I’m Off To Join The Red Faction, Ma!
First-person shooters are, if we’re being honest, the quintessential gaming experience. Video games like Doom, Quake, Half-Life, Deus Ex, Halo, Call of Duty and countless others helped to establish video games as something more visceral, fun, and engaging than simply pinging dots at brightly colored little pixel-saucers or prancing about, leaping from platforms while dodging cute ghosties.
I mean — yeah, sure — those other types of games, they can be fun, they can be important, but first-person shooters (or “FPS games” since we’re cool and know the lingo) quite literally built gaming into an empire.
So, why am I going on about how important FPS games are? Well, recently I’ve delved back into some of the classics from the genre. More accurately, I went a little old-school happy over this past Steam Summer Sale — but can you blame me? Who could pass up a chance to grab hits like System Shock 2, Deus Ex, and Turok 2 for less than the price of some shitty, whipped cream topped and far too sweet caramel frappuccino? Not I!
Now, here we are. I’ve got a bunch of new-old FPS games and I’m going to write about a few of them, beginning with the focus of this review: Red Faction.
The Future is Now, Old Man
The year is 2001. Mankind seemingly averted the Y2K apocalypse. The world rejoices. Luddites, conspiracy theorists, and doomsday preppers, well, they’re not so happy, but they move on to the next thing. Meanwhile, and most importantly, computer technology continues to stride forward. Of course, this includes gaming technology.
A few years prior, id Software, the team behind Doom, released Quake, and with it, the FPS genre entered into true polygonal 3D. Not long after this, a fledgling game company, Valve, released their first game: a title called Half-Life.
Built on the back of the same engine that ran Quake, Half-Life shook the gaming world. It heralded a level of immersive storytelling unseen in first-person games past. Simultaneously catapulted and invigorated by these breakthroughs, a slew of new shooters hit the marketplace — among them was Red Faction by Volition.
Taking clear inspiration from both Quake and, most definitely, from Half-Life, Red Faction features fast-paced shooting in a sci-fi futuristic, low-industrial setting. The game takes place on a future Mars colony, and the player controls Parker, a rebelling miner colonist.
The comparisons to other shooters - again, Half-Life being a biggie - are obvious. From the general look and feel of the levels to some of the overtures of the story. Despite clearly “borrowing” some of Half-Life’s shit, Red Faction’s storytelling really falls short of its inspiration.
Life on The Red Planet
Red Factions plot, characters, and setting… well, let’s say they lack originality. Just imagine crossing Total Recall (the Schwarzenegger and only version of the movie) with Half-Life, then stripping it down to the bare bones.
It’s the future. There’s a mining colony on Mars. The company who owns the mines (and the miners) is the vaguely diabolical and appropriately sci-fi sounding Ultor. The miners are little more than indentured servants. There’s a mysterious plague. Miners are being treated like subhumans and are dropping dead like flies. From this up rises the titular Red Faction, and with it, our mostly silent protagonist, Parker, who spearheads the assault against Ultor.
Oh, yeah, and there’s a creepy scientist, a mysterious female leader of the rebellion, corrupt business practices, and quite a few OSHA violations. But you get the gist, right?
Hey, I will say that at least there is a story and the developers did put some effort into it, so they deserve a little credit, and really, the story at least services the gameplay - and it’s in the gameplay where Red Faction struts its stuff.
You Can Blow Holes in Shit Now
In an attempt to be the Next Big Thing, Volition developed their Geomod technology. The first game engine of its kind, it allowed for large scale, organic destruction of much of the game’s environment. In essence, if players shoot a rocket or toss a grenade at most surfaces, it will cause appropriate damage. Players could, in turn, tunnel through the vast subterranean mines of Mars or blast holes through walls to flank unsuspecting enemies. At least, this was the idea in theory. In practice, Geomod feels underutilized.
While the player can blow holes in walls or create their own makeshift tunnels, the level design and gameplay give little reason to do so. Occasionally, there are painfully obvious and entirely contextual moments of destruction. For example, the player might find a jammed door that requires them to tunnel around. But it only takes two quick rocket or grenade blasts and they’re through.
Aside from the scant scripted scenarios, there are obvious metal grates that alert the player of “hidden areas” and routes. The grates or the floor surrounding them can be blasted through, sometimes allowing for alternate routes around enemies; however, these occasions feel no different than any other secret or hidden pathways in earlier games, and the act of detonating an explosive charge to access them never makes them feel any more significant.
Other than these two types of gameplay moments, there’s no meaningful incentive to blow holes in the environment. Yeah, it’s neat seeing actual damage after an explosion — it gives the player a sense of impact on the game world around them. But, after the first few times you’ve blown a chunk out of a wall, any initial thrill wears off. Ultimately, the excitement is fleeting and unfulfilling. While Red Faction would have benefitted from more utilization of the Geomod feature, the game is still a fun, albeit somewhat outdated, FPS experience.
Playing By Old School Rules
Red Faction is an old game, so it should come as little surprise that it carries a strong dose of the “old school mentality.” That is to say, if Red Faction were a parent, it would spank its children. And it’s going to do the same to you — especially through its lack of some modern quality-of-life features.
