Red Faction

Review

by J.C. Barnes

Red Faction is arguably the next revolutionary (and some would argue evolutionary) step in the improvement of first-person shooter. The game boasts of "GeoMod" technology, which allows you to destroy almost anything in the environment. For example, if you come across a locked door, you can set explosive charges on the outside and blow a hole through it. There are many innovative ways in which you can use the "GeoMod" aspect of the game.

Hidden areas can be found by destroying certain walls, enemies can be avoided, and you can even make your own shortcuts. One of the more interesting ways to use the GeoMod engine is to make your own "steps" by blowing craters into a wall. If you see a high area that looks impossible to reach, or you want to take a slightly different route, you can use the destructible environments to your advantage.

Enemies are also intelligent. Soldiers will fire, duck behind walls and crates, and even run away when outgunned to get reinforcements. They also wear armor, which gets progressively thicker throughout the game. Soldiers have every kind of weapon that you have at your disposal, meaning they have access to the same explosive weapons that can blow away that wall you're hiding behind. There are also gigantic robots throughout the game, as well as a "unique" form of enemy that emerges late in the game (revealing it may spoil the plot for some players).

The single-player mission mode is where the game shines. Graphics are excellent and close-ups on characters reveal such subtleties as eyes moving independently and blemishes on the skin. Lighting effects are well done and the environment changes often, although at first the monotony of crawling through the red-rocked mines may get unsettling on the eyes. Players will storm mining facilities, barracks, high profile office complexes, and medical centers as well as navigate through a variety of environments on foot, with terrain vehicles, submarines, and fighter jets.

The sound is equally impressive. Gunshots are realistic, enemies scream a variety of phrases at you, and the music fits each stage of the game. Control is generally solid, and each button can have a command assigned to it, meaning PS2 first-person shooter buffs used to Quake III Revolution or TimeSplitters can easily replicate whatever control scheme they wish. Even better is that these settings are permanently saved to memory card.

The armament includes many of the standard pistols and machine guns that are common in the genre. Each weapon has a first and second trigger (like Unreal Tournament), and there are over ten weapons to find and use to your advantage. The weapon that stands out the most, however, is the Rail Driver, which combines the sniping capabilities of Quake III's Railgun with the infrared shoot-through-walls capabilities of Perfect Dark's FarSight. Every game should have a weapon that can read heat signatures, and the developers have done it right by combining two of the most memorable weapons to date.

Multiplayer options are also included and are a great addition to this game, but the options are severely limited. This is where Red Faction's flaws start to become painfully evident. Only two people can fight each other at a time, so you can forget about using the Multitap and getting in on four-player split-screen action. There are two basic forms of multiplayer: Player vs. Player Deathmatch and Player vs. Bots. There's no Team Deathmatch, no Capture the Flag -- just one-on-one kill or be killed.

The only customizations you can make are how many bots are present, their intelligence, and both the kill and time limits. There are nine arenas available to fight in, but the only one that stands out is the Matrix-like office lobby level. Another annoying thing is that the second player button preferences are not saved, meaning if you and a friend want to duke it out, whoever is assigned as the second player will always have to enter in their button configurations. This seems like it could have easily been remedied, especially when looking at all of the statistics and configurations recorded for different players in TimeSplitters.

Other annoying quirks include loading times whenever you enter a new area. This seems to happen almost at random and interferes with the fluid motion of gameplay and exploration. Also, some of the AI demonstrated by the computer soldiers is too good. For example, say you're behind a closed door and on the other side are two guards, waiting to shoot you. You open the door, blast away, then shut the door, still standing directly behind it. The guards will not run up to the door and open it, so they always keep what seems to be a preset safe distance between themselves and your character. What's interesting is that when you back away from the door a few feet, the guards know you've backed away from the door (even though it's still closed) and will charge through with guns blazing.

The game could have included more stealth-like aspects, such as the Perfect Dark and Medal of Honor: Underground single-player infiltration objectives. These types of missions are present in Red Faction, but there are few times when you will be able to sneak up behind a guard and make a stealth kill. The AI also ruins the stealth missions, where you have your weapon holstered in order to avoid attention from guards and civilians. If you walk up to a guard, stand right behind him and remove your weapon, he somehow "knows" it and immediately pivots and fires at you. Localized injuries are also questionable in some instances; certain enemies seem to be able to take several shots to the skull before falling down.

Red Faction is a great game that could have benefited from more polish. The PC version of Red Faction will inevitably receive add-ons and customizable player maps, skins, and deathmatch arenas that the PS2 will never see, so players may want to wait for the best version available. Make no mistake, this title is still very fun to play, but it could have been even better. The potential is certainly there and the developers came so close to fully realizing it that it's upsetting. It's like when you're watching your favorite basketball team play an important game -- you feel about 100 times worse if they lose by 1 to 2 points than if they lose by 15 to 30. The same can be said about Red Faction.