Red Faction II

The Good
The futuristic Earth locations really stand out. There's enough space and places to explore with much of the terrain being destructible due to the way the GEOMOD game engine works. This allows you to look for secret stashes. Little hidden objectives are fun to find and boost your chances of getting the good ending. Each of the levels is accompanied by Dan Wentz's brilliantly composed music tracks among other unique music. Of course, all the good things about this second game come to end when you look deep into the mechanics and plot.

The Bad
While it may seem that the plot of this game tried to go into interesting politics, it doesn't make too much sense. What is the Red Faction doing on Earth? How did they get there and why? And the game is pretty short compared to the prequel, so that even the multiple endings don't do justice. Much of the shortness is because the levels have a beeline route as opposed to alternate routes you could find in the Martian mines of the first game.

The weapon selection is a major a problem. Unlike the first game where you could select a type of weapon with one of the four numerical buttons, you now have 14 different buttons at the top of the keyboard, which makes choosing the weapon you want very difficult especially in the middle of a fierce firefight. In addition to all those weapons being too much, many of them become obsolete. There's no reason to have the grenade launcher when the NICW is so much better.

And now for some little but noteworthy nitpicks. When it comes to vitality, the new health system has absolutely no armour to reduce the damage you take and it takes so long to get back a heavily reduced health bar. And believe me, enemies can eat your health bars like candy. There is no ability to save state anywhere you wish, you have to do a whole level without dying in one go. This raises another issue in which the cutscenes are good to watch the first time, but are tedious to watch every time you do a level and you can't skip them. And lastly, half the vehicles are in rail shooter mode, so you're not able to maneuver freely to avoid taking damage. You never get to fly freely like you did in the prequel.

The Bottom Line
While Volition tried to take Red Faction to new territory, new horizons and new levels, it didn't quite work out how we thought it would. It can be fun for some part, but the irritable changes in the mechanics combined with the shortness of the game reduce the enjoyability of this title sharply. This sequel didn't stand a snowball's chance of living up to the reputation and standards of the first game, it was more of an experiment to tinker with the GEOMOD's capabilities and in the process Volition's well of story ideas ran completely dry. This is quite like how Quake II is barely related to the first Quake game. This game is pretty much worth playing once and has not much to go back to. Of course if you want to collect this title to complete the Red Faction quadrilogy set, there's no stopping you.