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.

No tengo ni idea de por que me empeñe en jugarlo, era literalmente injugable en PC y tuve que jugarlo en PS2.
La historia es pésima, el gameplay es tosco, lento y en general aburrido, y oh dios mío, ese voice acting parece sacado del primer Resident Evil, así que tiene un buen humor involuntario casi como única virtud.

Una perdida de tiempo total.

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.

This game holds up surprisingly well considering its age. It's certainly lacking modern conveniences like checkpoints, actual enemy AI, and the types of set pieces you'd expect out of a modern FPS, but it's an enjoyable, if basic shooter. The destruction elements are pretty muted here, it would have been nice to see them utilize them more than a few scattered instances, and enemy railguns seem disgustingly overpowered. Fun to see where this series began, as a huge lover of Red Faction: Guerrilla.

There are games out there that have a cult following, most of which you presume deserve so as they are hidden gems. Tis could be something like Shadow Warrior (1997), Blood, Get Even, XIII (2003), and what have you. But THIS is lost on me. Why people like this game so much, is something I can't figure out and probably never will. It's not a bad game, but my god is it slow and clunky.

It's an FPS, probably one of the slowest. If I had to describe it, it would be Half-Life, but it's on Mars, it's slower, and the lore and world is way more boring. It takes place in the future where workers of a corporation known as Ultor decide to rebel against them given the incredibly poor working conditions and sickness going around.

In terms of gameplay, it is very much like Half-Life. All the weapons you carry have some kind of secondary like Shadow Warrior (1997), except most are useless.

You have a Baton which is slow, doesn't do much damage, and the secondary, a taser, requires batteries and it guzzles the whole thing before you ever actually stun an enemy. A pistol with a silencer as a secondary that you only have to use once in a stealth section. It nerfs the pistol so badly it will take maybe 6 shots before you kill anything.

There are two assault rifles and snipers. Once you acquire the second of both guns there is no reason to return to the first because they're that much better. To be fair, these are the two most practical in the whole game. The assault rifles fires like normal, but has secondary for more accurate shots at long range. However, this is almost worthless because you get an SMG with an assault rifle secondary that takes the same ammo. (These weapons are a fucking mess.)

A shotgun which functions and looks exactly like the one from Half-Life. A railgun which is a railgun. Then there are the three most useless weapons in the game. The flame thrower and rocket launcher, while not bad weapons, are useless due to how scarce ammo is. Then there's the riot shield. It is so terrible it will take you 13 hits before you kill an enemy. The only reason this weapon seems to exist is because you need it to avoid getting insta-killed by an enemy with a rail gun.

Now one thing I think most people associate Red Faction with is the geo-mod technology which this game is the earliest use of. This is something that allows the player to blow holes in walls, floors and just about anything, allowing some advantages in game. Is what I would say if it did. There is almost no scenario where blowing open a floor or wall gives you some kind of tactically advantage. Technologically impressive, tactically unnecessary.

I keep saying how slow the game and that is very apparent in the movement which feels too slow for the kind of game on display, there is no enemy variety with you fighting the same Ultor enemies over and over again, the level design is pretty flat, and the only thing that keeps the game from being incredibly boring are the two stealth and vehicle sections.

The stealth is poor and the mechanics established are pointless most of the time. It's the most basic stealth in that you wear a disguise, keep your distance from guards and cameras, and keep your pistol holstered to avoid detection. That's basically it. There are only two missions and they're very straight forward. Well, except one.

In the second stealth mission you have to get to Cryptek's secret lab and you need a access card to get through. To get this, you need to get it from the administrator, but you can't get into his office if you just b-line straight to it because the guards will be alerted. It turns out that you have to receive a brain from a room that's out of your way, give it to the surgeon in OR, take it to cryogenics, to which then you can get into the admins office as you need the admins signature. If you don't know about this beforehand then you'll be lost as to what to do.

The vehicle sections are actually not bad and allows you to blow up and kill many enemies. These mostly serve as a way to get somewhere, not that different from the vehicle sections in Half-Life 2. Except these vehicles actually control much better, oddly enough.

If you wanna play a good version of this, just play Half-Life.

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.

