Red Faction is a game that's been kicking around in my head for the twenty or so years it's been since I'd last played it. I've been meaning to go back to it for years, as my memories of the game were quite fond ones. What I have found in returning to this game, however, is that memories can be unreliable, even outright incorrect.
Aspects of this game unearthed memories buried deep within my brain, things that without my knowing I've been carrying with me for a couple decades: the enemy call outs and death screams; the incredibly stupid line at the beginning as the mining corporation thug attacks your comrade, "You threatenin' me? Yeah, well threaten this!"; a select few sequences here and there. But what I also came to realize is that this game that I looked back on so fondly? It's a total blur. I remember almost none of it. And for good reason: it kind of sucks.
For the purpose of not making this drag on too much (edit: about that... oops), when Red Faction is at its best, it's a pretty fun FPS. Shooting feels for the most part good, although I do think the spread could use to be tuned to be a bit less dramatic. There's a world in which this could be a game right in there in the same breath (or at least not far off) as the greats. So why is it, then, that I sort of hate this game?
Right as you start accruing an arsenal of decent weapons, Red Faction decides to flip a switch and turn into a stealth game. It takes all of your weapons but the silenced pistol from you, gives you a disguise, and tells not to get too close to anyone or they'll see through it. The game never communicates any of this information well enough to not feel fucking terrible and I found myself instead wishing I were playing No One Lives Forever or, shit, even one of the new Hitman games. Even if you set off alarms, and you will, you can't break out of your disguise and pick up new weapons; you have to hope you can make do with the magazine of bullets you were given. After some trial and error and strong use of quick saving and curse words you'll find your way through, but it never feels rewarding or that you've done something well. Oh and by the way? After that whole miserable sequence and more traditional shooting segments where you get your weapons back the game does it again, it fucking does it again, but this time in a more confusing area with deadlier enemies.
Even with those awful parts I wasn't overly down on the game, but then it turns into one of the least enjoyable FPSes I've ever played. For the last third or so of the game, nearly every single area you take battle in contains at least one enemy with an instagib rail gun that shoots through walls. It makes every encounter basically random: you will die dozens of times the instant you walk around a corner, well before any person could react. It feels like playing a multiplayer shooter in a lobby full of cheaters. It is horrendously fucking unfun. Except of course when you're using the gun yourself. It is awfully satisfying ripping a single cartoonishly powerful round through a line of clueless enemies from a couple rooms down the hall.
But it's not just the rail guns that made me ultimately hate the game: more generally speaking, the last stretch has a severe leap in difficulty that never feels properly challenging so much as it does cheap. Sometimes you'll open a door and be greeted by an unavoidable rocket an enemy has already sent your way. Sometimes enemies will be spawned behind you from dead-end corridors. There are stretches where there are more health items than you can use and then others where there are so few you end up riding the quick load button until you get by without taking a hit. I didn't happen to find healing before the (for the record, really, really bad) final boss fight, so I had to beat it without taking a single hit.
I should also make quick note of the game's defining feature: the so-called "Geo-Mod" technology, wherein explosions excavate the game's terrain. From a technology standpoint it's pretty neat, especially for 2001, but also: it barely exists. There's almost nowhere to use it in the single-player campaign and the places you can are at best superficial. Volition's method of stopping players from using the technology to perform sequence breaks appears to have been basically stopping the player from ever being able to use it at all. I think if they had instead taken the exact opposite approach and embraced the potential game-breaking nature of deformable terrain, the game would be profoundly more interesting. Instead, we're left with little more than a few walls in empty rooms you can make small dents in.
Before I get out of here, I've already rambled on too long, let me just briefly touch on the story. How fucking cool of a concept is taking part in a full-on violent revolution against the capitalist fucks who have been killing your fellow workers. It whips ass, right? Unfortunately no. I can't possibly imagine the concept for this game wasn't to at least some extent inspired by the real life labor history of miners such as that documented in the essential documentary Harlan County, USA, but rather than using any of that to enrich the plot or even attempt at making anything grounded in reality, Red Faction just kind of throws in some weird old cyborg guy who floats around evilly and has a forcefield. And a weird lady who also floats around evilly and has a forcefield. There's a virus or some shit too? I don't fucking know. It's written badly and acted stiffly and I didn't care about a goddamn thing that was happening. Wasted potential.
I still don't have the answer for how much of this game I actually ever played in the first place. It very well could have been that I cheated my way through the whole thing. Was my fond memory of this game based on a reality where I barely even played it? I don't know. Regardless, now that memory is replaced with a new one, and it goes a little something like this: Red Faction—a game I thought I liked.
