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!
