Good Story that has an interesting plot that makes you feel for the miners. I would say 2nd best of the Red Faction Series behind Red Faction Guerilla. One of the first games to introduce destructable enviroments. Good selection of weapons that are very fun to use on enemies and the enviroment. Fun and immersive gameplay. Is linear but not is a hindrance.

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

There is a lot to say about this game, both good and bad. This game has a lot of design elements that aren't seen any more in other shooter franchises, for better or for worse. Seeing this game's multiplayer years ago during the early days of Counter Strike, I was enthralled by its advanced destruction physics and somewhat detailed gibs. Playing through the single player again recently, I nociced how fresh and different the weapon behaviours were.

The gameplay is fast and brutal, the enemies don't have a lot of health, and they have weapons that can rip you apart in an instant, encouraging players to play either carefully, or agressively. The weapons sound very meaty and are very satisfying to fire. There are also the inclusion of NPCs that react to your actions, either firing at them, pulling your weapon out, or approaching certain NPCs with an injury. In a way, there is a lot to be compared to Half-Life 1 with the fast, brutal encounters, the linearity with some tribute paid to exploration, the interactive NPCs, and the general Sci-Fi theme. What sets it apart though, are the advanced destruction physics which allows you to blow open walls and structures, sometimes revealing secret passages or shortcuts, giving players a feeling of agency.

However, there are plenty of issues that hold this game back, the most noteable of which is the pathfinding AI, which frequently gets enemy NPCs stuck on geometry or simply shut-down, turning them into still statues until you start shooting at them. The stealth sections felt crowbared in as a very flimsy excuse to reset the player inventory for each act, and they are not very compelling or properly implemented as the enemy AI creates scenarios where stealthing through each section are nigh impossible. It is often better to just run through the enemies, as they're too inaccurate to land enough hits on you to kill you, or blow through them, as they provide more than enough supplies when they die. Not only that, the stealth sections are programmed so that you can never fall below 1 health. Another thing is that the weapons that the enemies use during the third act of the game pretty much makes it so that the best way to get through a section would be to save-scum after every encounter, since the snipers can shoot at you through walls with their Rail-Drivers and it's extremely random whether they would hit or not. There's also the weak major boss battles where the only weapon capable of defeating them is the flamethrower, and the ending which throws an arrow guessing game at you at random instead of an epic battle. One more final thing that holds this game back is that, unlike Half Life 1, the graphics and model quality simply didn't age well.

Despite its flaws though, there is a very good game underneath and I feel that had Volition had more time to polish and do QA testing, this game would be able to stand abreast of Half Life 1 as a landmark piece of gaming curios. Do I recommend this game? Definitely! There is a lot to like about this game, and for just $9.99 you can definitely do a worse than play this game. If you decide to pick this game up though, it is imperative that you download and install the Pure Faction 3.0 patch and the Pure Faction 3.0c beta update, as it adds a ton of fixes that improves the experience immensely, like widescreen resolution support and mouse raw input.

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

Cons
-No auto save feature, only manual saves.
-The sneaking around mission 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.

Not bad.