The first thing you need to know about playing Red Faction: save and save often. Seriously. This game is the product of a long- lost time before the common adoption of autosave.
I’m not sure if this is also true for the PS2 version, but if you’re playing on PC, you’re gonna want to save your game as much as possible. Failing to do so could result in the buttcheek and fist clenching fury of losing half an hour or more worth of progress. Which sucks extra hard considering how difficult this game becomes.
Seriously, this game becomes an absolute nightmare in the later sections. Standard security enemies make way for armored and highly-trained mercenaries — and by that I mean they’re fucking bullet sponges with near laser-precision accuracy. Also, there are two boss fights that are infuriating.
Both of these bosses fly around in invincibility bubbles, with pinpoint, one-hit-kill attacks. It’s a goddamn nightmare that doesn’t challenge the player’s skill or knowledge of the game in any way. However, the other boss fights, including one against a giant, acid-spewing worm, and another against a giant, four-armed robot are much more exciting.
Despite a few moments of near-rage-quit resentment, I still found myself enjoying much of what Red Faction offers. It’s a challenging, sometimes too difficult game, but I won’t deny that shooting mercs on Mars is a hell of a lot of fun. And it’s in the pacing and the shooting that Red Faction stands out.
I Came Here For a Proper Shootout
It’s not a perfect game, but the pacing and the actual hard, gunfight-to-gunfight shooting mechanics feel great. Except, kind of, for the shotgun — I mean, for whatever reason these early fully-3D FPS games never seem to get shotguns right: unless you’re shooting point-blank, you might as well spray enemies with a fucking seltzer bottle; you’ll do more damage. Otherwise, the other weapons, oh man, they feel good.
The assault rifle, sub-machine gun, precision rifle, and rail gun all handle exceptionally. Rifle bursts are accurate and impactful. The sub-machine gun gleefully sprays hot lead. And the rail gun, oh the rail gun, nothing feels more satisfying than ripping an enemy in half through a wall.
That’s what surprised me most about Red Faction — I felt engaged the entire playthrough. Even when I was frustrated or the game’s difficulty felt steep, I kept pushing forward, and it never felt like I was doing so in spite of these moments. I genuinely was having fun. Although, there were a few low points, namely some of the vehicular sections and the forced stealth sections.
Trains, Planes, Submarines, and Lab Coats
There are sections of Red Faction that require the player to hop into a submarine or an armored vehicle. These parts of the game are the most lackluster, mostly because the vehicles themselves handle like ass and there’s never any excitement in the simple shooting-fish-in-a-barrel-gameplay that accompanies these segments. But the forced vehicular sections are still a better experience than this game’s lowest moments: two stealth set pieces that both feel out of place.
I get that the devs wanted to break-up the constant corridor shooting and create a different type of tension for the player. The problem is, the engine Red Faction is built on is incompatible with stealth. During these sections, the player is given a disguise and simply told to “not get too close to” patrolling guards or cameras; however, what defines “too close” feels arbitrary.
It’s possible to walk within three of four meters of a guard looking directly at you and not set off any alarms. At other times, if the player gets within the same distance of a guard with his back turned to the player, that guard instantly recognizes the player and an alarm is immediately sounded. Even more frustrating is how the player has all of their weapons stripped before beginning these sections.
During both stealth sections, the player is only left with a pistol — which comes with a silencer — and are told to “only use it if you absolutely have to.” Yet, using it in any way whatsoever will immediately sound an alarm. So, you might as well not use it. In fact, during these sections, the player is likely better off not taking the disguise and continuing through the level as if it was a straight forward shooter because that’s far less annoying.
Given that both stealth parts are essentially optional if you never put on the disguise, I have to wonder if the devs themselves got the feeling these segments were stupid but kept them in the game in a vain attempt to dry hump the craze around FPS stealth games brought on by the Thief series. Regardless of these few lackluster sections, the game still holds its own overall.
The Final Verdict
Red Faction is an undoubtedly old game. It’s so old most college kids today probably never knew Red Faction was an FPS long before its recent third-person iterations. Despite its obvious aging, the game is still fun. Most of the gripes that I have with the game have less to do with the game’s age and more to do simply with its design.
Yes, of course, the graphics are dated, and the lack of iron-sight aiming is a tell-tale sign of “old school” shooters, but Red Faction is still solid and, most importantly, it’s still fun to play.
Despite a few hiccups, the game’s presentation is well executed and the gameplay is engaging. Since it is an older game, you’ll likely have to mod it in order to get the game running on modern computers. Fortunately, the Pure Faction mod is an easy to install fix that even comes with its own launcher. In my two playthroughs of the game, I didn’t encounter any major bugs or graphical glitches while running it through Pure Faction.
At the price you can pick this game up for, it usually competes well if not better than comparable modern indie titles at a similar price point. So, if you, like me, want to take a trip down memory lane or just want to pick up a fast, challenging old school shooter, your money would be well spent on Red Faction.