Aspects of this game unearthed memories buried deep within my brain, things that without my knowing I've been carrying with me for a couple decades: the enemy call outs and death screams; the incredibly stupid line at the beginning as the mining corporation thug attacks your comrade, "You threatenin' me? Yeah, well threaten this!"; a select few sequences here and there. But what I also came to realize is that this game that I looked back on so fondly? It's a total blur. I remember almost none of it. And for good reason: it kind of sucks.
For the purpose of not making this drag on too much (edit: about that... oops), when Red Faction is at its best, it's a pretty fun FPS. Shooting feels for the most part good, although I do think the spread could use to be tuned to be a bit less dramatic. There's a world in which this could be a game right in there in the same breath (or at least not far off) as the greats. So why is it, then, that I sort of hate this game?
Right as you start accruing an arsenal of decent weapons, Red Faction decides to flip a switch and turn into a stealth game. It takes all of your weapons but the silenced pistol from you, gives you a disguise, and tells not to get too close to anyone or they'll see through it. The game never communicates any of this information well enough to not feel fucking terrible and I found myself instead wishing I were playing No One Lives Forever or, shit, even one of the new Hitman games. Even if you set off alarms, and you will, you can't break out of your disguise and pick up new weapons; you have to hope you can make do with the magazine of bullets you were given. After some trial and error and strong use of quick saving and curse words you'll find your way through, but it never feels rewarding or that you've done something well. Oh and by the way? After that whole miserable sequence and more traditional shooting segments where you get your weapons back the game does it again, it fucking does it again, but this time in a more confusing area with deadlier enemies.
Even with those awful parts I wasn't overly down on the game, but then it turns into one of the least enjoyable FPSes I've ever played. For the last third or so of the game, nearly every single area you take battle in contains at least one enemy with an instagib rail gun that shoots through walls. It makes every encounter basically random: you will die dozens of times the instant you walk around a corner, well before any person could react. It feels like playing a multiplayer shooter in a lobby full of cheaters. It is horrendously fucking unfun. Except of course when you're using the gun yourself. It is awfully satisfying ripping a single cartoonishly powerful round through a line of clueless enemies from a couple rooms down the hall.
But it's not just the rail guns that made me ultimately hate the game: more generally speaking, the last stretch has a severe leap in difficulty that never feels properly challenging so much as it does cheap. Sometimes you'll open a door and be greeted by an unavoidable rocket an enemy has already sent your way. Sometimes enemies will be spawned behind you from dead-end corridors. There are stretches where there are more health items than you can use and then others where there are so few you end up riding the quick load button until you get by without taking a hit. I didn't happen to find healing before the (for the record, really, really bad) final boss fight, so I had to beat it without taking a single hit.
I should also make quick note of the game's defining feature: the so-called "Geo-Mod" technology, wherein explosions excavate the game's terrain. From a technology standpoint it's pretty neat, especially for 2001, but also: it barely exists. There's almost nowhere to use it in the single-player campaign and the places you can are at best superficial. Volition's method of stopping players from using the technology to perform sequence breaks appears to have been basically stopping the player from ever being able to use it at all. I think if they had instead taken the exact opposite approach and embraced the potential game-breaking nature of deformable terrain, the game would be profoundly more interesting. Instead, we're left with little more than a few walls in empty rooms you can make small dents in.
Before I get out of here, I've already rambled on too long, let me just briefly touch on the story. How fucking cool of a concept is taking part in a full-on violent revolution against the capitalist fucks who have been killing your fellow workers. It whips ass, right? Unfortunately no. I can't possibly imagine the concept for this game wasn't to at least some extent inspired by the real life labor history of miners such as that documented in the essential documentary Harlan County, USA, but rather than using any of that to enrich the plot or even attempt at making anything grounded in reality, Red Faction just kind of throws in some weird old cyborg guy who floats around evilly and has a forcefield. And a weird lady who also floats around evilly and has a forcefield. There's a virus or some shit too? I don't fucking know. It's written badly and acted stiffly and I didn't care about a goddamn thing that was happening. Wasted potential.
I still don't have the answer for how much of this game I actually ever played in the first place. It very well could have been that I cheated my way through the whole thing. Was my fond memory of this game based on a reality where I barely even played it? I don't know. Regardless, now that memory is replaced with a new one, and it goes a little something like this: Red Faction—a game I thought I liked.