Red Faction

October 04, 2002

It’s not often I fall in love with a game at first sight (I think Street Fighter II Champion Edition was the last one), but when I saw this on demo at CompUSA a few months ago, I just knew I had to have it. On the surface it looked just like another run of the mill Doom or Quake clone, but underneath it was so much more than that. With an immersive story line, intelligent AI, cool weapons, and some new gaming technology called the Geo-mod engine, I soon would find myself hopelessly addicted to this new entity called Red Faction.

Red Faction has one of the best plots I’ve seen in a first-person shooter in a long time. None of that “you mysteriously awaken to find yourself on some strange alien planet armed with only a luger and your wits” mess here. You play the game as Parker, a top-of-the-class high school graduate who bails on his parents’ great expectations of an Ivy League education in an attempt to find himself. Unfortunately instead of tooling around Europe aimlessly for a few years like most rich brats, he signs up with the Ultor Corporation to work as a miner on Mars.

Naturally, once Parker gets to Mars he discovers that conditions are not exactly true to the recruitment posters. Miners time-share both bunks (eww) and environment suits (eeeeewwww), the food is horrible, the work is long and back-breaking, the mine guards are mean and violent, and to top it off, there’s a mysterious plague going around killing miners. When the game opens, Parker finds himself witnessing the Mars equivalent of an “LAPD meet and greet" which touches off a deadly miner revolt that had been brewing for months. In the chaos that ensues Parker realizes that he must try to get off Mars alive. Along the way he’ll meet a few new allies and many new enemies.

Normally, the whole first-person corridor shooter thing gets tired after awhile, but the good folks at Volition made sure to attach a gimmick to this title. The designers have introduced something called the Geo-Mod engine, which allows players to blow holes in walls, ceilings and floors in real-time using various explosive devices. This allows for some impressive twists on strategy during gameplay. For example, at one section during the single-player game, Parker will come to a corridor where around the corner sits several troops armed with automatic weapons and a machine gun turret. Unless one is very good, facing such opposition is suicide, so look around. On the floor is a grate that Parker can blow open to take an alternate route underneath the troops to the other side of the hallway. Once safely out of harm’s way, Parker can continue on his quest or backtrack and perforate the guys from behind who were blocking his way.

But the Geo-Mod technology is most fun during online multiplayer sessions. With an explosive pack or rocket launcher, you can blow obstructions open to look for secret weapons, destroy bridges to cut your opponents off from important weapons or power ups, or carve yourself out a nice sniper niche in a rock face somewhere up high. The graphic technology is very adaptable so feel free to explore and experiment.

The gameplay for Red Faction is mostly standard FPS fare, though the Geo-Mod Technology does step up the strategy and replayability elements considerably. Players have the ability to run, jump, turn and strafe in any direction using the arrow keys and mouse, or whatever configuration you choose to customize in the game’s control panel.
The control is very tight so you rarely feel like your character is not completely in your control. You do get a bit of “drift” when playing in lagged rooms online, but this side effect is lessened with a faster connection.

Players have a variety of weapons at their disposal, including 12mm pistols, assault rifles, flame throwers, automatic shotguns, and everyone’s favorite Eraser-type railgun. Each have different ranges, pros, and cons, so you’ll want to completely familiarize yourself with your arsenal as quickly as possible.

Graphically, Red Faction is nothing less than spectacular. Character models look sharp and realistic and the weapons effects are bad a**. You’ll love how the screen does the classic “white-out” when a Fusion rocket (nuke) detonates. Even the environments are stunning – everything from the scarlet, striated rock formations of the surface of the red planet to the Formica office furniture in the Ultor executive offices looks 100% real.

The sound in Red Faction is impressive as well. Though you won’t be humming the background music for the levels anytime soon, the tunes are well composed and unobtrusive so they will not compromise your gaming experience. Sound effects for the game are darn near perfect; though I’ve never fired a chain gun or rocket launcher in real life, the sounds in the game are extremely close to the best f/x of the motion picture industry. Shots ring out in open environments, guns “klick-klack” when reloading, and players howl when being ripped apart by hot, twisted metal. It’s very satisfying.

Unfortunately, Red Faction does have one glaring downside that you won’t actually see until you go online with the game. Red Faction editors give players the ability to create MODs or modifications to their characters, which is fun when people play by themselves or with friends on a LAN. Players can create MODs which give their character unlimited ammo, invulnerability, the ability to see through and move through walls, and turn even the slowest weapon into an automatic.

Unfortunately, there’s a glitch in the game that allows players to play with these MODs online, so now it’s not uncommon to enter a server room and be greeted by a hail of rockets from one person. Modders upset normal players because its obviously seen as cheating, plus the additional graphical load of some weapons that were never intended by the game designers to be fired in rapid succession will slow many servers to a crawl. And no one likes having his or her game messed up because some sorry 13-year old wants to cheat.