This post contains spoilers for Red Faction – I know it’s old as shit, but if you’ve not played it, this is your warning! Also, before getting into things properly, I recommend having a look at Dash Faction, which is a mod that allows for the game to run more smoothly on modern systems, enables ultrawide settings, squashes some bugs, improves the graphical quality, and increases performance, amongst a raft of other updates and fixes. A must have if you’re going to play the game.
You don’t know fun until you’ve put a remote explosive charge onto a guard’s face and watched them flail about in panic. That’s what Red Faction provides – and it might be enough. It has more than that to offer, of course, and the main selling point of the game when it was released was the oft touted and rather impressive Geo-Mod system, which allows for players to deform terrain, blasting through certain parts of the map (not all by any means, but a good deal of it). This, the decent gameplay, alright story, and the aforementioned torturing of non-player characters makes Red Faction one of those games that is a pretty good time (even if it didn’t change the world). Released in 2001 by Volition, Red Faction takes place on Mars, and had the player fighting for independence along with the rest of the miners in their rebellion. If you’ve ever read the Red Rising books by Pierce Brown, you’ve experienced a better story. Miners on Mars isn’t a particularly original idea, but despite there being dozens of more complete versions of this premise in other media, the Red Faction story is enough of a backdrop to see you through.
Once you start the game, you’ll receive a brief cutscene that shows the protagonist – Parker. He’s as bland as unbuttered toast, but perhaps that’s a fault of early 2000s graphics, so don’t hold it against him (his eyeballs are animated at least). He’s already down on his luck, apparently, and for some reason, he has decided to take a long mining contract on the infamous red planet. You’d be excused for not caring about what happens to him after such an ill-advised decision – everyone knows you shouldn’t work for corporations in space! Clearly Parker hasn’t watched any dystopian sci-fi films lately… Too late now. After arriving, Parker then complains about the terrible conditions, the long hours, the sweat, the brutal guards, and the plague. Well, what the fuck did you expect, mate? Mars ain’t a holiday. You also get a little insight to the possible uprising that’s in the works, but you’ll have to wait a few seconds before that comes up again. As soon as you load into the game, you’ll find yourself at the end of a rocky tunnel. It’s suggested that you were digging there, but it seems you were doing it with your bare hands… Anyway, you take control just as your shift ends, so that’s something, right? Time to chill out in your bunk and masturbate… or whatever passes for entertainment in a Martian mining colony.
Unfortunately for Parker, wanks will have to wait, as shit hits the fan before Mr P can properly relieve his stress. He wanders down the tunnel to witness a guard and miner have a bit of a tiff. One thing leads to another, and within a moment you are thrown into the uprising, or at least a small part of it. Alarms sound, and you pick up a UCB-24 Control Rod. Taking this to hand, you’ll find yourself reverting to some kind of Neanderthal savage, clubbing guards to death whilst making grunting noises (grunting noises aren’t part of the game, but you’ve got to get into the role). Chaos surrounds you then as guards and miners clash, and for a moment it feels as though you’re really part of something. After a while, you start receiving instructions from someone called Hendrix, who wants to help you navigate the tunnels to find safety. You’ll be hearing from him a lot as he serves as the exposition delivery mechanism for the most part. Once you’ve got your bearings, you pick up a pistol from a fallen enemy and the fighting only intensifies from there. This excitement is rather short lived however, as you never really feel as though you’re pushing back with your fellows. Save for the odd occasion, almost every miner you find gets killed immediately, and there is no real sense of group combat, and this is something that I feel is sorely missed in the game. The moments when you have backup in games like Half-Life 2, or in the Halo games really contrast the times when you’re alone, and while you do fight alongside miners occasionally, they are usually there for the sole purpose of dying, and more often than not they are scripted to die just as you reach them.
