can reach checkpoints, but that's it. Just make sure you save your game before you exit! No, that won't save your game, it'll just save your progress from the last checkpoint.

Multiplayer. Here's where they do another double-stab at whatever hopes we had for this game. First of all, there is no multiplayer. Only a bot-match mode (which, by the way, if you thought the AI in the game was bad...oh ho, wait until you see the bots). Second, the bot-match levels suck. Let me go back in time once again and express my sheer disappointment for Red Faction. Even though the game sucked, I was sure multiplayer would be awesome. Being able to destroy an entire level during a multiplayer game...just imagine that! Rockets flying all over the screen, the walls coming down around you, the floor no longer being there, and eventually having to restart the level because it's just TOO destroyed? Who wouldn't love that? But, once again, Red Faction disappointed me with horrible multiplayer levels that, like the game itself, barely utilized the geo-mod technology. Well, the bot-match levels in the sequel are just as bad, if not worse.

The Bottom Line
Whether or not you liked Red Faction 1, I can't imagine anyone not being disappointed by Red Faction 2.

I hope someone out there will buy the rights to the engine so they can do it right. Like the first game, this one had potential, but completely wasted it.

The Good
The futuristic Earth locations really stand out. There's enough space and places to explore with much of the terrain being destructible due to the way the GEOMOD game engine works. This allows you to look for secret stashes. Little hidden objectives are fun to find and boost your chances of getting the good ending. Each of the levels is accompanied by Dan Wentz's brilliantly composed music tracks among other unique music. Of course, all the good things about this second game come to end when you look deep into the mechanics and plot.

The Bad
While it may seem that the plot of this game tried to go into interesting politics, it doesn't make too much sense. What is the Red Faction doing on Earth? How did they get there and why? And the game is pretty short compared to the prequel, so that even the multiple endings don't do justice. Much of the shortness is because the levels have a beeline route as opposed to alternate routes you could find in the Martian mines of the first game.

The weapon selection is a major a problem. Unlike the first game where you could select a type of weapon with one of the four numerical buttons, you now have 14 different buttons at the top of the keyboard, which makes choosing the weapon you want very difficult especially in the middle of a fierce firefight. In addition to all those weapons being too much, many of them become obsolete. There's no reason to have the grenade launcher when the NICW is so much better.

And now for some little but noteworthy nitpicks. When it comes to vitality, the new health system has absolutely no armour to reduce the damage you take and it takes so long to get back a heavily reduced health bar. And believe me, enemies can eat your health bars like candy. There is no ability to save state anywhere you wish, you have to do a whole level without dying in one go. This raises another issue in which the cutscenes are good to watch the first time, but are tedious to watch every time you do a level and you can't skip them. And lastly, half the vehicles are in rail shooter mode, so you're not able to maneuver freely to avoid taking damage. You never get to fly freely like you did in the prequel.

The Bottom Line
While Volition tried to take Red Faction to new territory, new horizons and new levels, it didn't quite work out how we thought it would. It can be fun for some part, but the irritable changes in the mechanics combined with the shortness of the game reduce the enjoyability of this title sharply. This sequel didn't stand a snowball's chance of living up to the reputation and standards of the first game, it was more of an experiment to tinker with the GEOMOD's capabilities and in the process Volition's well of story ideas ran completely dry. This is quite like how Quake II is barely related to the first Quake game. This game is pretty much worth playing once and has not much to go back to. Of course if you want to collect this title to complete the Red Faction quadrilogy set, there's no stopping you.