For years Ultor, a martian mining corporation, has been advertising colonial life on mars ad adventurous and glorious frontier life, a new beginning full of opportunity. Instead, the conditions are brutal and inhuman. A violent incident at a guard post sparks the full-blown rebellion as the Red Faction fises up in defiance to strike down Ultor and defy Earth.
The Game has an exceptional playing engine. You can climb ladders, chain link fances, and (if you're skilled) rock walls. Using explosives (remote charges [good for setting ambushes], grenades or rocket launchers), you can not only slaughter your enemies, but physically change the levels by leaving large craters, or in some cases, even blast through walls to take shortcuts or find weapons dumps. Several times, I've actually skipped hard parts of the level by blasting my own tunnels, though this takes a lot of explosives and you have to be carefull (not just to keep from blowing yourself up, but to make sure you're blasting horizontally; I've dug myself some deep holes and trapped myself in there a few times).
If you're infiltrating an enemy facility, it become vital to hide the bodies whenever you have to kill someone with your silenced pistol. Stay away from guards and security cameras, or you'll be reckognized as one of the enemy.
The Artificial Intelligence is S U P E R B. Not only do enemies dodge bullets and communicate with each other (via radio consoles or direct speech), but they have a sense of self-preservation! Unlike in Oni, where the guys would always attack you even if you had killed hundreds of other baddies, the troops you're up against will run behind obstacles for cover, run away when the odds are against them, call for backup when they spot you, blow up bridges to slow your advancement (yes you can do that too in this game) and when they know they've been beaten, will even surrender! (they almost always try to trick you into lowering your weapon by 'surrendering', then shoot you, those dishonorable scum).
There are five Vehicles you can drive in the game: the Drilling Machine (which actually can drill holes and tunnels through walls), the submarine (armed with torpedos which are fun for blasting underwater stalagtites off the roof), The fighters (very fun to fly, can strafe in all directions like in Battlefield Earth [what a crappy movie]) armed with machine guns and rockets, the APC, and the Jeep (these guys are cool, you can either be the driver or the gunner!), however you rarely get to drive each more than once in the game.
The weapons are pretty good, not too fancy, not too lame, just the type of guns you'd expect rebels to use. The only exotic weapon you'll use besides the flamethrower is a railgun you steal from Mercenaries. This baby can shoot through walls and instantly kills someone no matter where you shoot them.
Animation and graphics are pretty good. Each chareacter has his/her own animations and textures. The only problem I have with the texturing is when someone burns to death (via my flamethrower), they are not all black and crispy. They just fall down and the flames die away after running around on fire for a while, with no burns!
The character models are obscenely comples and well-modeled. They actually have faces complete with facial expressions, talking, and blinking eyes, not just pictures of faces on modeled heads. There are a few problems with synchronization of speech and mouth movements, but it's hard to notice.
Death sequences are fun! Bodies go flying when a grenade explodes, when you shoot someone in the face (a lethal shot) blood shoots out the front and back of the head along the path of thee bullet and their helmet fills with blood. When you put a sticky bomb on someone, they'll run around screaming trying to get it off. I like to wait untill they're in the middle of a group (they often run back to their friends) to detonate it via remote control.
One problem with explosives, is there is no gibbing in this game (no matter how big the explosion is, your enemies will not turn into chunks). If you try to blow someone up, there will be an explosion and when the dust settles (yes there is dust in this game), you see a body lying either on it's back or front. If you try and blow the body up, the body simply disappears in the explosion.
Hmm, did you know the whole game is one level? Yep, one huge level that covers the surface of mars and a space station (you fly to the space station). That's a good thing because you can explore for hours, and a bad thing because if you get lost in the tunnels and mines in the beginning, you are f***ed. Thank god there's in-level game saving.
OVERALL
Good News: Despite the lack of gibbing and conservative use of blood, this is a very violent game. It's not quite hardcore, but that's a good thing for you players into a game for it's plot and gameplay and sheer interactivity. The plot seems a little generic at the beginning, but has a few surprises towards the end
Bad News: The only real serious problem I had was that the first-person perspective in this game is somewhat distorted, leading to mild sea-sickness and disorientation after a few hours. Also, $50 is a bit much for a game that has no level-editing tools and limited multiplayer experience.
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Time is the best teacher, yet it kills all of it's students.
Ohhhhhh yeah
