Red Faction II

"An awesome single player campaign"

Red Faction 2 is a solid console FPS and it has one of the best single player campaign I have ever seen.

Story: 6/10

Red Faction 2 story has nothing to do with the original game. The game doesn't take place on Mars, Ultor doesn't exist anymore and there's no miner revolt. Instead, the action takes place on earth and you are part of an elite commando who must assassinate a dictator after being betrayed by him.. His name is Sopot and he is the chancellor of the Commonwealth. The guy looks like a mix of Mr. Bison from Street Fighters and Joseph Stalin. To execute him, your elite squad will join with the Red factions who are now fighting Sopot because he uses nano technologies developed on Mars. This is the only link to the original game.

Graphics: 9/10

This is where Red Faction 2 really shines. Except for the normal PS2 ''jaggies'', the graphics are awesome. The level design is impressing. You get to fight inside buildings, on rooftops, in the street, down in the sewers, inside a gigantic cathedral and even in the air. The designers created more than a hundred different character models. Red Faction 2 has nearly 50 different bad guys model, from fat police officers and soldiers wearing camouflage to high tech elite snipers. There are dozens of different looking civilians and Red Faction members as well. They also all have unique face design. This is a huge step from the original Red faction that featured guys wearing blue or red envirosuits and ugly face models. The overall animation of the character is also greatly improved.

Music: 6/10

The music in Red Faction 2 is average, the only good memorable songs are the ones that could already be heard in the original game. In 2 years, they couldn't come up with something new. Maybe they should hire an another guy to compose the music in Red Faction 3.

Sounds: 8/10

The game has professional voice acting and it's very good most of the time. The enemies are also less repetitive in Red faction 2, you won't hear ''It's you and me miner!'' every 2 seconds. The weapons, explosions and ambient sounds are nice. For those who are wondering, the enemies still scream and run like wussies if you stick an explosive charge to their uniform.

Gameplay: 10/10

This is where Red Faction 2 really got to me, the gameplay is excellent. The game is fun and challenging from the beginning to the end. Unlike in the first game, the levels are now well separated and you can go back to replay any of them without restarting a new game. Each level has a primary objective, and a few bonus ones which you have to figure out by yourself. This add much replay value. Completing bonus objectives will raise your ''heroic level'' and killing civilians lowers it. This will determine which ending you get once you complete the game.

The first Red Faction really created much hype about the geo-modification system, but it wasn't used much. Sure, you could blast around a door if you didn't have the key, but wait a minute...there was no a locked door in Red Faction anyway! You could also dig a long tunnel, but there was no strategic reason to do so and it was a waste of explosives. Halfway in Red Faction the geo-mod completely disappeared and all walls were made of solid metal. Red Faction 2 geo-mod is always present in the single player campaign, but it's more subtle and realistic. There are no signboards that say ''Use geo-mod here'' like in the first game. That's how a like it.

The first game also made much fuss about being able to use vehicles, but they were very rare and their use was limited. Red Faction 2 gives us even less freedom with the vehicles, but we get more action. You first get to play as the gunner of a gunship and a tank. Then later you can fully control a battle armor and a submarine. These vehicle levels are quite entertaining, especially the tank ride.

The controls can be customized and the fine aiming from the first game is gone. The auto aiming was also taken out. So now all the aiming must be done using the analog sticks.

The level design is superior to the original game in my opinion. The places you get to explore are small and full of enemies while the original game had huge empty spaces. Unfortunately, the enemies respawn on some level and this can be very annoying.

Red faction 2 offers a large variety of weapons; pistols, submachine guns, assault rifle, sniper rifle, rocket launcher. It's now possible to throw grenades without unequiping your weapon, this is very useful. The game also let you to use dual pistol and machine pistol.

The multiplayer aspect of the game is almost identical to the first Red faction. For some weird reasons, the geo-mod was taken out of the multiplayer maps. The only things that you can blow up are obvious walls and doors blocking the access to weapon caches. Also, while the game as 40 multiplayer maps, only 8 of them are available for my favorite game; capture the flag. I don't understand the logic behind this.

Overall: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/27/02, Updated 10/27/02