Kireatic

Red Faction – the original one, I mean. A classic game, if not a tad dated at this stage in computer gaming, being released in 2001. I have the great honour of owning all the Red Faction games, but have never in fact played any of them. As part of my One Hundred Plus Review, I played through the original Red Faction with an eye to review the game by both today’s standards and those of games of almost a decade ago.

My first experience of Red Faction was actually when it first came out on a friend’s Playstation. I never played the single player, but much fun was had in the multiplayer mode, running around, getting cheap kills with the rail gun and digging a hole in the wall. So, when I first started up the game, it brought back many fond memories, and reminded me of what I love most about the game; the destructible environments.

Games which let you blow holes in anything you feel like are rare, even today, so being able to just blast your own personal tunnel into a wall is great fun, if not a waste of explosives. More games need this mechanic rather than the RF series, in my view. However, RF1 falls down insofar that it relies too much on destruction to see you through the game. If you get caught needing to get into a room with explosives, but you have none left, you either have to reload an old save or, the horror, cheat to continue. It’s a nice idea, but if you are going to make it a necessity, have some form of unlimited destruction, not just a 5-clip rocket launcher, some C4 and a few grenades. Because they run out.

A side effect of the destruction is that there are a ton of hidden passages to be uncovered, making the game feel a lot less linear than it really is, without being confusing – something games being released now could probably learn a lot from. That and I always have liked bursting out through a wall on top of some surprised guards. Makes my day.

The gameplay itself remains good by most standards. There’s a steady difficulty curve, and both combat and stealth sections. The stealth works well for the most part, except when discovered. There’s then about a minute of frantic shooting until your silenced pistol runs out of ammo, and then hiding hoping nobody will shoot you until the alarm goes away. The alarm buttons on the wall, by the way, are apparently for the NPC’s to press, and for you to stop them pressing. Don’t press them yourself. They set the alarm off. Call me an idiot, but I didn’t realize that would happen the first time. The NPC’s are also well programmed, reacting on sight to your intrusion and not being all-knowing through walls that some games suffered back in 2001 (and some still do). The voice acting is great as well, but the first guard who said “Don’t shoot! I’m unarmed”, I believed, so I put my gun away. Bastard hits me. I shoot his head off, and proceed to kill everyone I come across for the rest of the game, just in case.

The story is…good. It makes sense, for the most part, although it’s hardly ‘gripping’. Not much more I can say about that, except for wondering why Parker takes orders from Eos so…readily.

The option to melee with your weaponry would have been nice, especially at the start of the game when you just have the pistol. What’s wrong with smacking someone with the butt of your weapon, huh? And why the hell does the riot shield vanish after one shove? Seriously, that’s just a bit odd.

The various environments of play are also great fun, with the exception of shallow water, which behaves oddly and really slows you down. On the topic of bugs, there are a few of them, the most notable one being the giant robot in the trash refinery. First time round, he got stuck. And the second. And the third. And the tenth. So I went and looked up what exactly I was supposed to be doing - apparently I was doing it right, the robot just does that. In the end I was forced to turn godmode on and jump into the robot to shove him into the tunnel before carrying on. I suspect you could have used rockets or something to widen the tunnel, but regrettably, I had used all the rockets in the area trying to kill the robot. Boo-hoo. This is why you have more than one save, people.

Checkpoints would be nice as well. If you don’t save, you are screwed – it actually just restarts the game for you. I lost 20 mins because I assumed that “Loading…” also meant saving, but apparently that mentality hadn’t caught on back in 2001. It’s been a while since I frantically saved after every bad guy, but there you go.

On a graphical note, very impressive for 2001, although the weapons UI starts out as being a little difficult to use compared to the modern day equivalents, and a tad clunky. Reminds me of HL1′s UI, but better looking and less obvious.

Oh, and I love the soundtrack.

So, Red Faction I, I give you:

Gameplay: 8/10
Graphics: 9/10
Difficulty: 7/10
Storyline: 8/10

Overall Score: 8/10! Not bad for a game that’s 9 years old.