This game aged well. Although it isn't too long (this is the only con I could think of), I enjoyed every bit of it. Loved soundtrack, ability to destroy environment, fast shooting, missions with vehicles, it felt somewhat like Half Life with that Mars interior crawling, especially with monster part. First parts were easy and You'd learn there how to fight, at the end though it becomes real challenge to survive. Must-play classic FPS.

Oh no. A door I can't get past. Well I could go and backtrack for 3 hours and fight enemies that have respawned again, looking for that keycard... or I could just blow a hole in the wall and go around it. Like literally anyone carrying explosives would do.

THIS IS WHY RED FACTION IS ONE OF THE BEST GAMES EVER MADE. WHY IS THIS THE ONLY GAME WHERE THAT'S A ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ OPTION.

It's a rainy thursday evening, and Summer-Rain
has a thermometer sticking out of her mouth
as she curls up in bed, shifting underneath the
covers. You feel her forehead tenderly with your
hand's exterior before checking her temperature.

"Seems like it's going down..." You tell her, while
she pulls a long face. You open your laptop and
engage the Steam client, looking for a game to
play together, a simple one, to take her mind off
of the fever. Suddenly she grabs your arm, and
orders you to stop scrolling in your library.

"What's that one? I've heard of it, but it doesn't
seem familiar." Summer-Rain points at a game
you remembered buying on the franchise sale.

RED FACTION.

You tell Summer-Rain about how you were ten
years old when the game came out and you had
to play as a miner named Parker who started as
a disenfranchised worker on Mars before leading
an entire Revolution against his evil company,
Ultor.

Summer-Rain pulls the sheets up to her nose and
says she wants ice cream while she watches you
play Red Faction. After a short trip to the kitchen
and fetching her a bowl of vanilla ice cream, the
introductory cutscene plays as Parker narrates
his down-on-his-luck life as a miner on Mars.

The introductory level opens quickly enough. A
fellow miner is provoked into assault with the
guards, and all hell breaks loose, with you quickly
obtaining a stun baton to bludgeon guards with
and a 9mm pistol as a basic firearm.

Remote charges that stick to targets and grenades
round out your arsenal in this starting stage,
and Summer-Rain laughs while you latch remote
charges to the oncoming Guards, their arms
flailing wildly as they scream and run about
before you detonate them.

You encounter an APC amid a rocky bridge as
Summer-Rain tells you to be careful, expecting
you to face the APC head-on with your Rocket
Launcher which has minimal ammo. You opt to
blow up the two edges of the rock bridge, which
sends the Guards and the APC falling to their
death down the ravine below.

"How-?!" Summer-Rain exclaims, before telling
her that this game has Geo-Mod technology, a
precursor to DICE's Frostbite engine and their
destruction 2.0. "Although this game is from
2001, almost everything you see that isn't part
of the preprogrammed story is fully destructable."

You are soon taking on Guards in drilling vehicles,
travelling between sabotaged power plants in
Submarines and even taking to the skies in one
level in one of Ultor's AESIR Fighters. By now, you
have obtained an Assault Rifle, a Shotgun, the
deadly Precision Rifle with 4x zoom scope and
almighty Sniper Rifle with 10x zoom scope.

Through it all, Summer-Rain mindlessly munches
ice cream in anticipation of what comes next,
with Parker laying waste to everything before him
in his quest to be free of Ultor and Mars.

The villains of the game, Dr. Capek and later the
cold, calculating mercenary Masako, prove to be
some of the most difficult boss fights in the game
with your meager health and zero modern-day
mechanics a player takes for granted, such as
shields and auto-save checkpoints.

When you die and you had the unfortunate habit
of not saving in a game like Red Faction, you find
yourself at the beginning of the Miner Uprising
at the start of the game, having to do it all. over.
again.

The supporting characters of Red Faction are
minimal, but they all compliment the story very
well. The hacker Hendrix is a non-annoying
version of Otacon, Summer-Rain observes, while
she likes the no-nonsense attitude of the Red
Faction leader Eos, and her right-hand man
Orion, who appears only a few times, but chews
up scenery well with his sincere voice acting.

The enemies of Red Faction progress incredibly
well. First there are regular guards, then the
Officers, with their rough-and-tumble black
assault rifles, red visors, yellow trim and biting
attitudes to match.

Later, armored Mercenaries take over the
enemy role, armed with heavy machine
guns, one-hit-kill Railguns (which can see
and shoot through walls) and the dreaded
Fusion Rocket Launcher.

The end comes, and you have to disarm a
bomb that Eos is strapped to, but the controls
to disarm the bomb make no sense, and you
swear to the High Lords of Valhalla that the
timer is rigged. Summer-Rain has long finished
her vanilla ice-cream, cowering under the
blanket and hoping you can save Eos in time.

The screen fades to white, and both of you
find yourselves at the main menu of the game,
where you load your last save and find that
you have to fight Masako in her AESIR Fighter
again before you can try to disarm the bomb
she strapped to Eos. Summer-Rain heaves a
small sigh of disappointment.

