Full Review: I like digging holes with grenades.
At this point in time, it's been almost two full years since the release of the original Red Faction on the PS2. Since then, we've seen a plethora of first person shooting titles come out and try to knock it off of the top of the mountain. With the exception of Halo, and to a lesser extent Metroid Prime, nothing has even entered into the same arena of quality, fun and innovation. So where does Red Faction II stack up against the original? In a lot of respects, they are very similar.
Red Faction II takes place just a few years after the end of the original Red Faction. If you played the original, you will feel right at home with the new one. Don't worry though, there is no prerequisite for playing the new game as the two stories are completely unrelated. You are a member of an elite squad of six super-soldiers, condemned to death by the same man that "created" you. In various missions, you will fight alongside the other members of your team, playing off of their individual strengths. Quill, the sniper, covers you as you plant explosives to destroy a bridge. Repta, the heavy weapons expert, helps you clear a building of dozens of enemy soldiers. Along with Shrike, the man who can drive anything, Tangier, the wily assassin, and Molov, your leader, you take the fight back to the man. Red Faction II comes complete with plot twists, betrayals, and intense action. In all honesty, with a little bit of script help, I could even see the story make the transition to the silver screen.
On the surface, Red Faction II plays a lot like any other FPS. It is easy to pick up the game and jump right into it. Once again, what sets RFII apart from the pack is Volition's fantastic GeoMod engine. If you aren't familiar with it, the GeoMod engine allows you to destroy your surroundings in real time. In other words, you can blow a hole in a wall to bypass a locked door or shoot the ground out from under a pesky opponent. There are still surfaces that you can't destroy, steel support structures and the like, and Volition put things together so you will never be stranded by blowing up the wrong bridge. However, there are a few occasions where I wanted to blow something up, and thought that I should be able to, but was utterly disappointed. I suppose that the developers had to put some limit on the destruction you could incite, but it was still a let down. With that in mind, I'm looking forward to what they can do with the next generation of processing power and a GeoMod2 engine. Still, the GeoMod engine adds a unique set of strategies to the now standard FPS genre.
In order to take full advantage of the GeoMod engine, you need to bring out the big guns. Fortunately, there are a wide variety of weapons available for you to tear your enemies (and your surroundings) apart. In addition to your standard pistols, machine guns and rocket launchers, Red Faction II sees the return of the Rail Gun (it allows you to shoot your enemies through a wall) and the new Anti-Personnel Weapon (it fires five grenades at once!). If those don't contain enough firepower to suit your tastes, you will love having control of the munitions on a tank, a mini-submarine, and a military gunship. However, all of those seem like peashooters compared to the personal battle armor. This puppy is armed to the teeth with dual mini-guns, a missile launcher, and an incendiary grenade launcher. You can take the battle armor right into the middle of a firefight and come out smelling like roses.
Let's face it, the single player experience in any FPS only lasts as long as the story does and nearly all of the replay value comes from playing with your friends. Red Faction II really steps things up with the sheer volume of multiplayer features that have been added to the game. First and foremost, Red Faction II allows four of you to go head-to-head in all of the gameplay modes, a vast improvement over the nearly nonexistent two-player mode in the PS2 original. RFII also broadens the multiplayer horizon with a half dozen additional modes of play. Sure, a lot of the modes are takes on the now standard deathmatch and capture-the-flag mayhem, but there are a couple of unique setups in Arena and Regime. These modes are even available to lone gunmen as RFII allows you to tear into up to five computer controlled (and completely configurable) bots. The only real drawback to the multiplayer setup is the exclusion of any type of networkable gameplay. The GameCube has a network adapter, why doesn't anyone use it? This could have been a perfect vehicle for network play to break out on the GameCube. If someone was to invest in just a LAN connection for two (or four) 'Cubes to play their game, they'd have an uber hit!
Despite everything that works well, there are a few shortfalls to Red Faction II. My biggest complaint is that the game doesn't give you any real sense of freedom. I know that any story driven game needs you to eventually go from point "A" to point "B," but the truly great games make you feel like you are going where you want to, not where they want you to. I often felt like I was being herded down a specific hallway or into a specific room. There were even a few times where I wound up stuck somewhere when I couldn't find the next step they wanted me to take. The only other fault I can cite is the occasional AI glitch. Generally, the AI is put together really well, but I found one boss that I could trick into running back and forth, right into my gunfire, over and over again. Bosses are supposed to be, and in the rest of the game are, difficult but this one never even fired at me. More than anything, small flaws like these are annoying bits of tarnish on a game that is polished to a shine.
