Red Faction

The Good
Volition circa 2001, despite their relatively small name in the business at the time, were by no means an unaccomplished development house, existing as one half of the now defunct Parallax Software, creators of the Descent games. Volition already had the fantastic Freespace titles under their belt, but Red Faction represented their first attempt at the first person shooter genre.

Interestingly, Red Faction began life as Descent 4, a game I would much rather see, and there is evidence of this in numerous places; the proprietary GeoMod ‘blow-up-anything’ engine was originally slated for D4. When RF came out I was particularly ecstatic with it; the ability to arbitrarily blast the hell out of anything was (in the places the game allowed it) a ton of fun and something nobody had ever tried at the time, and the game’s overall presentation was really quite impressive. Stylistically, Red Faction comprises of a thick mix of Half-Life gameplay, with a thick topping of Total Recall and some very light peppering of Deus Ex.

With all of these elements being taken from cult classics, surely Red Faction contained the makings of a truly classic game? Well, I’d suppose the thing that makes a classic a classic in the first place, is typically the ability of a piece to try and succeed at something that has never been done before; a million dollar idea multiplied by a million dollar production and a ton of spit and polish. Red Faction, by comparison, doesn’t really have an original polygon in its body, so the best you can hope for, really, is a solid first person shooter with some great technology to back it up.

To be fair, there are some good ideas here. I loved the idea of being able to go tunnelling with my rocket launcher and skewering people through walls with the rail gun – but not one to paint itself into a corner, Red Faction also features some extensive ‘undercover’ sections where you travel through some high-security areas in disguise, watching out for security cameras and guards at every turn. There’s some interesting set pieces, such as the first time you see a shuttle get blown up through the window. The graphics are pretty good; on the PC, the visuals are much more polished and sharper to boot; the game’s many explosions, slow shattering of glass and empty shell casings flying all over the place are fantastic to behold. Sound effects are pretty good as well, all the weapons provide some nice aural feedback with chunky firing sounds and a satisfying click-clack of swapping magazines. Throwing sticky bombs at enemies and watching them running around screaming like girls as they flailed their arms spastically above their heads was endlessly hilarious to boot (although retarded).

The game’s central characters exhibited a great amount of potential. Eos was an enigma of a woman, with her strange appearance and unusual drive in the face of oppression; Parker, the player’s character, was not quite a silent protagonist either and had plenty to say during the game’s occasional cutscenes.

In all honesty that’s about the most praise I can offer for the game. Now for the sweet, sweet catharsis…

The Bad
Good ideas are multipliers. A fresh, original concept coupled with a great production will make for an instant classic, whether it gets the recognition it deserves or not – Red Faction is a great example of lots and lots of ideas that have been done before, and throwing them all together into a half-arsed mishmash that tries everything but succeeds at nothing. My most significant criticisms of the game come from three pillars:

Firstly, though it’s strong on a visual front, the game engine strangely feels very much like it was made to be… well, a Descent game. Player physics feel very floaty when you’re jumping and running feels like you’re gliding on air. Bullet impacts come out as puffy little explosions, as if they were from lasers. Character animations are stiff and wooden and the AI is similarly robotic. Many sections of the game involve you running down very long tunnels with very little else to do, and feedback from shooting your enemies feels very clean and subdued. The length stealth section in the middle of the game drives home how deliberate and clumsy some sections have been implemented; all the time you’re running away from the telepathic guards that spotted you from across the room and behind that pillar, you’re just thinking about how easily you’d have smashed the meagre resistance here if you’d just kept all the weapons and armour that you supposedly gave away to make your job easier.

Secondly, the level design underscores the developer’s failure to construct a game world that plays the strengths of the design of the game and its underlying technology. When I heard of Red Faction’s revolutionary GeoMod technology, I envisioned epic firefights with destruction on a huge scale, with towers collapsing, blasting away peoples’ cover, glass windows getting blasted out left and right, vehicles mowing down foes all and sundry, shooting out false walls to plunder secret areas for goodies… and while at one or two points the game does almost achieve this, for the rest of this longer-than-average journey you’re running down empty corridors, creaming faceless guards shouting ‘mine scum!’, tasering civilians out of sheer boredom and shooting screechy mutant creatures with pistols.

It’s absurd that after giving you this wondrous new technology of arbitrary destruction, the game almost immediately takes it away again by putting you in cramped corridors of indestructible scenery. For a supposed full-scale planetary revolt, once you see your miner buddies trying to help you out, you begin to piece together how everyone got so oppressed in the first place; your friends in Red Faction are utterly incompetent every step of the way, prancing gleefully into every gun battle with heavily armed guards, who then ice them with a single shot. Every time a miner supposedly tries to help you, they either flee for their lives or are immediately killed after performing their intended function. This becomes even more hilariously frustrating towards the end once the mercs roll in – tough as nails and armed to the teeth, your Red Faction buddies boldly run up against them with their pop guns at the ready, half the time getting turned to vapour before they even enter the room.

Even if the gameplay wasn’t all that gripping however, the game could still coast on its setting and characters alone. Which brings me to my most scathing criticism – Red Faction is a game with no soul. Every element is ripped off of something else; the Martian rebellion comes straight from Total Recall, the set pieces are ripped straight from Half-Life, the ‘mysterious plague!’ was already done much better in Deus Ex, etc etc… truly, Red Faction cleans out the cliché closet and then comes back for more. Character development is pretty much non-existent; while the manual features some extensive character bios, none of what it mentions actually impacts or is even mentioned in the game proper and basically all you’re left with is some very cardboard cut-out people. Perhaps the worst offender of all is Parker himself, who apparently is supposed to take on the nonchalant, sarcastic anti-hero type of vibe but just ends up coming off as a total wanker. Even during cutscenes other characters seem to be aware of this, frequently brushing the player off or leaving him alone as soon as they are able.

The Bottom Line
In the end, Red Faction is simply not a game that even came close to living up to its fantastic potential and will certainly not be remembered fondly in the same way as some classics of its time will be. I’d quite highly recommend avoiding it, and especially its god-awful sequel.