The PS2 version is practically ruined by poor performance, quaint controls, long loading times and a weird save system. Honestly, one of the most frustrating experiences I've had with a game in recent memory. It was a mistake to play that version, but I'd had it in my backlog for years, so I figured what the hell.

The game by itself is not perfect, but it has some redeeming qualities. Namely, the atmosphere. The music is quite good and can be enjoyed on its own - it reminds me of KMFDM. The art style is very reminiscent of Total Recall (and other Verhoeven movies). They're are a few interesting weapons. And there's also the geo-mod tech, of course, which is underutilized, but still fun to mess around with. The game as a whole has always had a bit of a Half-Life vibe for me, but there're probably a lot of games from this period which tried to imitate Valve's work to some degree.

Unfortunately, Half-Life this is not. The gameplay is just not on that level. The AI is kinda funny for the first 15 minutes, until it gets annoying and every single human enemy behaves the exact same way throughout the game. Non-human enemies are even less enjoyable to engage with. There are nasty difficulty spikes during the last third of the game, including enemies who can one-shot kill you through walls. Yup.

Anyway, I understand that there's a community patch for the PC version which fixes up the game nicely for modern systems. I think if you play it that way, you can probably overlook a lot of it's fundamental flaws and enjoy the good parts. In the PS2 version the issues are just amplified tenfold. I'd stay clear of it, even if emulated on PS4/5.

A solid shooter with plenty of variety for its short runtime and a pretty sick soundtrack to boot. By comparison, the plot is rather bland.
One of the selling points for Red Faction were the destructible environments, so you can tunnel through solid rock with explosives and such. I think the mechanic is underutilized, but it's neat nonetheless.
A mechanic I wish they employed less were the stealth sections, but thankfully they are few and far between.
You probably need the "Pure Faction" mod to play it in modern systems and limiting the framerate to 60 with your graphics card control panel.

There was a time when I was about 13 that I would've listed this among my favorite games. The destructible environments did make for an extremely good time, tunneling your way through mine walls or blowing the ground out from underneath enemies never got old. And any game with a working class revolution as the inciting incident is always gonna be right up my alley.
But nostalgia's a hell of a thing. Turns out the destructible environments were pretty limited, the vehicle sections that I remembered fondly were actually monotonous slogs a lot of the time and the writing and plot does absolutely nothing with the potential of the game's premise.
An ambitious game with interesting ideas and fun mechanics that falls flat after its extremely promising beginning.

The gameplay takes a bit of a nosedive at the 2/3 point when more accurate and spongy enemies replace the much more fun to fight Ultor guards, plus that bomb minigame at the end is just a piss take and the stealth segments and boss fights are plain bad, but when Red Faction sticks to what it does best it still remains a fine example of early 2000s PC FPS and the Geomod technology is impressive even to this day, despite being woefully underutilized on the level design side of things. Red Faction's shortcomings are annoying but they aren't uncommon issues for games of that era.

It seems bland, but there is a shockingly high amount of stuff to say about this game.

The story is, clearly, just Total Recall setup with some changes. The odd part though is the protagonist, who after the introduction cutscene, is silent for the next two hours. He then talks and I wish he was quiet again. Parker is one of the most obnoxious and annoying protagonists I've played in a game. Then, a miracle happens, he doesn't talk again until pretty much the end of the game.

The actual gameplay is fine. It feels best early on, as late game enemies make all but three weapons useless, as they are heavily armed and frequently carry one-shot kill weapons. Luckily for me, I liked those three weapons. The main crime is vehicle segments and stealth. The former doesn't feel good and takes up too much of the game. The latter is somehow easy and absurdly difficult.

I had an OK time with Red Faction, but it won't be a game I return to.

B movie style plot with a terrible in an amusing way main character and strangely decently acted supporting cast. Ability to use explosives to blow through rock and walls is cool but never really used that well. Some areas have multiple paths to the objective. Auto lock on with poor aim gunplay isn't satisfying, enemies might die from two or three leg shots and they might survive 10 shots to the chest, their reactions and how accurate they are seems very random. Halfway through the game a lot of enemies can survive rockets or remote charges going off right next to them which makes some of the guns almost worthless, a riot shield was an interesting but pointless inclusion. Enemies spawn behind you sometimes and if I reload then they sometimes don't. Opening a door can get you shot to half health instantly until near the end of the game where someone thought it was a good idea to give enemies a one hit kill gun that can shoot through walls with their random accuracy.