Red Faction

Moby ID: 4194
PlayStation 2 Specs
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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 146 ratings with 17 reviews)

Is 'Red Faction' the revolutionary FPS the critics make it out to be?

The Good
The answer to that question is a complicated one. Truth be told, THQ's 'Red Faction' did not revolutionize first-person shooters (FPS) or games in general. But, having said that, this game is also not the "disappointment" and the "soulless clone" many disgruntled user reviewers have described it, either.

The 'Playstation 2 Official Magazine UK' praised 'Red Faction' as the "Playstation 2's deadliest game" upon its first release in 2001. It wasn't kidding. 'Red Faction' is a really challenging game, which gets more difficult as you progress. It is not the puzzles that are tough, usually they are pretty straightforward. 'Blow a hole there to get to there', 'push that switch to open that gate', that kind of stuff. It is learning how to survive from one gunfight to another that is the real trick here. Even on the lower difficult settings, this game is relentless. One wrong move, one unnecessary encounter, one careless mistake, and you are dead. 'Red Faction' provides a real challenge for the most veteran of FPS players out there. This forces the player to find all the available strategies available to him before engaging an enemy, such as finding an armored vehicle or an alternate route in the game's expansive environments.

'Red Faction' is obviously inspired by such videogame classics as 'Half-Life' and 'Deux Ex' (not to mention the obvious, like 'Doom'). However, to its credit, it does feel like its own unique game. And for its time, it was certainly avant-garde as well. 'Red Faction''s so-called 'Geo-Mod technology' was an innovative feature in 2001, even though there are a lot of limitations imposed upon the player in this regard. But I find these limitations to be justified. The game tries to make you think outside the box, at least occasionally, and there is no other way but to strategize accordingly if you want to make it out of Mars in one piece.

The story is also pretty satisfying, especially for an FPS. Ultor, a mining corporation operating in Mars, maltreats its employees to the point of enslavement. Eos, Orion (named after gods from Greek mythology: Eos being the goddess of dawn and Orion the legendary huntsman) and a couple of other miners organize what starts to be known as the Red Faction. As Eos explains:

"It was Orion who came up with the name of Red Faction for our team. He thought the political sense of 'faction' would have meaning only for us. And the 'Red' symbolised that we represented all of Mars. The name clicked with everyone..." (from the instruction Manual).

Sure, the story is nothing more than a quest of retribution against an unethical and oppressive company, so don't expect anything Shakespearean. What makes matters more interesting is that there is a 'plague' reaping death among the miners; although, most mysteriously of all, it does not seem to affect Ultor's security guards. While it is revealed that a scientist called Capek had something to do with it, the 'how' and 'why' are never really explained. Still, it is decently intriguing stuff, and the ideas and concepts explored in this game were eventually actualized in the newer generation 'Red Faction' games.

What is probably the game's most redeeming feature is how ambitious it is, even if its budget and the technical limitations of its time may have prevented it from achieving more of a classical status. By 'ambitious' I mean what the game was trying to do even if it is arguable whether it has succeeded or not. From the in-game selection of five vehicles, including a submarine and an aerial fighter craft (the Aesir Fighter), the number of paths the player can occasionally choose to the 'rail driver' weapon, which allows you to shoot through walls and so on, there is no end to the game's innovative and ambitious vein. Even if you do not like the game per se, you have got to admit that it is really impressive what the game had attempted to do.

The Bad
However hard the game tried to be innovative, which it was and still is, not everything turned out the way they should have. The 'Geo-Mod technology', for example, despite being fun, is gimmicky. There are only a few places where you can use it to a good purpose, and I rarely used it in my playthrough. The graphics, although for their time they weren't atrocious, could have been better. Even the lighting could have been improved. At one point I could not find a switch I need to open a door because I could barely see it.

I have already mentioned the game's difficulty, but some parts are so relentless that they are ridiculous.You will be loading your last save file a lot of times, because the game does not have any checkpoints. So having multiple save slots and saving often is a must. Even then the game is frustratingly tough. Later on in the game, heavily armored mercenaries can kill you in almost one shot. The stealth sections did not facilitate anything as well. I almost had an easier time finishing Killzone 2 on elite difficulty than beating this game on Medium, no joke, because I am not someone who is accustomed to saving every few paces. Good luck finishing this game if you haven't already, and I dare anyone who thinks he is a veteran of FPS games to try to beat 'Red Faction' on impossible mode!

Another thing that could have been improved is the artistic direction. Although there are sections that take place in the grand canyons of Mars, underwater caverns and even one level on a space station orbiting Mars, the majority of the game takes place in industrial complexes or drab environments. They did try to create a sort of Flora and Fauna for Mars, but there are only a handful of examples, such as fern-like trees and small bat-like creatures. Nothing special.



The Bottom Line
I have the impression that 'Red Faction' tried to be for PS2 what 'Doom' was for PCs. In that respect, it has arguably failed. But it did show what could be done, and there lies the true success of any revolution.

PlayStation 2 · by Carmelo Lia (42) · 2016

Paint the planet Mars Red

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.

Windows · by Kayburt (30354) · 2020

It's truly good to dig deep...

The Good
Geo-mod really, REALLY made this game what it is. Puzzles can be solved or simply skipped by blowing the crap out of... well... just about anything! The storyline really helps motivate you to start cracking skulls when the Miner Control group screams for mercy, then start shooting again. Plenty of weapons to keep me happy, and of course, the vehicles just sweeten the deal. Just so damn fun...

The Bad
Well, limitations on how much you can blow up for starters. I built a really, really long tunnel into the ground only to find that nothing blows up anymore. It took me 3 minutes to crawl back out, but I wanted to go deeper. Load times really ticked me off as well. It seems like almost every minute or so you'd have to wait a good 15-20 seconds to continue on your mission. The graphics also kind of annoyed me, but graphics arent what make the game great. Those aside, the game is just pretty good.

The Bottom Line
I'd say an equal match, or possibly even BETTER than Half-Life for the PS2. Realistic destructible environments, a very pretty sounding and destructive arsenal, and a good storyline to back it up. Rent first, most likely buy.

PlayStation 2 · by Kain Ceverus (30) · 2007

[ 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.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 4194
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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 January 21, 2024.