Red Faction

Moby ID: 4194
PlayStation 2 Specs
Buy on PlayStation 2
$8.00 used, $49.99 new on eBay
Buy on Windows
$1.99 new on Steam
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Description official descriptions

The Ultor Corporation of Mars is successful because of the mineral wealth of that planet. It employs a number of miners and scientists to mine the Noachite ores far underground. The miners are constantly pressured by the guards to work harder and faster, while at the same time being forced to share their meager resources. While the mines itself are dangerous, so too is the mysterious plague that has broken out among the ranks of miners, killing many. Into this low morale situation, propaganda against Ultor has begun appearing, signed only by "Eos". These pamphlets and posters urge the miners to rise up against their oppressors and take a stand, also recruiting members into their secretive "Red Faction". As a result of Eos' efforts, tensions are rising high between the Ultor corporation and its workers, any little incident could ignite...

Red Faction is a first-person shooter. Players take the role of Parker, a miner working underground for the Ultor Corporation. Equipped in an environment suit, Parker is protected from various hazards and able to breathe deep in the mines and in airless locations. At times, Parker also needs to travel undercover in a less protective disguise. Parker defends himself with a variety of weapons, most of which feature a primary and secondary firing mode. The weapons are divided into: hand weapons such as riot shields and flamethrowers, light arms which include pistols and shotguns, heavy arms featuring rocket launchers and sub-machine guns and finally weapons that are thrown or placed such as grenades and explosives. The game features a variety of vehicles to drive in first-person; including jeeps, drillers, flying craft and submarines. In order to survive, Parker must link up and aid his fellow miners, receiving direction and objectives via com-link messages.

Red Faction features a game engine called Geo-Mod. It allows holes to be blasted into all manner of terrain including floors, walls and ceilings. While limited to certain surfaces, such as rock, ice and concrete, this nonetheless results in a more destructible environment where deviation from the level design is encouraged. Players are able to at multiple points, create their own paths, tunneling past obstacles and into new environments. Only heavy explosives; such as missiles, torpedoes, grenades and plastique will allow the terrain destruction of this sort.

Spellings

  • Red Faction :สงครามแดงเดือด - Thai spelling
  • 红色派系 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (PlayStation 2 version)

127 People (103 developers, 24 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 80% (based on 58 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 151 ratings with 17 reviews)

FPS intéressant mais...

The Good
FPS d'action se voulant être dans la lignée d'Half-Life avec beaucoup d'action, des véhicule, des médecins pouvant nous soigner, avec une bande son athmosphérique intéressante. Le multijoueurs inclus suffisamment de cartes pour s'amuser avec ces dernières des jours durant via les botmatch et en 1v1 !

The Bad
Le jeu ayant été développé au plus vite sur les cendres de Descent 4, les lieux manquent cruellement d'éléments de décors, le scénario est incroyablement court, bâclé et un rapide datamining avoue que le jeu était loin d'être terminé. Le GeoMod, moteur de destruction présentant l’intérêt principal du jeu, n'est finalement que très peu utile en campagne solo, ce dernier étant très largement plus amusant et utile en multijoueurs.

The Bottom Line
Après un développement très rapide et bâclé (merci THQ !), l’intérêt du jeu repose finalement sur son multijoueurs via les bots et en 1v1 mais n'étant pas possible de jouer via internet ni en console interconnectée, le jeu aura bien plus d'intérêt sur PC et Macintosh, des mods et cartes communautaire pouvant être importé sur le jeu contrairement à la PS2. Dommage.

PlayStation 2 · by Saig Omaristos (138) · 2023

Agh! Horrible! Disappointing! Gimme my ten bucks back!

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.

Windows · by kbmb (415) · 2003

A potentially great game full of flaws

The Good
The weaponry, by a long shot. Blowing holes in walls with explosives is great, but for the most part appears to be more about showing off technological innovation rather than constructively contributing to gameplay. Likewise, the rail driver gun is great fun as well. There are some good examples of good artwork too, like environmental artwork. I personally like repetitive gameplay, so it wasn't much of a problem for me.

The Bad
The incompetent programming that left the game riddled with bugs, some of which should've been weeded out during play testing. The largely talentless voice acting, much of which resembles somebody trying to fake a rape claim. The largely crappy artwork, which could've easily been knocked up in Photoshop within a couple of minutes.

The Bottom Line
Worth buying, but download a patch first, otherwise you WILL have problems.

Windows · by Dave Billing (24) · 2010

[ View all 17 player reviews ]

Trivia

Game engine

Although hailed as its main feature, the GEOMOD engine is really the SECOND 3-D engine to allow deformable realtime terrain. The first engine was part of an independent game, Tread Marks

German PC version

On March 29, 2003, Red Faction (PS2) was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS. For more information about what this means and to see a list of games sharing the same fate, take a look here: BPjS/BPjM indexed games. The German PC version of Red Faction is heavily cut. The flame thrower is missing and there is no blood at all. The game still got an "Age 18+" rating.

Hidden movie

There's a hidden movie in the game's data\movies\ folder. It's a executable file named technochunk.exe,and running it gives you a short movie of various game characters dancing to techno music.

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Related Sites +

  • Red Faction Section at Levels 4 You
    The biggest map and mod database for Red Faction containing thousands of files some of which are real gems.
  • redtechnologies
    Everything you need to know about the RED level editor for Red Faction. This site also has a forum for RF mappers and mod-makers.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Kartanym.

PlayStation 4 added by Charly2.0. PlayStation 3 added by Sciere. Macintosh added by Kabushi. Windows added by MAT.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, phlux, Alaka, Lumpi, Abhisit Chanmana.

Game added May 29, 2001. Last modified March 30, 2024.