Ok story time. Brace yourself for a totally unique tale here (*sarcasm alert*)! You assume the role of ‘Parker’ a miner who works for a company called Ultor on the planet Mars (which means you can jump higher and fall slower due to its gravity – nice touch it must be said). However the miners are treated like slaves by Ultor, and to make matters worse a plague has developed within the miner’s ranks. Your character helps start a revolt among the miners and instantly joins the rebellion group ‘Red Faction’. You then must solve the mystery of the virus that infects the miners. Oh, get this, Ultor actually made the plague that infects the miners! Sorry if I spoiled the big surprise! LOL
Here is the developer’s opinion of the story: “A true first person shooter with an engrossing single player storyline, taking place during a revolution on Mars”. Yes ok, have these people been locked away from all science fictional writers for the past 40 years or what? Engrossing??
Now, perhaps you may think I’m being a little too harsh. This story has been used in video games for donkey’s years (with Dues Ex still providing the best version of this particular storyline). But the major problem with Red Faction using it is that it succeeds in making it feel extremely stale. It is all very heavily clichéd, and to be honest quite pathetic at times. One minute you’re a miner, the next minute you are saving the entire miner race in a “Yahoo!” action kind of way! All in the space of a few minutes. It’s so unbelievable, even for Science Fiction! On another point, for a miner you’re actually pretty damn good and accurate at using weapons of every calibre, even more than specially trained security units you meet on the way! Eh?
The whole thing actually feels like just a string of levels that the developers of Red Faction made, THEN they added the story in afterwards, hence why the story is really so meaningless.
Characters
The characters you meet along the way also help make the story even worse and more infuriating. Your rebel leader ‘Eos’ as well as your advisor ‘Hendrix’ are so frustratingly annoying in their own unique way it’s really unbelievable. The main bad guy ‘Capek’ is no better either being your stereo-typical evil scientist bad guy who looks deformed, ugly, speaks in an ‘evil tone’ etc. Come on! Like if you went to work in this company and you had no idea it was an evil empire in the first place, one look at this guy and you would tell him to stuff his job where the sun don’t shine!! As for your main character, the originally named ‘Parker’, sheesh! He looks and acts more like a James Bond style spy than a miner. I suppose we are meant to think he worked for MI5 years before he decided to fulfil his true lifelong ambition of becoming a miner.
That console smell in the air
What about the game though? Ok, the story is frustratingly bad but what about the actual FPS side of it all?
To be honest, I knew something was up with Red Faction as soon as I played it, with something I couldn’t put my finger on for ages. Then when I heard it was on the PS2 it clicked. This game does feel more on par with console FPS, rather than the high calibre PC versions we know and love. So perhaps this game is better for PS2 owners who know very little about how FPS games should be made? I don’t know, and I really don’t care. You shouldn't make a PC game, and just copy it full scale to a Playstation, nor does it work vice-versa as does this. But that’s exactly what it feels like.
The 'Geo-Mod'
Back to nicer thoughts briefly. The newest bit of programming for this title is called the Geo-Mod engine, and is the main feature that distinguishes Red Faction from every other FPS to date. What it means is you can blow up and deform terrain you see in game. For instance if you rocket launcher a wall, you blow a hole in it etc.
Sounds wonderful? Well it is actually to some degree. Fire fights can be pretty cool, with debris flying everywhere. However one major flaw is that terrain is only destructible on certain surfaces and not others. For instance concrete will not be touched, where rock explodes into many bits. Plus only explosives can blow bits of terrain, not bullets ala Matrix Style. Maybe this will be in Red Faction 2?
These restrictions make it feel a little bit of a let down, but it is step in the right direction none the less. Neat idea, if a little limited.
A.I
A.I. in first person shooters is another important ‘make or break’ aspect. Red Faction fairs quite well here. Enemies do run away, gain confidence with more allies and dodge attacks etc. However they don’t make use of cover and the ‘run away’ A.I. routine kicks in at certain key times that you soon pick up on and notice (and predict) after extensive playing.
Also a lot of movements in the game are scripted meaning predictable gameplay at times, and a lack of any surprises once completed and playing through again. But on the whole it’s enough to make the game quite action packed and fun the first time round.
The game itself is made of your standard FPS style puzzles. Go here, press switch here etc. Some goals are not obvious however, and this is another blemish in gameplay. One for example that I had trouble with is a mission for you to destroy something, with no clues on how too. So I went to my target and placed a bomb or two and it did nothing (apart from waste my ammo)! Only then do I notice a switch that if I pressed actually destroyed it. Yet for another objective but with exactly the same mission goals I did use my explosives and destroyed the targets successfully. It doesn’t define what you have to do very clearly at all, and you do find yourself running around like a fool trying to figure out what to do next.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer is average too, and works fairly well for those deathmatchers who want a short break from Q3 and such. You wouldn’t go and buy this game just for a multiplayer experience though because it really is just standard. But works ok, and is stable. But really nothing new at all, shame.
