Red Faction (PC)
Ah yes, Red Faction. A game which spawned the idea of "Hey, what if we could destroy our environments at will rather than as a scripted event?" On the surface, it's quite intriguing, and I think it's one of those concepts that if done well, could really enhance, and at the same time, break a game. "Hmmm, there's a door that is locked. Lets destroy it!"
Unfortunately, RF does not really utilize this feature to its potential. There are a few areas which do help the game when destroying your environment, but the game never uses it enough to make it feel worthwhile. The game easily could have used those areas as a required area to destroy the environment, and it would not have made a difference in the overall game design. Sure, there are some areas where you can actually create access to certain areas, but this isn't a game where you even feel compelled to do so. It normally would feel like a chore, rather than a necessity in the design of the environments. Not to mention I already think the level design is decent enough to get the job done without really needing destructible environments. Again, non-destructive environments would not have changed the core design of the game in the end. It's mostly there for the sake of being there, and not challenging the full use of what you can do with your environment. Maybe the sequels have addressed this (I haven't played the others, so can't comment)?
Besides the lack of commitment towards destructive environments though, there are some good things about the game in general. Like I said, I think the level design has overall held up, but it is not without fault. There are still some areas towards the end where it feels like a mishmash of go to this area to unlock something, but unlike some games of its area, this one just doesn't feel rewarding. I understand the game is meant to be pseudo-open world ala Halo, but it doesn't feel like it benefits from that part of the design. But again, the game design is fine, but it tries to make it feel both open world with the destructive environment, and yet linear in that "do this at point A to get to point B." There isn't enough variety to make it feel it's utilizing its full potential. It's almost as though it doesn't know what it wants to be: Linear, or Open-world.
Two aspects of the game though that I do like are the weapons, as well as the soundtrack. Having not played this in well over a decade, I'd forgotten how good the music is. It's both incredibly atmospheric, and also really fits the design of the game. Naturally, it does reminiscent the likes of Total Recall, but it presents its own unique taste for its Mars location. The guns are also good, although I think the shotgun in this game is one of the most useless weapons, although part of that fault has to do with the A.I. More on that later. As good as some of the weapons are though, there are some things with regards to aiming that I think would give STALKER a run for its money in what is actually better. The Pistol, despite its great punch, suffers from endless times when you're aiming directly at someone, and the bullets sort of following their own trajectory rather than where you're actually aiming.
A lot of these aiming issues stem from the terribly aged A.I. I feel like the enemies of Ultor where taught in the school of serpentine, zigzagging back and forth constantly to the point where it sometimes is impossible to aim at them. Out of all the issues Red Faction has, the A.I. is the single worst part of it. The enemies are simply not that good, nor have they aged that well either. And keep in mind, this was a play through on Medium difficulty. Not as bad, but still worth noting though is the bugs/glitches in the game. On a modern system, there are frequent hitches, and stutters throughout the game, plus for some reason, I was unable to cap the frame rate at 60fps, so it was running at over 100fps. For some, this is fine, but for starters, I only have a 60Hz monitor, so any additional frames are irrelevant. Also, Red Faction was never designed to run beyond 60fps, so some aspects of the game run effectively in fast forward. There's one section where you disengage a submarine to drop it into the water, but because of the high frame rate, the submarine falls too fast, and simply explodes. There's also the issue during cut-scenes where the syncing of the mouths and voices do not match, so there's a delay of the voices when the lips are moving.
Overall, I was glad to revisit this, but I also believe Red Faction is in dire need of an overhaul, practically a remaster at this point. RF: Guerrilla has been reMARstered, so why not the original one that started it all? It would also be nice to update the game for native widescreen, so the field of view is not simply stretched. Seeing as I have a 1080p standard widescreen monitor, 1280x1024 is the highest non-widescreen resolution I can use (I've used this in other older games such as Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and MOH: Allied Assault. As a side note, some folks say to just force the game to run in your native resolution, but I do not like stretching the image so everyone looks fat and wide. You're not making anything look better except to simply fill the screen. So you have black bars on the side. Get over it.
All in all, I would like to try out the later Red Faction games, including Guerrilla since it feels more in line with the original vision of destroying everything, plus simply doing anything you want. Sounds like right up my alley.
