Red Faction

The Good
All 1st person shooters try to out do the previous standard. Take Half-Life or Counterstrike. When they were released, very few games had the same amount of action and playability to them. But have a look at today, and see how many games have tried to emulate both titles. The only game, to my mind, that has tried something different, not just in looks but in gameplay, is Red Faction. And the reason why is simple: Geo-Mod.

The inclusion of this graphical beast has allowed not just a new way to design the graphics engine and to include more detailed terrain, but to allow a more interactive environment, which in turn changes the style of the gameplay into a more tactical style then just run shoot (as in Quake 3). For example, instead of taking out the many guards waiting in your path on a bridge, just take out the bridge. Of course, some limitations had to be made, otherwise you could blow up Mars itself, but just having that ability is a major step in the development of first person shooters.

The other major task that I believe has been captured well is the mix of serious combat and laugh out load moments. There are plenty of moments with the guards that will get you laughing (at times, the guards will shout out "I don't want to die" just as shoot them). This adds a bit of fun to the serious nature of the storyline.

The Bad
Put simply, multiplayer support. These days, you can't have a shooter without a 4 player mode. Quake 3 and Timesplitters accomplished this well on the PS2, but the lack of 4 player support here hurts the the overall package. I can, however, understand why. It would have been very difficult to have 4 on together, as well as having a smooth game, Geo-Mod and all.

Some may also have problems with the control system. I have this down to a fine art, but others will hate the lack of Keyboard and Mouse support (especially when the PS2 sports two USB ports).

The Bottom Line
For those who have a PC and PS2, I would suggest the PC version mainly because of better multiplayer support.

But besides what I have mentioned, Red Faction is still a worth while purchase for the PS2. Two player multiplayer games are still plenty of fun, and the single player game will take a lot out of you. The Geo-Mod technology is a reason in itself to take a chance on this.

The Good
The setting. Mars. I loved the switches between hightech Ultor buildings to old abandoned mines which are prone to collapse.

I also loved the weapons (they aren't anything special, but they are very cool). The secondary modes are also good.

The so called GeoMod engine. This engine allows the player to "mangle" the levels with his/her weapons. You can blow everything to tiny little bits.

The multiplayer mode is fairly balanced. Not that many levels, but they do differ a lot. Shame though that there isn't a capture the flag mode.

The Bad
This game is to normal. The weapons are fun, but they arent revolutional. The Martian surroundings do offer a variety, but it just doesn't feel that special. The story is almost identical to the 1990 blockbuster movie "Total Recall" which adds nothing new to the story aspect either.

The AI of the opponenents is terrible! And i mean terrible! If a guard decides to attack you, he'll just run into you and when he notices that you are crouching, he'll flee and starts screaming. In the 'infiltration" level the guards have "super acute" hearing. You are disguised as a diplomat, but the guard will recognize you from quite a distance.

The potentially great GeoMod engine is severely underused. Blowing walls away isn't required to complete the game (oh all right, except for that one moment). I think that this problem has been taken care of in Red Faction 2. And let's be honest, the GeoMod engine is the only thing that is actually new in this game. It's an enormous dissappointment that this was disregarded by the developers.

The Bottom Line
This game isn't bad, but it sure isn't good either. This is just one of these games that just loses it's "taste" once you've played it for about 15 minutes. Multiplayer can be fun, but your going to have to do with deathmatch only. If you are looking for a basic shooter than this is the game for you. If you are looking for a shooter that has a lot of new things to offer, then upgrade your PC and wait for Doom III.

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.