Red Faction

Red Faction is an ambitious game whose execution doesn't quite live up to its lofty goals, but it reaches just high enough that it warrants your attention, and even a sequel. First the good: The overall concept of a miners rebellion on Mars is compelling, and both the gameplay and in-game narrative tools are solid in that derived-from-Half-Life sort of way. Volition also invested effort in advancing the capabilities of the Half Life source engine, adding variable gravity, drivable vehicles, some rudimentary stealth elements, and most impressive: destructible environments, which is definitely the most interesting innovation in the game, and one that is frankly underutilized. On the other hand, some aspects of the game feel undercooked. The most glaring one is the level design, which just feels like it was done on a budget. It's mostly geometry, with very sparse use of in-game assets, and that means you'll be walking through a lot of empty and generic corridors and rooms, that barely feel like real environments. The only thing that makes this somewhat believable is the industrial-mine setting of the game, where you can believe that the barren spaces are simply utilitarian. Nevertheless, the emptiness becomes hard to ignore after a while. Another issue is the lack of enemy variety. You'll be going through long stretches of facing the same enemies over and over again, and while there are story reasons for that, it nonetheless makes the shooting less interesting. The story itself is a kind of in-between for me: intriguing enough to keep you interested, but certainly isn't the best example of writing in gaming either. Overall, thanks to a strong foundation (Half Life), and an ambitious vision, this game clears the quality bar just enough for you to come out of this experience wanting to see a sequel that will properly realize the narrative ambitions of its creators. It has a solid Half-Life-on-Mars feel to it, and that would be good enough for most people.