Everybody wants 1st person shooter to be extreme: Best graphics available, more powerful weapons, more aggressive action, more bodies, explosions, swarms of attacking enemies. Even if 1st person shooter are a little simple, only few game developers know how to do them. Amatours think that it is enough to put a hero running in to corridors, shooting everything moving in sight. It needs somekind of soul to make a good 1st person shooter. The soul makes some idea and purpose for a shooting. A good 1st person shooter needs a real story and a credible places. It needs to have suspension of disbelief. If you see New York in Max Payne you can imagine a story of crime and revenge. If you see caves of Mars in Red Faction you can imagine a violent revolt.
Papers of Harward University threw in a garbage can. Parker had enough of life that his parents had trying to push he in whole his life. Universitys and careers suck! This boy is going to Mars. Everything was so easy. Just visiting Ultor office was enough. Ultor owned Mars, Ultor was Mars. Imagine as a miner in Mars. Easy money, excting life was that Parker have always dreamed about. Do stupid things first, regret that later. The life in Mars isn’t so good afterall. Stinking barracks were full cockroaches. Miner in Mars was worthless, replaceable part in mining operations. Blame about something and guards give you somthing to blame. A Life was cheap. If you didn’t die in a mineaccident or in a hands of the guards, you should be afraid of disease that kills miners. Ultor said that there is nothing to do. About ten dead miners in a week was normal. Parker had seen enough. There was a revolt about to start. Only question was would it start on his shift.
The Mars in Red Faction in convincing. This is the most realistic scifi-place after System Shock. There are mining machines and digging holes in caves and there are bedrooms, toilets and other things like that in the barracks. It have taken some extra work to make these little, somehow worthless little things. Even if Red Faction as simple as other 1st person shooters, good level desinging will make it look less simpler. There are a lots of civilians in Red Faction, especially in Ultor office levels. Scared civilians are a good reminder of that there are some other living creatures than blood-tasty enemies. Unlike many other game there is no penalty for killing innocent civilians. Action is simple and there is not a lot of puzzles. Red Faction isn’t only action: there is some sneaking levels with civilians clothes. Other good specialty is vehicles. There are assault tanks, jeeps and submarines. You can drive over your enemies with a big tank. A story of Red Faction is nice because there are a couple of fake ends and a real end is interesting.
The technical specialty of Red Faction is a Geo-Mod. It means Geometric Modification. You can destroy about everything in game. There is two minors problems of geo-mod. First some of the wall in indestroyable. For second, you can only destroy wall with explosives. Other weapons make only bullet holes. It is a lot easier to kill enemies with assault rifle then rocket launcher. When you get to use explosives, Geo-Mod is convincing idea. But I didn’t use explosives very much, because other weapons were so good. Weapons aren’t very original, but otherwise they are very good. Weapons are like nodays weapons with future extras. Assault Rifle has an ammo display like in Pulse Rifle in Alien vs. Predator. Submachinegun has two clips: 12 mm and armor-piercing 5,56 mm. Semiauto-sniper is a so fast that you can kill enemies as fast as you can click a fire button. Rail Gun has thermal scope, which allows you to see behind walls. If I would give score of weapons, it would be 10.
The earlier games of Volition are two excellent Freespace-spacesimulators and OK fantasy game Summoner. Red Faction proves that Volition is one of the best game developement studios nowadays. Even if Freespace were technicly perfect, the best thing of them was a great story. Red Faction has a same kind of story.
Red Faction
Good:
+Story
+Weapons
+Geo-Mod
+Vehicles
Bad:
-Short
-Multiplayer game lags
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