Before I get into the nitty gritty, let me get one thing out of the way: this game is overpriced. $10 is too much for a nearly two decade old game that isn't even that great. Definitely wait for a sale.

Red Faction was developed by Volition, at the time known for the Descent franchise (with Red Faction even starting development as Descent 4), and later going on to create the Saints Row franchise. The game stars Parker, a miner living on Mars under employment by Ultor, a comedically-evil mining corporation who subjects the miners to terrible working conditions and regular physical abuse from guards. After a group of rebellious miners known as the "Red Faction" begin a revolt, Parker is basically forced into participating in this revolution as the guards begin to slaughter all miners on sight.

As for the story, an effort was made, but it really isn't up to snuff. It starts interesting enough, but it just kind of goes on and doesn't maintain that initial momentum (though the same can be said of the game itself). Some cool concepts are introduced but never really explored. None of the villains are given any buildup and as a result none feel intimidating. None of the characters are all that memorable either, with the vocal performances being okay at best, and dialogue writing being quite cringe-worthy at points.
The biggest problem with the story is the presentation though. The game initially begins very similarly to Half-Life, with an unbroken first-person perspective and a silent protagonist. However, about midway through the game, it switches to in-engine cutscenes with a fully-voiced Parker, who comes off as an arrogant asshole for no real reason. This change is jarring, especially because the cutscenes aren't particularly well-animated. The game would have been better off keeping the Half-Life-esque storytelling.

As for the gameplay, the game touts Volition's proprietary Geo-Mod 1.0 engine, which allows for procedural terrain destruction (sometimes). It's a very very impressive engine from that standpoint and it does blow me away that they were able to accomplish that. However, it feels much more like a gimmick rather than an actual game mechanic. There are few instances where it's more useful than just finding another entrance into an area. It looks neat, but perhaps it was too ahead of its time to be a practical mechanic? The gunplay itself is pretty fun. I found that most of the weapons had a proper use for most of the game, however in the late game most of the older guns are made useless by the new ones you acquire. I found the enemy AI to be frustrating. It seems to zig zag in a particular way that is just perfect for dodging literally all of your attacks. Plus, the enemies aren't very visually distinct, so it's hard to tell who has a shotgun and who doesn't from a distance. I played on hard mode, and the difficulty was relatively fair for the most part, until the lategame, which introduces a lot of bull all at once. The mercs just aren't balanced, and the railgun mercs were the bane of my existence for a while. The friendly miner NPCs are borderline useless and usually get themselves killed instantly. The vehicle combat is fine for the most part. Not remarkable but it gets the job done, other than a particularly boring turret section near the end of the game.

Presentation-wise, this game isn't much to write home about. For a game released in 2001, the graphics aren't very impressive and are somewhat below-average, but for the most part aren't bad by any means. The environments are nicely rendered and the lighting can be pretty cool at points. I do think this game actually looks worse than a few games that game before it, such as Deus Ex. Red Faction suffers from a problem I like to call "half-graphics syndrome", where the technical rendering side of things is perfectly solid, but the art direction is very boring. Some of the robots and early game areas are really cool looking but eventually it just devolves into sameish looking metal corridors. On the audio side of things, the music for this game is surprisingly really good. The song "Faction" especially makes the player feel like a badass.

If this review has been somewhat harsh on the game, you may be asking, why is it marked as recommended? Because for some reason, despite the final stretch of the game being quite boring and/or total bull, the game is just enjoyable from a gunplay perspective. If you can get it for cheap (and it often goes on sale), I would say it's worth checking it out, even with it's many many flaws. As for the multiplayer, I haven't tried it yet but I heard it has a cult following. If you decide to check it out, I implore you to download the Dash Faction fanmade source port, as it fixes a game-breaking bug later in the game

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.

The main gimmick of Red Faction is the destructible terrain, so it's unfortunate there's only a couple of places where it's actually used, as you progress further into the game it basically stops being relevant entirely, there's maybe 3 sections in total where it was useful excluding the tutorial sections. Parker as a main character is pretty unlikeable, the villains were kinda dull and it was overall pretty uninteresting, the stealth sections were novel though, but it did cause me to get a save bug where I couldn't use any weapons at all due to a glitch, so that made it less interesting.