I was disappointed with more things too. The lack of Geo-Mod is disturbing. It is there, mainly for blasting some smaller walls and irrelevant things that you won’t care about. Whatever happened to the fun in Geo-Mod? And that, my friends, could be the biggest reason I slammed Red Faction 2. I think that if a game promises more Geo-Mod, the game should deliver it. Instead, we get about ten walls in the game that can be penetrated; the rest of it is just some small structures and thin walls that aren’t that fun to destroy. Also, they said that the Geo-Mod was going to be improved. Maybe it’s just me, but I think that it’s the exact same thing! If “improving” the Geo-Mod technology means having less of it, then Red Faction 2 has succeeded. Volition had to sacrifice a great deal of the technology just to keep the game running at a constant framerate…Well what the point of having it if it wasn’t even used efficiently? The only reason this game is going to sell well is because people have faith in Volition, but apparently, something went wrong during development. Guess we’ll just have to wait for the third game, maybe the third time is a charm.
Whew, that was a lot of slamming. Fortunately, the game is not a failure by any means. I gave this game a 7.8 out of 10, and that translates to a “good” rating. And I think that Red Faction happens to be a fun game to play, it’s just flawed. There are some very fun sequences in the game, such as the one where you get to use the battle armor. You are almost invincible in that suit, it is a very tall robot that fires missiles and has a chain gun. You blast through buildings, destroy the enemy vehicles that try to block you, and it is hilarious. It is so much fun to take out everything in your path in that vehicle.
The graphics have had a significant upgrade when compared to Red Faction. The framerate is the most noticeable change. Instead of 30 frames like Red Faction, I would say that this one is about five frames higher. Not much of a noticeable difference, but it’s a nice upgrade. The textures have been improved as well. Just today I was in a complex that had carpet, and it looked photorealisic. The lighting effects are almost identical, yet the shadows on objects have been improved. No more pixels on walls, unlike Red Faction’s shadows. The level design is great; there are nicely designed corridors and buildings. The outdoor parts of the game were done extremely well. There is one part that reminds me of Medal of Honor Frontline, where you are making your way through some destroyed buildings, and Sopot’s guards are sniping you. You have to hide behind some rubble and slowly make your way to the next area. Then you pick up a sniper rifle, and have your revenge. It’s awesome!
The guns have had a significant upgrade. All of your favorites except for the flamethrower are back, and look completely different. The precision rifle has some new type of scope, and the rail gun’s heat seeking scope looks entirely different. Basically, if it was in Red Faction, it looks different. And better, too! Volition did an excellent job designing all of the weapons to make them visually appealing and useful. I don’t think that there was a single weapon in the game that had no use to me. And now, grenades have their own button on the PS2 controller, sort of like the grenades in Halo had their own button on the Xbox controller. There are several types of grenades, which can be shuffled with the right and left arrows on the D-pad. Thank you very much for this, Volition. I love this feature; finally, it is easier to throw grenades. I hope that games in the future will do the same.
I can’t tell you how pleased I am with the dual-weapons feature. I know that there have been FPS games in the past that let you shoot two weapons at a time, but this game lets you control each one at the same time! The L1 button fires your left weapon, and R1 fires the right one. This works especially well when you are in battle. If done correctly, you can fire one weapon while reloading the other. When one weapon runs out, switch to the other one.
The health system has been revised, another small add-on but it pays off. You can have a maximum of three health kits at a time, and when one completely gets destroyed, he will use another. And the best part is, each one recharges like they do in Halo, but if you ran out of health kits, you will die. Clearly, Halo has shown games how to be successful by recreating the FPS genre, and it makes me extremely happy to see that Red Faction 2 is the first game to follow in its footsteps. I just hope that games do the same in the future.
I haven’t mentioned too much about multiplayer, but I can honestly say that this could become one of the coolest multiplayer games in a long time. It’s no where near as cool as Red Faction or Syphon Filter 2, but it’s nice. There are 40 maps in all, and this could possibly be one of the biggest varieties of maps in a multiplayer game. My favorites include the snowy level, in which you can blast through some really thick ice that is frozen to the walls and one that looks like a maze. Only this maze can be blasted through! That’s right, Geo-Mod allows you to tear apart these stupid walls in this maze, so you do not become frustrated. Equip everyone with only the rocket launcher and you could turn this into a deadly game of hide and seek. Plus you can play this game with 4 players, unlike the two in Red Faction, so it’s nice. But the best part about multiplayer is the framerate, which remains constant unlike Red Faction.