Red Faction
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
Groups +
- BPjS / BPjM indexed games
- Console Generation Exclusives: PlayStation 2
- Gameplay feature: Body dragging
- Gameplay feature: Freely destructible terrain
- Games with Dopefish
- Middleware: Bink Video
- PlayStation 2 Greatest Hits releases
- PlayStation 2 Platinum Range releases
- Red Faction series
- Setting: Mars
- Setting: Space station / Spaceship
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Credits (PlayStation 2 version)
127 People (103 developers, 24 thanks) · View all
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Reviews
Critics
Average score: 80% (based on 58 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 151 ratings with 17 reviews)
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
Geo-Mod and great multiplayer make up for all the single player dullness!
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.
Windows · by Lumpi (189) · 2004
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
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 +
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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 +
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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.