I miss Red Faction. That feeling people get when they waxed nostalgia about Rare's GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64 is what I what I have when talking about Volition's first person shooter. The genre was always awkward for me to play on console back in the day, while titles like Perfect Dark and GoldenEye 007 laid down the groundwork for revolutionizing how an FPS can be played on a home system, I think Red Faction made it even more accessible.

Developed by Volition, Red Faction was released in 2001 on the PS2 and Windows. Red Faction's story follows a Martian colony that ends up becoming oppressed by the ever increasing power and influence of the Ultor Corporation. Held under the thumb and abused by their oligarchs, a small uprising begins in the contaminated mines, and Parker, controlled by the player, finds himself on the frontline leading the charge. The story lends itself to cheesy sci-fi b-movie fodder, so it was definitely up my alley at the time when I was watching an awful lot of Sliders. Ironically, a little more than a decade later, a made-for-TV Red Faction movie was produced by SyFy (I can't even put into words how much that spelling infuriates me) to promote Red Faction Armageddon, the newest and last entry in the series as of this writing. Picking out vinyl siding was more entertaining than Red Faction Origins. But hey, Robert Patrick got a payday out of it.

Red Faction was very revolutionary for its time, as Volition utilized "Geo-Mod" technology, which allowed for destructible environments. A wide range of the terrain can be demolished by your weaponry, giving it some interesting strategies and implications. There's a point early in the first portion of the mines where you can blow up a bridge and sink an APC into the ether. From a presentation perspective, this was really awesome, the living environment gives Red Faction a distinctive flavor, this is the stuff that I thought was the future of games. It never really happened in as robust a manner that I would have wanted, but I digress.

Sticking with the graphics, it's reached that point now where visuals from the PS2, GameCube, and Xbox are starting to look pretty gross. Not apologizing, avid fans who really romanticize this time period, the mapped textures on these character models have teetered into "quaint" here in 2021. I like the aesthetic, a corridor shooter taking place on Mars sets the tone amazingly well for a narrative that's heavily focused on a grisly revolt on the government. Most early PS2 games come off as remastered Nintendo 64 blocky character models. I'll cut it some slack, at least the lip flaps and some of the facial animations look pretty decent, a step above most Dreamcast offerings per the era. Then again, it's not that hard to outclass Blue Stinger.

The character models don't have a lot of animation to them, many of the reactions to being shot are pretty similar. Procedural animation tricks like ragdoll physics were not commonplace in vidja games just yet, so the kills lack a grisly satisfaction to them. I like the explosions, and the story sequences are stylized and pretty well directed.

The gunplay in Red Faction isn't the best, but it's solid. I feel like there isn't a great deal of cohesion with the controls and aiming when I play with the aim assist on. Either there's an awful lot of variables, or by default the reticle is magnetically drawn to the most durable portion of the body. It's hard for me to critique this, given the horrible aim I've had for multiple decades now, but headshots feel pretty tricky to nail down, they just sort of happen. 

Perhaps it's because its play feels more obtuse with the passage of time, Red Faction 1 can feel like an alpha of Halo at times. Not really a dig, just an FPS from a bygone era. Having to cycle through weapons instead of the directional buttons being hot keys, but it's pretty easy to pick up and indulge. Popping it in for this review, I found myself playing it for a pretty healthy stretch. It was also a culture shock to play a shooter with inverted controls.

I was completely thrown off by how Red Faction's save feature functions. Going through it at the beginning, I'm thinking to myself, "alright, when I get to a checkpoint, I'm going to take a break and grab a bottled water". 

Nothing happened.

So, I just keep playing. At some random point, I hit the menu, and noticed the save function was tucked away here. Having been spoiled by autosave, going back to manually record my game data at ANY given point during play was awesome, it felt like abusing a save state on an emulator. Save often, because the missions can go on pretty long and if you are on a long stretch and happen to die, all that progress is gone.

I love the way the main campaign starts, the miner's revolution begins literally with a guy having a bad day. He's gunned down, many others (with zero preplanning, it seems) and Parker is just thrown into the fray as EOS soldiers will begin to fire down on him. You're almost a one-man army against insurmountable odds, almost every other miner you ran into is either already dead or begging for help. Occasionally, a woman named Eos will rally the troops over the intercom and Hendrix will chime in and direct you to a post, but it never felt like you'd get any kind of reinforcements. Backing some winners here, Parker. 

The first Red Faction gets a decent amount of play from me over the years. The story is pretty intriguing, I actually like some of the characters, certain ones would be a part of Red Faction lore in future games. Its single player campaign had a good challenge, and the multiplayer was very entertaining of you were a fan of GoldenEye. This is a franchise I miss greatly. While the second game is a significant improvement, I consider the first red Faction a pretty cool PS2 game. 

Volition technically has the rights back to them after all these years. I've waited for a revival of the series, but I don't see it happening. If there's anything this industry has taught me in the last decade is to throw out hope.