Red Faction (PS2)

Geo Mod, which is short for "geometry modification," allows formerly permanent elements of a game's background to change in real-time. For example, if a player were to shoot a rocket at a stone wall, the wall could crumble or have a hole blown clean through. The best that previous games could do is to change the texture of the wall and leave it looking charred.

While most gamers would applaud any advance in realistic graphics, Geo Mod looks to also influence the way first-person shooters are played. If the world of the first-person shooter can be altered, the game makers point out, then the world itself becomes a weapon at your disposal. More than just shooting opponents through walls, players should be able to cause a ceiling to collapse on an opponent. With the right tools, players will be able to destroy bunkers, block escape routes, and otherwise flush players out of their well-defended positions.

Obviously, it's Geo Mod that has gamers so excited for this game, so other game components might be easy to overlook in the excitement. Red Faction's story is set on a Martian mining colony, where workers, buffeted by abusive guards and a deadly plague, revolt. In the single-player game, you'll run around the tunnels of Mars in a first person view and use 15 weapons to destructively deform the environment as well as your foes. You can also hijack land, sea, and air vehicles to aid your revolt. --Porter B. Hall

A great game all round, slight frame rate dips here and there and noticable loading junctions in the campaign.

A real gem, buy it.


A missed opportunity.   November 26, 2002
D. James (UK)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

A very nice first person shooter (FPS) that borrows styles from films like Total Recall, and games like Half-life. However Red Faction has a supposed edge over these games, thanks to a unique technology known as 'Geo-mod'. This allows background elements of the environment to be altered and damaged in real-time. Using explosives, you can actually blow through walls, not just in set places, but anywhere you feel the need to use it. Set on a Martian colony, you are caught up in a workers' rebellion and are soon a wanted man. You must fight and sneak your way though various sections of mines and facilities to uncover the truth and fight for freedom. The Geo-mod feature, unfortunately is severely under-used, since ammo is in short supply and very few walls will actually have anything behind them. In multiplayer mode, however, Geo-mod is extremely useful and very effective at showing the complete carnage that you can cause. Basically, if you can see it, you can destroy it, and multiplayer games can be a lot of fun. Especially with railgun-like weapons that can fire through walls and have thermal imaging. The style and story of the game are pretty good, as is the atmosphere, but enemy intelligence is questionable. It's nearly impossible to get anywhere near an enemy without them seeing you, even if you are crawling behind them with their back turned, they will still magically know you are there and begin firing right away. Its also practically impossible to perform stealth-kills, since shooting them directly in the head doesn't kill them straight away. I know they have environmental suits on, but these are bullets you know! Then there are the loading times which seem to show up at random points along the way, often when you are in the middle of a fire-fight and move into a new section of the level. These can be quite long, but are generally acceptable. You can pilot the occasional vehicle, including a mobile drilling tank and an underwater sub. These are quite good, especially when you can use them to cause more level destructive carnage. A missed opportunity I feel for a game that could have been absolutely amazing, but instead it swoops back down to average, maybe the lesson has been learned for the recent sequel...?


Geo-Mod is a nice gimmick   April 19, 2002
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

Red Faction was my first FPS game on the PS2 and to be honest I didn't find it particularly impressive.

It might just be that I like game with proper plots, but I couldn't get really involved in the game. For some reason your character, a miner, gets caught up in some rebellion- he then takes on an entire army and kills them all single-handedly- since anyone meant to help you is so weedy they get killed as soon as you join them. Maybe you're jinxed or something.

I guess that THX decided to put the PS2's processing power into the large environments and only used limited polygons for the people, because some of the characters look, honestly, a bit lame. The environment is pretty nice, but at one point you go past a mirror, and your character- well, he runs a bit like Mr. Bean. Only more exaggerated. None of the enemy soldiers seem to have been based around motion capture studies either. Given the loading times (makes the PSX look speedy), I wasn't too impressed. The AI is pretty limited as well- guards charging your machine gun with a baton, and threatening you whilst running away. Oh, and you can kill people in another room with the rail driver (x-ray gun) and their mates will just sit there and ignore them.

The novelty feature of Red Faction is the GeoMod, ie ability to blow chunks out of walls. However, many walls just refuse be blown up (ie, the useful ones which you actually want to go through), and there aren't too many places where the technology is actually particularly advantageous. If you blow up a ceiling, by the way, the lights will just sit there suspended in mid air... seems they have explosion-proof lighting in the future.

There are a number of nice touches though, with the car, plane and submarine bits adding some diversity to gliding around on your feet. And the rail driver is sooo cool! I was reasonably entertained until I finished the game, and thought the multiplayer was pretty fun.

At the end of the day, now that I've finished the game, I haven't sold Red Faction second-hand because the multiplayer is good for a laugh, but then again, I haven't even touched the single-player mode once either.