Red Faction

All in all, I have mixed feelings towards the game. It starts off on a high note, with a lot of interesting ideas to boot. However, second half of a game is kind of a mess - not rushed and empty, but bloated.

The terrain destruction system is a lot of fun when it works - but it usually doesn't. Not because of technical shortcomings, but because of level design. Not enough opportunities to play around with the system - later levels straight up prevent you from blowing anything up

The difficulty is all over the place. It feels like the game is balanced strictly around multiplayer, and somebody forgot to adjust the values for single. Later levels feel like playing Unreal Tournament against your older brother who's been playing it non-stop for 20 years.

While I appreciated the unusual in videogames "worker's revolution" setup, the plot qucikly devolved into blockbuster-movie-emulating silliness, with cutscenes full of cheesy humour. I liked it more with silent protagonist and no interruptions.

What I found really fun though was the weapon design. Even though the later game is dominated by Precision Rifle and Rail Driver, I love the ideas at play here and I'm sure all of them were really fun to use in multiplayer.

Summing up my thoughts. I would love to see an Immersive Sim with the mechanics of this game. Terrain destruction system would just be SO good with open-ended levels, but it doesn't work that well with linear levels that you can't really learn the layout of.

Is it worth playing today? I would say - yes, just to see the ambition and ideas at display here. Save often, consider using cheatcodes. I heard that multiplayer was a lot of fun back in the day, and with systems and weapons in place I can definitely see that.

God awful time i had with this game. It started out pretty fun and interesting but quickly turned into a frustrating mess and ending in just rage.

There are a lot of problems with the game so il try to be brief.

1. The A.I has aimbot and this isnt some "git gud at the game" but when all enemies 4 shot you in the later stages it gets really hard really fast. The entire pacing of the game is ruined after the first like 2 hours of the game because all bots just drain your health from 20 feet away but you cant hit that far not without a sniper or precison rifle and when you try to hit them they just run back full fucking sprint so its hard to hit their ass.

2. The game has technical problems. I played the steam version and the first time i booted up the game it worked, after about 2 hours i quit and the next day it didnt want to run, so after 30 min of validating the files finally it starts again by some miracle. However during the later stages i got a crash after i reloaded a save, so i thought "No biggie i have 3 saves il start the game and go back" but nope. At the time of writing this i have not gotten the game to work again which means i missed the last 10 min of the game. I watched the ending instead because now the game wont run on my pc for literally no reason what so ever, i changed no settings yet the game ran perfectly twice but not 3 times.


3. The map designs were kinda bad, most of the time i had no idea where i was supposed to go and i walked in circles multiple times which made the game incredibly long. The game is actually quite short, you should be able to complete it in like 2 hours but because of the technical problems and the aimbot A.I it took me 6 hours and i still couldnt finish the game because of the crash.

4. The story and the cutscenes suck ass. I dont care for any characters and the story just feels like 1 big fetch quest. "do this, fix that, do this, fix that". The boss fights are an absolute joke. During the capek boss fight i was super confused because he has his shield up and when i shot him nothing happened so i was like "is there something im missing here?" but no youre supposed to shoot the shield which takes about 6 sniper shots which is super easy to hit him with and then it cuts to an awkward cutscene. It was so garbage i honestly laughed out loud at how terrible that fight is.

It also didnt help when i saved during an insta kill sequence later in the game. Basically youre supposed to blow up the missile defence system and the game sets a timer of like 30 seconds or something but the idiot i am i killed enemies on the way which you arent supposed to do since you the timer is there but i saved it at 10 seconds remaining which isnt enough time to get to the tram and thus its an infinate game over. This meant i lost 50 min of my life because of that terrible level, however part of it was my fault.

Overall a frustrating experience and i can not recommend the game to anyone.

Just replayed this game after 18 years. As of today, it still holds up: it's fast paced, fun and very hard sometimes.

The story is kind of bland nowadays and the script is very uninteresting. Some gameplay aspects are annoying, and It's very short compared to other shooters from that era.

But still, underrated and innovative.

Most of the game is a fine enough take on the Half-Life style of FPS, with the Mars backdrop being a fine addition to the shooting, as well as the novelty of the Geo-Mod and the ludicrous amounts of weapons you can get. Weird dalliances from this formula fall flat on their face, as the second half of the game decides to actually include voiceovers from our protagonist, cutscenes, two minute vehicle segments and a bomb defusal minigame as the final gameplay segment. I was actively scratching my head at these times. These days it ain't worth all that much, but it was good enough for its time.