Red Faction

The Good
In Red Faction, you are a miner on Mars thrust into the heart of a revolution. That's basically the story. There are a few twists involving a mysterious disease and mercenary troops, but for the most part you follow a linear path shooting people and things while oohing and aahing over the GeoMod engine.

The GeoMod engine allows you to deform terrain, meaning that you can create craters with explosives, "tunnel" through certain areas and shoot through walls. Red Faction comes with a demo level titled "Glass House" where you can experiment with the GeoMod engine and shoot-up a glass house. This gets a bit old after a while.

There are a several weapons available under four different categories, including two sniper rifles and two rocket launchers. Apparently the mine owners knew they were dealing with a tough crowd. There are also several vehicles. Surprisingly only one can drill through walls. You only encounter this once in the game, early on. Sadly, the vehicles are only good to get from one section to another. Expanded use of the vehicles would have been much more fun.

The AI is fair. Enemy units try to kill you and respond to gunfire with scripted phrases (perhaps three scripted phrases). They try convince you that they are either unarmed or on your side while shooting at you. You also have some fellow miners and revolutionaries who either contact you in a style reminiscent of Deus Ex or serve as cannon fodder. I was actually confused by the cannon fodder bit, because I thought it might possible to save them. Nope.

Let's see the sound and music was not egregious. The graphics were quite good. And the game was very stable.

The Bad
Red Faction is neither very good nor very bad. It is actually quite average and unremarkable. Most of the ads focus on the GeoMod technology, but that is such a small portion of the game and so tied in to puzzle-solving that it becomes unimpressive.

Some people have commented that the story in Red Faction is good. It isn't bad and would probably make a good movie (starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone). My complaint is that your character doesn't experience the story so much as he is told it from fellow revolutionaries. I prefer games like Deus Ex where you create the story, ones where your character's activities have impact. At no time in Red Faction does the story branch or even hint at branching.

This game seems unbalanced as well. The first two-thirds are pretty easy and the final third is extraordinarily difficult. The game actually ends with a puzzle that reveals the game's platform origins.

The Bottom Line
Red Faction is your typical FPS. No more, no less.

The Good
I bought Red Faction for the same reason as anybody else: because of the "Geo-Mod Engine". This piece of software allows you to alter the game's environment by shooting holes into walls and rock structures and letting glass break with the most detailed splinter-effects you've ever seen. The feature is just as amazing as it sounds and everyone ends up spending hours digging tunnels through the martian underground simply because it's so much fun.

You could now expect the game to only concentrate on the geo-modding without any attention to other aspects of gameplay but it's totally the other way round! In fact you badly miss the Geo-Mod in single player missions while you will find enough other features most of which you hardly ever see in other games. There are many drivable vehicles including a stylish sub-marine, a driller and an APC. Infra-red devices let you see people through walls. Bullets ricochet from metal surfaces and riot shields can be used to fend off enemy fire.

Unlike many others I even liked the enemy AI in single player. The guards will take cover, wait for you around a corner and and even try to shoot remote charges from a save distance instead of running into them blindly.

I didn't expect this game to have full Geo-Mod support in multiplayer but, well... I was wrong. Sooo wrong. In fact multiplayer makes much better use of Geo-Mod than single player. The 27 maps, including 7 CTF ones are all very well designed and deliver some of the best multiplayer-gameplay I know and I've played quite a few FPS games.

Last but not least Volition also was smart enough to put the RED level editor on the disk. RED is very easy to use and there is a huge mapping and modding community that is keeping RF fresh and alive.

The Bad
The single player of RF is simply not that good. There are some nice ideas including stealth-gameplay and underwater-fights but you never really feel like being involved in the crude "martian miner-revolt" story. I love secret-agent style gameplay (Goldeneye/PefectDark-veteran :D ) but there was a map in RF where I had to sneak through an office-complex without using a gun and at some point I felt like "what am I doing here? Give me a rocket launcher and I'll shoot my way right into Mr Gryphon's office..." For reasons I do not understand there are only very few places in single player were the Geo-Mod engine is actually used!

Also some rather edgy maps, repetitive fights and stiff animations didn't add anything to the atmosphere.

The Bottom Line
There is a great game hiding behind some ideas that simply didn't turn out that well. Honestly, the Geo-Mod engine alone is reason enough to get this game. I would also recommend to take a look at the RF section over at www.levels4you.com to get an overview of the RF mapping and modding community which is surprisingly big. This game has it's flaws but the RF-bashing like you hear it from some gamers that were disappointed with the single player (just like me) simply isn't fair.

This game shortened my waiting time for Half-Life 2 and if you give it a try I'm sure you will learn to like it as much as I do.

The Good
I will try to keep this review short since FPS aren’t my preferred genre…

I believe that a good fps should be as a good action movie and this title have a strong developed plot. Player takes command of a rebel miner that is part of the Red Faction in the Mars mines against the Ultor Corporation.

The best point in my opinion is the need to play vehicles in order to beat the game, submarines, helicopters, jeeps and tanks.

The personal guns are great also; I specially liked the two-function feature for each item.

I know that many of this features are already an standard on FPS but since I have low-expectations when playing FPS I had a good-time playing Red Faction.

The Bad
Just 2 Points:

1) Too easy, well I like easy FPS but not too much.

2) Too short, finishing a game in a weekend isn’t especially long…

The Bottom Line
Good game that represent high entertainment but not a challenge.