Red Faction

This is a "groundbreaking" game in the most literal sense of the world – you can use heavy weapons to destroy the rock walls of the underground compound the game is set in. This leads to some interesting solutions, like blasting the wall to get around a locked blast door. You can also commandeer vehicles like in the more modern Battlefield, but the physics of them is terrible and feels like you're driving an inflatable rubber dinghy, overturning after you trip on a small rock on the road. Only the submarine is a pleasure to navigate. The game is based solely on the destruction gimmick, which isn't used that much to be frank, meaning the story and actual gameplay received very little attention. It's forgettable and doesn't offer many thrills.

Red Faction is one of those game where people who bought it when it first came out say it was the best thing since Doom but when you look at it today its not even close. Old-dated graphics, OP merc's in the later levels, non-intuitive boss fights and to top it off with a horrific ending really nock off a few stars. But its still okay and enjoyable if you can overlook its flaws.

I just finished my first playthrough of this game last night, and I have to say I highly recommend this game, and consider it to now stand as a unique and thoroughly fun fps with a camp story where all the combatants are idiots and the plot feels like it just keeps tacking stuff on, but it remains consistently fun throughout. Before going in I got the impression the game was a little wonky, really underutilized the advertised Geomod feature because it was a PS2 game first, and had bad stealth, so I checked and it turns there were mods that fix those issues and you can skip the stealth! After applying Faction 1.8.0 for bugfixes, I played the game with Reaper Balance 2.0 and the All Geo mod, the former of which handled the balancing issues like nerfing the enemy health and their railgun damage. It certainly still allowed for the game to really push me to keep retrying a section or two because I ended up using Geomod to dig out corners of doors to make sniping dugouts when the higher tier enemies started showing up, and it was so dang cool. The All Geo mod does what it says on the tin, it makes every object and surface that could be destructible, destructible. The All Geo mod turned explosives into a resource I carefully managed (so I saved before I would dig something big) because of how dang valuable it was to dig out the ground under enemies' feet so they were stuck in a pit, flank enemies through walls, and make shortcuts on top of the segments that already called for it. The result could use more polish (maybe don't let me dig a hole in a space station) but holds together really strongly in a way that seems like they may have planned it to be like this from the start. Just be sure to keep save back ups as the autosaves failed on me a couple times and go nuts, the game can take it now! Red Faction's gunplay also feels stronger than Half-Life, and now has a layer of strategy with Geo Mod unleashed. The game has evolved to match it's marketing, so have fun!

... with a with a good variety of enemies. I couldn't play through the gog version alone, because I still had the well-known submarine problem even on windows 10. Reaching a special location, you have to go on driving a submarine. If you have too much fps, the lowered submarine explodes and the game ends. Really! You have to load a special filter program or the additional free dash faction program. Dash faction offers higher resolutions like 1.920 x 1.080. The game consists of a corridor world in a sci-fi setting on Mars. In some missions you have to use vehicles, too, which brought some variety in mission design. The strongest point of red faction is the big arsenal of weapons, you can use. I love the synthie soundtrack, which is unfortunately not part of the offer. I didn't like the boss fights, the mini-games and the missions with a time limit. Better buy it cheap in a sale, because red faction is a short fun shooter for in between. I played it a second time, but I won't come back again.

It's a pretty fun and atmospheric game with a more than decent soundtrack. Eventhough the graphics aged, the artstyle imo didn't and the rough, industrial scifi look still works today as it did in 2001. The theme of a worker rebellion against an evil corporation is also relevant as ever. The destructible environment is a nice extra, and can lead to some pretty cool scenes, but I think it's overall underutilized