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Let's get one thing straight right from
the start. Red Faction was originally a console game. Wait! Wait! Don't stop reading. It gets
better. Yes, it was originally released on the Playstation 2, but it is arguably the best
shooter released for the PS2 so far. Plus, you'd never know it was originally a console game.
You can save your game everywhere at any time. Resolutions are not restricted to 640x480. On
the contrary, you can pump them up as high as your system specs will allow. It has none of the
tell tale signs of a console game quickly ported to the pc, in order to milk a few extra bucks
out of a title. Red Faction actually adds features to the first person shooter genre. Which
actually is kind of infuriating… PC games are supposed to innovate… not console games. It turns
out that Red Faction is not just a great console game, it's a great PC game.
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All of the game takes place below, on and
above the planet Mars. You play the game as parker, an average guy from earth looking for a
better life and a little adventure. He goes to work on mars as a miner for Ultor Corporation.
As in all good sci-fi stories, Ultor is a repressive, evil company that literally works its
employees to death. 10 hour days are spent slaving away in the mines, watched by armed gaurds.
Nights are not much better with shared bunks and 8 miners to a cramped cube of a room. To make
matters worse a mysterious plague is wiping out the miners, one by one. An "underground" group
begins to form, calling itself red faction. The game opens with a dispute between a guard and a
miner, before you know what's happening the miner is dead and the miners start attacking the guards
in retaliation. The riot spreads throughout the entire mine. The revolt has started and you're
unwittingly in the middle of it. The guards are killing miners on sight and your only choice
is to kill or be killed. The story progresses through in game messages from red faction leaders
and also from some of your enemies. The plot, although somewhat textbook sci-fi, is fast paced
and really makes you feel as if you're fighting for your life as well as for the cause.
The graphics are impressive. Using a new graphics engine developed by Volition, the graphics are
most closely matched to Deus Ex. The gameplay can even be compared to Deus Ex, although it's on
the smoother side. The sound is a definite 10! Sub-machine guns sound like sub-machine guns,
shotguns sound like shotguns, flame throwers sound like flame throwers and rail-guns sound like…
well rail-guns… I guess. Is there really such a thing as a rail-gun? The music adds to the feeling
of being immersed in a high budget, action sci-fi flick (think red planet). Creepy mood music cues
up, while you're crawling through dark caves and hard-driving techno kicks in when the fire fights
start raging. So what makes Red Faction different from all the other first rate shooters available
on the PC? A lot!
Red Faction's highly publicized geo-mod technology is simply incredible. Geo-mod allows the player
to blast massive holes in all "soft" walls and destroy not only your enemies but the environment as
well. Now, instead of find the key or password for a door, you can just blast your way around it. If
an enemy convoy is moving across a rock bridge, don't bother firing your rocket launcher at the enemy
vehicles. All you have to do is fire a couple well placed shots at the bridge and bridge and enemies
alike go falling into the abyss. There could have been just a few more puzzles / scenes where you needed
to use the ability to blast through rock. The game is heavy on those scenes in the beginning but seems
to forget about them towards the end. Geo-mod also plays a role in multiplayer. With the high powered
rail-driver you can actually frag an opponent through a wall. They'll never know what hit 'em.
Another cool feature that's implemented very well in Red Faction are usable vehicles. You'll have a
number of vehicles to pilot, including a submarine, military jeep and a heavily armored APC.
Some of the most intense (and fun) scenes in the game involve driving a jeep down a narrow canyon,
running over screaming guards and mercs as you go. One scene puts you on the back of the jeep manning a
large machine gun as another character drives. This is some fun stuff! The vehicles are easy to control
and the sub will remind you of playing volitions classic descent games.
There's hardly anything wrong with the game. One very small, extremely picky fault might be that the
enemy units are all pretty similar. You basically fight guards, mercs and a few alien creatures.
But, this really isn't that much of a problem since the guards and mercs can use all of the same weapons
in the game that you can. So even though you're going up against the same guards, they'll be much tougher
to kill if they're carrying a rail-driver instead of a pistol.
To wrap it all up, Red Faction is a top notch shooter. It adds some much needed variety to the FPS genre
and lets you live out an action packed, sci-fi adventure on the Red Planet. If you liked half-life, and
who didn't (except for maybe "Sliceboy"), then you'll definitely like Red Faction.
Gamer42's Rating:
4.5 out of 5 Planets
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