Having said all this, when I first played the game in the early 2000s, I was rather struck by the overall atmosphere. I’ve yet to mention the music, and that certainly adds to the feel of the game. The soundtrack was composed by Dan Wentz and is very fitting, sometimes weird, and very enjoyable. Anyway, my breadth of experience was of course much smaller back then, and the setting was all new to me at the time. After dispatching the first wave of enemies, experiencing loneliness as everything seemed to go wrong, well, the feeling of being totally isolated in a hostile environment, left to fend for oneself… it’s quite special. This feeling fades a little as the power balance shifts however, as it’s not long before you get a rocket launcher, a shotgun, a flame thrower, and an assault rifle – and by then, you’re more than capable of dealing with whatever is thrown at you. As for the feel of these weapons, they are actually pretty good. There are no deep mechanics with weapon sway, recoil, or bullet falloff, but they are functional, rather hefty feeling, and fun enough to use. Most of the weapons have an alternative function, be it silencing your pistol, rapid firing your shotgun, or bashing with a riot shield. There are fifteen weapons in the game, and with variances in their use, the arsenal is quite diverse. Conventional weapons aren’t the only thing you’ll have to rely on however, as there are several vehicles in the game. The first you’ll find is the Driller, and is rather fun, despite the terrible movement, the awful vision when driving, and the deteriorating drill heads. Sounds crap when I put it like that, but when I first played this game back in the day, there was little expectation for vehicular hijinks, so being able to climb aboard the Driller, and to literally drill your way through a portion of the map to circumnavigate certain sections… well it was quite novel then, and still fun now!
Moving on from the briefest of vehicle sections, you continue to push on through the tunnels, experimenting with some exploration (and by that, I mean blasting holes in walls until you run out of rockets). Try to save a few, because it’s not long before you emerge on a catwalk overlooking a long rocky bridge. Travelling across it are a group of guards an armoured personnel carrier. It’s here that the game decides to show off the possibilities of the Geo Mod engine. A few well-placed rockets will destroy a section of the bridge, halting the enemies in their tracks. Shoot a couple more at the other end and the whole bridge (APC and guards included) will come tumbling down - brilliant! Moving on from there, you leave the tunnels behind and enter the barracks. Here you find enemies with riot shields, shotguns, and flamethrowers, along with a bunch of turrets. Standard stuff. Moving through the facility you find a medic, he can heal you if you require it, but it you don’t you should torture him with a remote mine (just for the fun). After that you eventually make it to the hangar where the escaping miners have commandeered a spaceship. You’ll arrive too late to board, but as luck would have it, the thing gets blasted out of the sky. Good?
After this, you’re told to find another way to link up with the rest of the rebellious miners. You continue through the facility and tunnels, and there is quite a lot of variety in the level design here – not the worst virtual world I’ve traversed. Lots more kill on the way, of course, and after a while, you come to the submarine bay. Another vehicle section? Looks like it. This one is much more interesting than the last, although that is a very low threshold. After releasing the vessel from its crane, the small submarine splashes into the water, and you’re allowed to take the helm. The underwater section here is alright. It breaks up the game a little, and the controls for the submarine are good. Not a huge amount to do, other than firing some torpedoes at the handful of other subs in the submerged tunnels, but that’s ok. After reaching your destination, you park up, jump out, and climb onto a very basic train – no snack cart unfortunately.
You’ll have wished that the boring train ride lasted longer, because shortly after alighting, you meet up with another miner. This guy takes your weapons and gives you a suit… he does leave you the pistol, but for this section, it’s pretty much useless. I really dislike sections in game where detection is an immediate failure, and while it isn’t quite immediate here, you do get shot almost instantly. You can fight back, and I suppose if you have the patience and skill of a ninja, you might make it through with an aggressive play style, but the game really wants you to remain undetected. There are also wanted posters with you face on all over the place, and if you get within a few meters of a guard, they’ll recognise you – that also results in being shotgunned at point blank range. Suffice to say, this section is annoying, and unlike the submarining, disrupts the flow of the game in a rather unenjoyable manner.
Guess what though, after reaching the office of Gryphon, who is the Deputy Administrator of the facility. You have to escort him to Eos (the leader of the revolt) and it’s here that a firefight is inevitable, and a quick improvement in your ability to successfully headshot your enemies is certainly required. Eventually you lead the guy through the tunnels, and you come to another vehicle section. This time it’s a gunship of sorts, and save for the underwater effect, it’s pretty much exactly the same as the submarine section – although you do have a minigun this time. This brings you to another section, and your first really challenging enemy. I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s a massive robot. The trick here is to lure it into a big pit. A right pain in the arse – but at least you get rid of Gryphon afterwards as he gets taken away by a group of miners to meet Eos…
That’ll do for this one so far. I’ve split it in two like the Mafia posts, because who can bear to read too much about this game in one sitting? No one – probably. The second half will be up soon!
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