Red Faction

I bought this game back in the day, and did not enjoy it. The destructable terrain is a cool gimmick, but it's irrelevant to the game. The level design doesn't let you take advantage of it. It's full of indestructable walls that just railroad you where the game wants you to go. Enemies have the unerring aim of computers, but dodge side to side frantically like human-controlled opponents would. It doesn't feel like you're a character fighting against humans, it feels like you're a player playing against other players who are cheating. Enemies are incredibly, frustratingly hard to hit. Netcode is terrible, frustrating. You will have to listen to radio messages over and over again after loading your saved game after dying in a boss fight, even though you saved after the message. So frustrating. Seriously, do not get this game. Get the tech demo instead, if you can find it - it's a room with a wood-framed glass structure and a selection of weapons. I had more fun playing with the destructable terrain and glass in that little sandbox than I did in the actual game.

Go on, blow up that wall. You've dreamt about it for years! Enthusiastically marketed, not quite revolutionary, Geo-mod engine powers this long and varied treck through the barren, Martian wasteland that, on reflection, gets by on the sheer volume of weapons, environments, vehicles and post-Half-Life, cinematic narrative that gleefuly mimicks every gaming impulse, saturating the FPS genre at the time. Ultimately, much less than a sum of its parts, Red Faction is stil a game with scope and ideas, crammed inside with a shovel, secured with a duct tape of glitching sound effects and music, simple animations and blocky models. Don't get frustrated if modern hardware polishes the edges too much, rendering it occassionaly unplayable and persevere -- there's a satisfying if bluntly B-movie type experience to be had with Red Faction, an unlikely franchise with one killer gimmick. Why open a door when you can blow a way through a wall? Because Geo-mod is not nearly as prominently featured as advertised on the box, that's why.

I loved this game when I was a kid and bought it for a bit of nostalgia. I had to quit at after sabatoging the plant. The next area requires you to deploy a submarine into a launch bay from a winch. When you click the button to deploy it, the sub just blows up instead of deploying. It's a known glitch.

I missed this game back in th days and was curious to sse how it is and well, it's not really pretty. I don't talk about the graphics but the first thing that surprised me was the IA...or the "non IA". Red Faction was released three years after Half-Life but the enemies routine is just running around like headless chickens, making the shootouts a ridiculous festival of missed shots (avoid the rocket launcher, its splash damage are non-existent) BUT if you insist, it will become more tolerable once you get your hand on a machine gun, still a chore but less. At the time, the Geo-Mod allowing you to destroy some walls is in turn a kind of gimmick, since it becomes pretty useless after the beginning. So what remains ? A pretty cool storyline and "seamless branching" storytelling (there is no hub or chapters, you go non stop from a place to another) with few interesting variations like some "mini" stealth missions (which end up with guns blazing unfortunately) and, the best part of the game, some sections in a submarine or shuttle, giving a Descent feeling for a few moments (Volition going back to their roots). Oh and enjoy the very last moment of the game with one of the most stupid ideas I've ever seen (my thoughts are dedicated to those who will play on Impossible...).

Game is broken with and requires patches to run. Could not use latest version of Dash Faction patch with GoG version.