Red Faction

Red Faction is a 2001 first-person shooter developed by Volition and published by THQ for PlayStation 2 and PC. On November 29, 2016 the game was made available for the PlayStation 4 through the PlayStation Network with added features such as trophy support and uprendered resolution.

Plot
Takes place on Mars around the year 2070. Earth’s minerals are being depleted and humans need more of them to survive. The vast Ultor Corporation runs the mining operation on Mars. The living conditions are deplorable, human rights for the miners are few and a disease called "The Plague" is running rampant throughout the colony with no known antidote available - predominantly within the confines of the mine complex. Parker, a downtrodden miner, came to Mars to make a new start in his life - taken in by the promises and advantages Ultor has to offer in the mines of Mars. After a routine day in the mine with the typical aggression toward miners and cramped living conditions and poor nutrition, he witnesses the spark that starts a rebellion when a security guard abuses a miner at the end of his shift and heartlessly kills him. Parker takes up arms, with the help of Hendrix, a rebellious Ultor security technician who guides Parker through the complex.

Good Qualities

 * 1) It was one of the first games to allow players unscripted level-altering possibilities meaning the environment is destructible allowing for limitless possibilities in how you can approach situations (if you don't feel like opening a door, just blast down the rock around it with your shotgun or explosives).
 * 2) There are fifteen weapons available to the player. Most weapons have an alternate fire mode, meaning there are almost thirty possible weapon actions (excluding vehicles and turrets).
 * 3) *Control Baton: This is the main melee weapon which works as club as well as a taser with the taser part requiring batteries to use.
 * 4) *Riot Shield: This is mainly used to protect yourself from gunfire and is great when facing enemies with railguns since it can take one direct hit. It can also be used to bash enemies, but it's not practical.
 * 5) *Pistol: Works mainly as a fallback weapon. It can be used underwater and even features a silencer attachment.
 * 6) *SMG: Another fallback weapon which can fire both SMG ammo and assault rifle ammo as an alt fire.
 * 7) *Combat Shotgun: In primary fire, the shotgun fires a fairly tight and deadly spread. After every shot, there is a moment that must be taken to pump the shotgun. Alt fire is fully automatic, but uses two shells. However, automatic fire has significantly greater spread.
 * 8) *Flamethrower
 * 9) *Assault Rifle: Primary fire is a very accurate 3-round burst. The secondary fire mode, automatic, is significantly less accurate, particularly compared to the accuracy of the SMG.
 * 10) *SMG: The best close range weapon with an alt fire that shoots AR ammo.
 * 11) *HMG: It suffers from inferior accuracy at medium or longer ranges compared to the precision rifle. It does have an alternate fire, which fires much slower then normal but great for picking off mercs and ultor guards at long range.
 * 12) *Hand Grenade
 * 13) *Remote Charge
 * 14) *Rocket Launcher: A rocket launcher with a built-in IR scope that sees right through walls Additonally, rockets fired travel slowly. However, its combination of splash damage, multiple round magazines (which reload quickly), and high fire rate make it an effective crowd-control weapon when it is properly employed.
 * 15) *Fusion Rocket Launcher: Unlike the regular rocket launcher, the fusion rocket launcher fires a single, highly powerful rocket, then must reload. This is more than made up for with the powerful, super destructive explosion it creates.
 * 16) *Precision Rifle: It fires fast, has pinpoint accuracy, and has good damage.
 * 17) *Sniper Rifle: More powerful and accurate than the Precision Rifle, despite being marred by a slow reload time and dim scope.
 * 18) *Rail Driver: Has a scope that can see through walls, and it can penetrate almost all forms of cover. For these reasons it is perhaps the most dangerous weapon in the game, however, it suffers from a terribly low fire rate and a low reserve of carried ammo.
 * 19) You can save your progress anywhere in the game which was uncommon for PlayStation 2 games at the time.
 * 20) Good visuals for it's time.
 * 21) Decent voice acting.
 * 22) It's got a decent story about a group of workers on Mars rising up against a megacorporation, Ultor, which treats its employees terribly.
 * 23) The AI is pretty impressive for 2001 as they will run away when injured, shoot C4s, and even plead for their life.
 * 24) The PC version drastically improves upon the PS2 version, and adds an weapon switching UI similar to Half-Life, as well as online multiplayer, modding tools, and an exclusive sandbox map to experiment with Geo-Mod.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The stealth is poor and the mechanics established are pointless most of the time. It's the most basic stealth in that you wear a disguise, keep your distance from guards and cameras, and keep your pistol holstered to avoid detection. That's basically it. There are only two missions and they're very straight forward. Well, except one.
 * 2) *In the second stealth mission you have to get to Cryptek's secret lab and you need a access card to get through. To get this, you need to get it from the administrator, but you can't get into his office if you just b-line straight to it because the guards will be alerted. It turns out that you have to recieve a brain from a room that's out of your way, give it to the surgeon in OR, take it to cryogenics, to which then you can get into the admins office as you need the admins signature. If you don't know about this beforehand then you'll be lost as to what to do.
 * 3) *You have a suppressor for your pistol and you can move bodies, clearly meant to be used for stealth. However, as mentioned before, there are only two stealth missions and you only need to kill someone silently one time and there's never a need to move bodies.
 * 4) At the end of the game, you have to defuse a bomb, which can be needlessly time consuming due to the code being random.
 * 5) It can be frustrating at times especially in the late-game levels where you fight against the Mercs armed with one-hit-kill railguns, and even their normal weapons can kill you in just 4 to 8 shots.
 * 6) Despite being given the freedom to blow up walls, it's not well utilized since there's few times where blowing up the environment gives you an advantage.
 * 7) There is very little enemy variety. Most of the time you'll be fighting the same Ultor mercs with the difference being what weapon they carry. There are alien creatures you encounter when in the caves, but they only show up in this area and nowhere else.
 * 8) Most of the weapons aren't good or aren't given much practicality.
 * 9) *The two melee weapons are useless.
 * 10) **The Baton's swing is slow and the taser alternate drains the battery after just one use. It seems the developers realized this since you never get it back after the first stealth mission.
 * 11) **The Riot Shield doesn't block most shots and the melee damage is the worse in the game as it can take up to 13 hits to kill one enemy.
 * 12) *The Pistol is an RNG machine. Sometimes it fires dead on where you aim, other times itgoes so off target that you won't get a single hit in. The surpressor is also pointless (BQ #1) and does even less damage.
 * 13) *The Flamethrower, while good, isn't given much ammo to make it all that practical.
 * 14) *Some inclusions like the assualt rifle alternate on the SMG and Percision Rifle feel redundent and makes the actual Assault Rifle and Sniper near pointless to use once you get these weapons.

Reception
The PlayStation 2 and PC versions of Red Faction received "generally favorable reviews", while the N-Gage version received "mixed" reviews. Despite this, many retrospesctive reviews have been more mixed on it.

For the PlayStation 2 version, IGN called it "an absolute must-have game for the PlayStation 2, and it's the best single-player first-person shooter by a long shot". GameSpot stated, "Although Red Faction rarely outstrips the games it draws inspiration from, the fact that there are times when it shows them up at all is pretty impressive." PlanetPS2 commented, "Red Faction delivers a satisfying, if slightly flawed single player experience and a distracting, but ultimately shallow multiplayer mode. The graphics are impressive, and the technology introduced in this game is amazing, it's just unfortunate that it hasn't been used to its fullest potential."

For the PC version, IGN stated, "It's all about the gameplay, and when you crank this baby to hard or, God forbid, im-freaking-possible, you'll find the gameplay to keep you going for hours piled upon days, piled upon weeks."