|
|
| Post Number: 1
|
Leisher 
Top 3%, yo.
Group: Super Administrators
Posts: 26651
Joined: May 2004
|
 |
Posted on: Nov. 30 2010,07:00 |
|
   |
Red Faction -
You are a miner on Mars and very oppressed by the corrupt government. While mining a rebellion breaks out and you become their big gun.
This is an FPS that was really pushed due to it's environment. The claim was you could blow up anything. That's true as long as you're blowing up things in your linear path...except doors.
This was a late 90s game so expect limitations in the graphics and sound.
Decent game for its time, and despite showing its age, its still ok to run through once. Although, it does suffer from some flaws. A few:
1. No autosave
2. Ridiculously hard boss battles...until you learn the trick, then they're ridiculously easy.
3. Horrible AI that spawns enemies and makes some of them expert marksmen.
A retro FPS that'd be worth grabbing as part of a package deal or under $3.
Red Faction 2 -
Red Faction had you playing a miner named Parker in the desolate Martian landscape. In RF2 you play as Alias the demolitions man on an elite special forces team tasked with taking down a dictator named Sepot.
First things first, I have no idea where this storyline came from. The original is never mentioned and Mars (if the game is even set there) went from desolate landscape to urban jungle. This is the Halloween 3: Season of the Witch of the Red Faction series.
The story is written really badly too. An example of that is the two big name actors they hired to do voiceovers, Jason Statham and Lance Henricksen, are barely in the majority of the game, and half the game is about one of them!
Again, destructible environments are the big selling point, and again, it works only on the linear path the game walks you down.
Like the original, a few variations are thrown in to change up the pace. For example, you'll be the gunner in an airship and pilot a sub. The sub moments being the absolute worst parts of the game. The game begins getting choppy during those scenes and sub control is ridiculous (Hint: when fighting other subs, just climb up and down constantly while firing and you'll win.).
The boss fights in this one are similar to Red Faction, crazy hard until you learn the trick, and then they're simple. Even so, I reached a point late in the game where I got bored with fighting the same mutated super soldiers over and over and over again that I turned on the super health cheat and walked to the end of the game. It just got too boring and I have a ton of other games on my PC waiting to be played.
I guess it's a good time killer if you have nothing else going on and you've beaten all the other games you own. Otherwise, you can skip it.
I just realized this was released 4 years after Half-Life and doesn't come close to that experience. Ouch.
Red Faction: Guerrilla -
Mars is a desolate landscape again...but I'm currently playing it so I'll save the full review.
Early impressions:
-It's obviously a console port.
-The driving controls are terrible.
-They have left the FPS genre.
-This is essentially GTA on Mars.
-The story is MUCH improved over RF2.
-The destructible environment has really improved.
-Fun so far despite its flaws.
|
 |
|
|
| Post Number: 2
|
Leisher
Top 3%, yo.
Group: Super Administrators
Posts: 26651
Joined: May 2004
|
|
Posted on: Dec. 22 2010,06:32 |
|
 |
So RF:Guerrilla wound up being a pretty decent game. I'd recommend it for folks who like the Grand Theft Auto style game play.
The driving is still bad, but it's not bad enough to be a deal killer. You'll get around, and there will even be moments where you feel like you've mastered it. That's when the terrain and cars will change and you'll be cursing it again.
By the way, apparently when RF: Armageddon gets released a Red Faction movie will also come out the same day. The bad news for RF fans being that it's a SyFy movie...
Edited by Leisher on Dec. 22 2010,06:34
|
|
|
|
| Post Number: 3
|
Leisher
Top 3%, yo.
Group: Super Administrators
Posts: 26651
Joined: May 2004
|
|
Posted on: Feb. 20 2013,07:04 |
|
|
RF: Guerrilla was a ton of fun, so I was really looking forward to playing RF: Armageddon.
Sadly, RF:A was a huge step backwards for the franchise. I spent weeks playing the open world RF:G because there was so much to do, and the world was so interesting.
RF:A is just a linear shooter with RF's trademark destructible...most things...
The best way to describe this is as follows:
Picture yourself at your local indoor mall. You're allowed to go anywhere and do anything you want. Sure, there's a limit, but that limit is the edge of the parking lot. Don't worry though, later in the game we take you to a new mall. That's RF:G. RF:A takes place in one of the anchor stores of the first mall and never leaves.
So right out of the gate, that's a huge disappointment that the game has to overcome with me. Spoiler alert: It doesn't.
The story has you on Mars as Darius Mason (yes, he's OP) and you're tasked with stopping a terrorist named Hale from fucking with the Terraformer. Things don't go perfectly, and you wind up doing a salvage job later on. The salvage job also goes south when you release these monsters from the middle of Mars onto an unsuspecting population. You spend the rest of the game trying to re-cork that bottle.
The enemies in this game really suck. The humans(?) you fight all wear the same armor, and look more like aliens than humans. However, they're only around for a few missions. The majority of the game is spent fighting the monsters who come in basically four flavors: Ant (big and small), big if a human fucked a grasshopper looking thing (red - shoots spikes, yellow - shoots bombs, gray - shoots electricty), tentacles, and hulk (fire and non-fire).
The worst part of the game, however, is the writing and pacing. It starts off with a less than friendly introduction to who you are and what to do. In fact, if you're never played any RF games, I cannot imagine a less friendly opening. It assumes you've played the previous ones. Anyway, the opening fight leading to your salvage job is weak, as is the reason behind the salvage job, which sets up the whole game. The two worst parts of the writing and pacing are...
SPOILERS
-The death of a character that is one of the most telegraphed deaths in gaming history. It's also one of the most ridiculous. Let me put it like this: You're in enemy territory. You're surrounded by hostiles. You are ACTIVELY fighting them. That's probably not the best time to stop fighting and have a personal moment... Terrible writing. It sucks too because the character killed was one of the best things about the game.
-The main bad guy? Killed by you about halfway through, and if you blink you'll miss it. Not a joke. The main monster? Dead about 80% into the game. Guess what that means for the ending?
-If you guessed waves of enemies, you win a pat on the back. This is an odd choice because up til now, the whole game has been about standing your ground and killing all the enemies until they stop spawning, then move forward. (There might have been one exception to this rule.) The end game actually lasted a bit longer for me because I was waiting for the spawn to end. Had I known I just had to move to a certain point to start the "hang on until this finishes booting" bullshit, I would have ended the game 10 minutes earlier, and with more ammo.
END SPOILERS
This is a competent game with decent graphics, solid weapons, and as a stand alone, I'd give it more wiggle room. However, this is the fourth game in a franchise. For them to make what is essentially Doom with destructible objects (not environments) after the previous game was a great GTA type open world game, well it's inexcusable.
If you have played the previous games, and just enjoy the world of RF, grab this game at $5 or less. If you haven't played an RF game, skip it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
