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)

Just misses my expectations

The Good
PRESENTATION: The game's menu were well presented, easy to read and pretty funky with the mars landscape scrolling at the back.

STORY: You are Parker, that's it for a name, you thought working with Ultor would be cool, how wrong are you. In fact the opening dialouge is spoken with surprise. Anyhow the conditons are bad, and the miners revolt. The story kinda trails off from there but remains through the game, in one way or another. It's ok but....you'll have to play to see what I mean. In a way it's just recycled from other story lines.

CONTROLS: All of them can be remapped, thank god, the default key configuration is too far paced across the keyboard for one hand, so remapping the enter key for operating doors is must.

GRAPHICS: Fairly good, the people/things in the game are well done, not perfect but enough to get things rolling. The GeoMod engine is lacking when it comes to curvy walls so some corners looks a little rough and jagged. The textures are also a bit lacking, the game WAS taken from the PS2, so that's one problem. The set pieces (desks clocks) are well done as well, there is even a little pencil on a desk, and the clock hands move, nice touch of details there. Lighting is fairly well done as well with a few ok shadow effects thrown in, and the light glare from flying craft is well done as well. Underwater is well animated as well with little particles (fish food?) floating about, and bubbles from gun shots are also included. The animations are fairly well done, keep an eye out for the shotgun death animation.

SOUND: All the gun effects work just perfect, the reload effects for the Persision rifle and the Sub Macheine gun are really fun. The game also notices little things like crunching glass when you walk over it. Foot steps are a little off set and the voice is not really that good. But it works.

GEO-MOD This has been given a section because it is different from GAMEPLAY. Firstly you all know what GEOMOD is? For the people who don't know, GEOMOD, is the first gaming engine to utilise a realtime world destruction engine. In other words, you can make a level swiss cheese with time and a rocket launcher. This also means you can make a cieling collapse by taking out the support struts, or make APCs plummet into a abyss by taking out the bridge. And if you have time, carve out large sections of the cieling and watch them fall onto people. All the effects that I have mentioned are possible. Glass is well done as well. Fire at a pane from a distance with a pistol and you will only get a little bullet hole. From close range with a rifle, and the glass will shatter from where it is hit. And the pieces fall down every where as well as get thrown about with an explosion. Perfect.

GAMEPLAY: Ok a mixed bag. Firstly the A.I in this game is GOOD. The enemy run to cover to reload as well as call in others and dodge their way around you. The weapons are wonderful to play with. The pistol has a nice silencer screw on animation and the heavy machiene gun has a really cool reload action. The only bad bit about the weapons is the uselessness of the close combat weapons. The riot shield only deflects so much in terms of bullets. The rail driver on the other hand is a weapon of mass fear, even in the hands of the enemy. Firstly it can drive a charge through the wall into somebody, or you. The levels are interesting, a bit boring at some points, mainly with the missions in the mines, but it really shines in the space station mission, with low gravity and interesting recol effects.

Multiplayer is interesting as well as chaotic. People try their best to terraform the enviroment to their advantage and other's disadvatage. In this game the floor can vanish below your feet with no warning. Fun.

The Bad
Ok time to dish out the diss.

Firstly the GEO MOD engine. The programmers offered us this new technology and do not let us use it fully. For examples all doors cannot be destroyed and the wall around them cannot be carved into with a rocket launcher. On top of all that the office levels walls are stronger than mars rock.

Apart from that major niggle, the game is a well thought out game.

The Bottom Line
Yes it is worth your $89.00 (Aus). The multiplayer levels are a dream and the single player, while lacking still is a good challenge. It may not be the next Half-Life, but it is very close.

Windows · by Sam Hardy (80) · 2001

Total Recall + Dig Dug = Bargain Bin

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.

Windows · by Terrence Bosky (5397) · 2003

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

[ 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 January 21, 2024.