Red Faction - Longplay

#1
This longplay replaces my previous Lets Play - Which was a disaster! This definitely went better.



This is a full play-through of the first (and arguably best) in the series of Red Faction games. Developed by Volition and published by THQ in 2001, Red Faction spawned a series of successful titles and a whole universe in its own right. Played with Pure Faction on Linux Wine, the game works more or less flawlessly but there are some minor issues - subtitles don't seem to display at all and I had some issues with the sound about half way through the game (you will notice when it happens, but it doesn't last for long). I couldn't find a way to get the subtitles to work, so you'll have to keep your ear open.

Red Faction is probably one my most memorable games from the early 2000's. Although I only played the single player campaign to completion about twice before, I did spend a fair bit of time running around in multiplayer and I even joined a clan at one point (known as PsY). Red Faction was pitched to THQ after the breakup between Interplay and Volition, back when the game was originally being developed as Descent IV. Some elements of the story, the character Parker and even some game assets were eventually used in Red Faction. I sometimes wonder what would've happened if Descent IV wasn't canned! A Descent game with geo-mod technology would've been something to behold.

Overall I would say Red Faction ranges from absolutely awesome to downright terrible. The first half of this game is a lot of fun, with some great level design, ambitious ideas and a wide variety of opponents. The various types of vehicles also makes for an interesting change of pace. Unfortunately, as soon as the Ultor Guards are replaced predominately by Mercenaries, the game becomes tedious and cheap on the higher difficulty level. The developers used some pretty nasty tactics to increase the difficulty of the campaign, from the one-hit kill enemies to the randomly spawning Mercenaries that just appear out of thin air, EVEN if there is no way they could've gotten there - unless there is transporter tech in this universe? There are also instances where enemies infinitely spawn such as in the subway section - these parts I just ran through, because I remember spending ages down there in the past wasting time. The comical villains in this game which serve as bosses are nothing special, in fact the Capek and Masako bosses are virtually the same fight - it's just Capek doesn't kill you in one hit, unlike Masako with her ultra accurate Precision Rifle. Fortunately this was not a blind play-through, so I knew what to expect from this game.

That being said, I always come back to Red Faction every so often because it has a lot to offer. It's a fun game, with a pretty solid albeit cheesy story and a fancy engine - it was indeed the first game to use non-scripted destruction, and probably remains to this day the only game to ever successfully implement geo-mod tech. And well, it's ever so *loosely* related to Descent - which gives it a few more points in my book.
The Expanse. Watch it!

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Majestic-12 [Bot] and 136 guests

cron