Andy Laub

I realized after posting that I left a major sore point out of my diatribe regarding Red Faction. It’s true that I found the game to be somewhat difficult (even compared to the similar Saints Row) for reasons mentioned, but honestly that wouldn’t have been such an issue if the game had a better system in place for checkpoints and mission restarts.

When I fail a mission/objective in a game, my first thought is okay, how much progress did I lose? In some instances I am pleasantly surprised, but Red Faction is not one of those instances. I can recall exactly two times where failing a mission allowed me to restart from a checkpoint instead of at the beginning. In all other cases, the game doesn’t even quickly revert to the beginning of the mission, but to your pre-mission status. I suppose it does this to let you (re-)prepare adequately for the mission (assuming you weren’t the previous time), but I don’t think that option is important enough to justify this as the default behavior.

I wrote about this a looooong time ago, but a big gripe I had about Gran Turismo 3 was that when you failed a licensing objective (admittedly a small part of the game), you were unable to immediately retry. I disagree with this (and apparently so did the GT time because they fixed it in Gran Turismo 4), and will continue to assert that the default option after mission failure is to immediately restart from the last checkpoint (or the beginning, assuming no points have been checked). Games difficult enough to require multiple efforts to complete an objective (ie. all of them) that don’t follow this rule are generally stupid and wrong.

Minor secondary forgotten gripe: the load times are pretty painful.

As if it’s not abundantly clear, I’m apparently back in the proverbial video game saddle, as they now consume a good portion of my free time. My Fallout 3 mania has pretty much run its course and has given way to a couple of other distractions, in no particular order:

• Fallout: New Vegas
• Red Faction: Guerilla
• Rock Band 3

I’m not going to talk about Rock Band right now, except to say that when played as a game it’s on the unfun, grinding side of the spectrum, whereas when played as a diversion (that is: with people) it remains one of the best things ever. And while I’m sure I’ll eventually have a lot more to say about New Vegas, I’m only about an hour into it so that’s best left on the back burner for now.

So let’s talk about Red Faction. It’s one of those weird games that kind of clawed its way to the edge of my radar and just hung there, refusing to leave until I gave it the attention it felt was deserved (see also: Indigo Prophecy). My initial take after playing the demo was “Saints Row on Mars” given that the developer and scope of the game are the same, just with a different setting and protagonist. To be fair, I prefer the controls of Red Faction to those of its ghetto brother in that it uses the triggers for driving instead of one of the face buttons.

The premise of Red Faction is certainly intriguing: you’re a demolitions expert (I guess?) on Mars, helping a group of rebels overthrow the corrupt and abusive government. So far it’s nothing that hasn’t been done before on a million other planets, but this game’s novelty comes from its completely destructible scenery. Smashing some buildings around with your hammer is pretty neat. Also blowing them up.

But after that, the game becomes a chore. A minority of the missions are enjoyable, but for the most part I often found myself asking “why me?” I’m some random guy who just came to Mars to keep a low pro with my bro bro my head down and live with my brother. Then my brother gets killed up and suddenly I’m the savior for this entire guerrilla movement that I wasn’t even aware of until five minutes ago. I have no special qualities but the Red Faction is sending me, alone (generally), on missions that nobody in their right mind would expect one person to be able to accomplish.

I’ve had this feeling before and it’s usually found in sandbox games – even the mighty Grand Theft Auto series is guilty of it to some extent. But it stands to reason that you probably wouldn’t send some random new guy out on what you’re telling me are incredibly crucial missions for your cause without any backup whatsoever. That… makes no sense, and that’s what made the game such a drag to play through.

There are some side missions that involve you capturing or defending a checkpoint from/against the bad guys, with a little gauge on the top right that shows you how many people are left on either side. Those were fun, and felt truer to the spirit of the game than anything else, core missions included. Unfortunately, that little slice of enjoyment wasn’t able to compensate for other annoyances:

• Your max ammo count through the entire game is pathetically low. I can carry a rocket launcher around but a few extra clips for the assault rifle is too much to ask for?
• Buildings don’t always collapse when they should. That three-legged structure will surely fall after I destroy two of the legs, right? Right? Couple this with the fact that one of your main goals is to destroy certain buildings, often under heavy fire, and you have a recipe for disaster.
• The enemy solders are obscenely well-armored, further exacerbating the ammo issue.
• The guy giving you missions is the same guy from Crackdown, where he was equally annoying to listen to.

But even despite these nagging issues, I slogged through the game. I don’t know why I do that to myself; I’m sure my blood pressure goes through the roof in situations like this but I feel that because I have it I should finish it for my own sanity (see also: Dead Space). Now that I’m done, I just have two words.