The best single player FPS experience since Half-Life arrives on PS2.
The advent of the next-generation consoles has allowed developers who would normally stick to the PC for first person shooter development to craft their creations on console that has a much wider audience. Realizing this, Volition, best known for their space faring FreeSpace series and the recent PC/PS2 RPG Summoner, has brought their promised-to-be-revolutionary first person shooter, Red Faction, to the PlayStation 2 first (a PC version is scheduled for a release in late summer/early fall). The demo that Volition released weeks ago showed promise for Red Faction, but the frame rate issues were troubling, though thankfully, things have come together in the final hour for what is now one of the most enjoyable PlayStation 2 titles yet.
In the near future, the colonization of Mars has occurred. The Ultor Corporation owns all rights to mining on Mars, and has been making fortunes selling the mineral Noachite to Earth. Known for maximizing production while minimizing costs, men and women from Earth have been lured to the red planet seeking their own fortunes promised by the Ultor Corporation. As soon as reality hits, however, the miners realize that things aren't as nice as the commercials made it seem. Besides the horrific living conditions, a mysterious plague has begun to infect the miners, and with no cure in sight, people are dropping dead left and right. The oppression has not been happening without resistance, though; a group ready to strike out against the Ultor Corporation has formed, lead by a mysterious Eos, and the player's character, Parker, has the chance to become a hero and save his fellow miners.
Geo-Mod Technology is a feature that Volition has been pushing with Red Faction ever since its initial announcement. It allows the developers to design levels where walls, objects and all other surroundings are completely destructible with player weapons or through other means. As the game's box proclaims, if you can't find the key to a door, simply blast around it with a shot from your trusty rocket launcher. Is a convoy containing valuable information making a getaway across a bridge? Toss a remote charge onto the bridge and watch it crumble to pieces, bringing the convoy down with it, as it detonates. Geo-Mod is, more than anything, a really cool feature to take advantage of than something that chances the way you approach playing the game.
What would have made Geo-Mod more interesting was more times where the game forced you to use Geo-Mod in order to advance (for example, the moment where a door won't open, and a hole has to be blown open on the side), but the obvious problem with that is that if a user runs out of weapon ammunition, it completely prevents them from moving forward in the game. Otherwise, though, Geo-Mod definitely spruces up the gameplay of Red Faction, and the satisfaction that comes from tossing a grenade into a guard station, which kills off a few in addition to creating a hole large enough to jump through, and then leaping in, submachine raging, is unmatched.
While Red Faction's frame rate has been tweaked to sit rock solid at 30 frames per second most of the time (the only times it dips down is during enormous fights, such as ones taking place in the Aesir Fighter where there are swarms of guards and large ships raining bullets on you all at once), but after the excellent Quake III: Arena's 60 frames per second, you cannot help but wish. The environments of Red Faction are big, full of detailed textures and enemies, and there's load of variety. Even though it all takes place on the red-colored Mars, Volition has created areas that are so radically different from each other that you never experience déjà vu when entering into a new level. Because of the game's complicated architecture, Red Faction has to load at different spots, but the load times are short and spread out enough that it doesn't interfere with gameplay.
One of the most controversial aspects of a first person shooter on a console is how the developer will handle the control scheme. Following in the footsteps of Medal of Honor on the PlayStation, Volition has used a once successful, still successful layout. The left and right analogs control movement and aiming respectively, R1 fires with R2 enabling the alternate firing more for each weapon, triangle reloads, square and circle cycle through Parker's arsenal, X is use, L1 jumps and finally, L2 crouches. More inventive on Volition's part is the use of the d-pad; instead of controlling movement as well, pressing up allows for a fine aim mode (akin to holding R down in Perfect Dark and GoldenEye), right brings up the message log, and down centers the cursor. Sure, it might not be the same as hooking up a mouse and keyboard, but so far, this is the best control setup for a FPS on a console yet.
Compared to the insane multiplayer blastfests that are TimeSplitters and Unreal Tournament, Red Faction has a hard time matching up against them since it focuses much more on the single player component. Nonetheless, there's enough in Red Faction for two players to duke it out with the skilled AI bots that Volition has programmed into the game to make up for the lack of human players. Geo-Mod doesn't come into play as much in multiplayer, but maps are designed with destructable areas in mind where players would normally hide from enemy fire. Red Faction is low on the options scale, sadly, as deathmatch is the only multiplayer, and there are few customizations that can be made with it.
Don't you hate having to battle massive tanks, helicopters and other machinery, but never being able to dish it back at the enemy? Red Faction allows the player to do this in one of five ways: All Terrain Vehicle, Driller, Aesir Fighter, Submarine and Armored Personal Carrier. The amount of time spent in each vehicle is relatively brief, but it is a blast while it lasts; pounding out missiles while simultaneously spilling thousands of bullets from a chain gun at poor ground troops never gets old, and since the vehicles have enough armor to survive a nuclear strike, charging in with weapons blazing doesn't transform you into a lifeless carcass as it would in the normal game. Particularly, the Aesir Fighter and Armored Personal Carrier are the best of the bunch, as the Aesir Fighter is fast and maneuverable, while the Armored Personal Carrier can plow through anything and everything in its path.
The quality of Summoner on the PlayStation 2 left Red Faction's fate questionable, but Volition has erased all doubt over them with the release of this excellent first person shooter. Easily the best single player-oriented first person shooter since Valve Software's Half-Life, Volition has strongly stepped its foot into the door as one of the better developers in the genre.