"I could never figure out the sequence in time
back then anyway." You shrug, apologizing
to Summer-Rain. She sets aside your laptop
and draws you in for a hug. Summer-Rain
thanks you for showing her a game from
your childhood, and if anything, she enjoyed
the ride with you, watching you play as
Parker and try to take down the Ultor
Corporation has her feeling better than
the fever that got her down.

You smile and say that you have to go
and prepare some things for tomorrow's
class before you can join her for the night.
"Go on, go on... hurry back so I don't get
too cold without you!" She says. You nod,
and reach for your laptop, before her hand
closes on yours. "Leave the laptop." She
orders, and you shrug as you leave to pack
your bags for the class tomorrow.

As you leave her room, you hear the sound
of swooshing doors of the main menu theme
and a guard shouting the familiar words to
a certain Parker...

"HOLD IT, MINER!"

You turn round and see Summer-Rain
looking away from you at the ceiling, her
mouth in mock whistling. "Better red than
dead, huh Summer?"

She beams back at you.

RED FACTION.

Pros
-Good story
-Fun mechanics
-Variety of weapons.

Cons
-No auto save feature, only manual saves.
-The sneaking around missions are tedious

Neutral
-People talking to you can be drowned by the action around.

Tips
-Use the purefaction patch to be able to play in widescreen and at an higher resolution than the game allows (make sure to dowload the beta, this is the only version that works with steam. Check out the guide in the community section for more info)
-Lock the framerate to 60. Anything higher and it will cause some game breaking bugs.

Still a classic. Grab it and have fun.

What happens when you mix the first Half-Life game with the original Total Recall movie (1990)? The first game on the Red Faction franchise featured a narrative and playable style very similar to Valve's first title and was set on a martian colony in a dystopian future like the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

PROS:

- Solid gameplay (very similar to the first Half-Life with a low gravity twist thanks to the martian surface).
- Non-Stop levels (the maps doesn't count with a "beginning" or "end" per se, just like the first Half-Life game).
- Multiple fully controllable aerial, marine and land vehicles (each one counts with a precise control and multiple weapons/modes of fire).
- Lots of cool futuristic weapons (each one with its corresponding primary and secondary fire mode).
- Multiple ways to reach an objetive or location (alternatives routes prevent the game to be fully lineal).
- Destructible enviroments (the Geo-Mod Technology allows you to use this to your advantage for destroying enemy cover, finding secrets, create shortcuts, alternative routes, etc).
- Some great graphical aspects for its age (dynamic lighting and water effects).
- Despite its age, the Multiplayer game mode remains active with more than 30 servers with players (at the moment of writing this review).

CONS:

- Given the Non-Stop character of the maps, the game does not save your progress automatically (there is no Auto-Save, so you have to be very aware to Quick-Save from time to time. Also, you only have one Quick-Save slot, so you have to know when and where to do it).
- some dialogue and characters are cliche and even generic (from my POV).
- The IA tends to cheat towards the end of the game, firing weapons that pass through walls/cover out of your vision range (although some weapons allows you to do the same thing).
- A little short.

If you liked the first Half-Life game regarding narrative, design, shooting mechanics and adding that you can control several vehicles, plus the atmosphere of the original Total Recall movie (1990) you have a winner in here.

There are Mods that allows you to play the game with widescreen and modern resolutions, in addition to correct some bugs (although i played the original Steam version).

My Score: 7.6/10

Note: Played it on Windows XP - SP3

Really awesome game, amazing mechanics and graphics for its time, I mean it has a fully destructible map, most modern shooters don't have that, well worth the price, here are some guides you need to do if you're running this on a modern rig though. Use this guide if you're planning to play this game on a modern Windows 7 computer because the base game is a mess when it comes to that http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=187911016

Memories.

Total Recall: The Video Game.

A great game despite its age . And this maybe, I guess is the first game to introduce, destructive buildings and objects. Although, I started playing new games I got addicted to the game until I finished it, if you dont mind dated graphics, you must try it and the gameplay and mechanics are awesome for its age. In this game you can drive submarines and jeep at some points which was a surprise as I didnt expect it. The story is good but , not great, The protagonist seems a bit hot-headed guy at some points who only wants revenge . The AI could act foolish sometimes, but that dosent matter much to me. The enemies get harder to kill as you progress through the story, and new and overpowered Weapons are unlocked and its always fun to blow walls and things up with the rocket launcher.And the music of the game is also great, really matches the mood of the game.
And the great part is the multiplayer is still alive after all these years, although only 10-11 players , but after getting the pure faction mod you can get more players and more new maps to join.

Now my conclusion is: Its a must play for those who like old-school FPS games , and I would also recommend others to give it a shot , A great game overall . I give it a 9/10.

Make a living wage mining on Mars!
Kill Corporate Thugs!
Contribute to a communist uprising!
Dig tunnels with explosives!
This game has it all!