Red Faction

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Red Faction
Developer(s)	Volition
Publisher(s)	THQ
Engine	GeoMod technology
Release date(s)	May 22, 2001 (PS2)
Genre(s)	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: Mature (M), BBFC: 15
Platform(s)	PS2, Microsoft Windows, N-Gage, Mac, Mobile Phone
Media	CD (2), DVD

Red Faction is a first-person shooter computer game that was released in 2001 for the PlayStation 2 and PC by THQ and Volition. It features online play in deathmatch and capture the flag modes. It uses a master server to facilitate online play.

Monkeystone Games developed a version of Red Faction for the N-Gage that was published by THQ in December 2003. It has some features exclusive to the N-Gage version, but is also greatly trimmed down in other ways.

The premiere feature of the game was its "GeoMod" technology which allowed the player to destroy the geography in the game. For example, instead of opening a door, a player could blast through the rock surrounding the door.

Red Faction came out of the ashes of the cancelled Descent 4 project that Volition had been working on. Many ideas that were originally for Descent 4 can be found in Red Faction, for example, Red Faction's 'GeoMod' graphics engine was supposed to be used in Descent 4, and the main character, Parker, was borrowed from Descent 4 as well.

Contents 1 Storyline 2 Characters 3 Weapons 4 Vehicles 5 GeoMod 6 Online Multiplayer 7 The cheat code controversy 8 Sequel 9 External links

[edit] Storyline

Red Faction takes place on Mars in the 24th century. Earth’s minerals are being depleted and humans need more of them to survive. The Ultor Corporation runs the mining operation on Mars. The living conditions are deplorable and a disease called "The Plague" is running rampant throughout the colony. The player takes on the role of a miner named Parker, who witnesses the spark that starts the rebellion. Parker traverses through the Ultor complex, eliminating any resistance Ultor throws at him. Ultor then calls upon mercenaries to help them in their fight against the miners. He then meets Capek, the scientist who created "The Plague", fights and kills him, and takes a shuttle to a space station to deactivate a laser defense system so the force Earth is sending doesn't get shot down. After going through the mercenary base, Parker fights Masako, the mercenary leader. But Masako has activated a bomb that would destroy the entire base. Eos is tied to the bomb, which Parker deactivates. The Earth Defense Force shows up just in time, and eliminates the remaining mercenaries.

In chronological order, with every event accounted for, the plot of the series takes place as follows:

• Ultor Corporation is founded. It then persuades people into becoming miners by using propaganda, at which point they are slaves to the corporation, who have exclusive mining rights on the planet.
• Capek starts research with Nano-Tech, is shunned by people on Earth, relocates to Mars and performs numerous experiments on people, especially miners. Causes a disease known as the Plague.
• Miners instigate rebellion known as "Red Faction" under the guise of being a sports team.
• Hendrix starts to spy on Ultor, helps Red Faction without them knowing.
• Parker is trained and initiated into the Red Faction.
• Rebellion starts, Gryphon decides to defect.
• Parker takes Gryphon to Orion, who in turn takes him to the Red Faction.
• Parker is told to find Capek, as he possesses the cure for the Plague. He finally catches up with him in his lab and shoots him down, with Eos's help. While dying, Capek sets the lab to self destruct. Eos gives Parker a computer disk with which to contact the Earth Defence Force. Eos is left behind and escapes the Lab with the antidote.

• Mercenaries are dispatched to stop the rebellion.
• Parker contacts the EDF fleet, which decides to mobilise to liberate the miners.
• Parker travels to the space station controlling the laser satellite network, capable of destroying the EDF fleet.
• Mercs raid the Red Faction base and capture Eos.
• Parker destroys the space station.
• Mercenaries set up a bomb to destroy the entire complex.
• Parker and Hendrix fight their way through the Merc base to disarm the bomb.
• Masako kills Hendrix.
• Parker kills Masako.
• Parker defuses bomb and rescues Eos.
• The EDF fleet comes to Mars to rescue the miners.
• Most of the Red Faction returns to Earth, many to the commonwealth, along with Eos, who disappears.

[edit] Characters

• Parker — The main character, who witnesses the start of the rebellion.
• Eos — The leader of the Red Faction resistance. She helps Parker periodically throughout the game over radio transmissions.
• Hendrix — An Ultor technician who works on the inside to help you. Hendrix is killed by Masako's mercenaries.
• Masako — The leader of the mercenary unit sent to kill all Red Faction resistance fighters and miners.
• Capek — An Ultor scientist who started "The Plague" and works on nanotechnology.
• Gryphon — An executive at Ultor. Parker kidnaps him and takes him to Eos, though he was secretly sympatetic to the rebel cause.
• Davis — Administrator of Ultor. Appears very briefly.
• Orion — A minor leader of Red Faction.

[edit] Weapons

All weapons developed by Ultor start with a "U". The four other weapons are only carried by the mercenaries and presumably brought from Earth.

• USP-16 Ultor 12mm Semi-Automatic Pistol — A standard pistol. It has a high rate of fire and a large, 16 bullet magazine. The secondary fire attaches/removes a silencer.
• UBS-4 Ultor Riot Body Shield — A shield that protects you from gunfire. The "firing" function of this weapon is a shield bash, It will shatter if it takes too much damage through enemy attacks or shield bashing.
• UCB-24 Ultor Control Baton — A weapon that can be swung or used to electrically incapacitate people.
• URC-15 Ultor Remote Mining Charge — An adhesive explosive charge that will adhere to anything. (infantry, walls, etc.) As its name implies it can be remotely detonated. It can be used against infantry, vehicles, and to clear debris.
• UHG-90 Ultor Offensive Hand Grenade — Can be thrown with a 4 second timer or to detonate on contact.
• UAS-10 Ultor Automatic Combat Shotgun — Primary fire uses a double shot of 10 ga. buckshot, while secondary fire fires a round every 0.15 seconds.
• UAP-32/20 Ultor Submachine Gun — Rapid fire short-range combat firearm, can fire either 12mm bullets (30 per magazine) or 5.56 mm bullets (20 per magazine).
• UAR-42 Ultor Military Assault Rifle — Primary fire uses a three-round burst, while secondary is full-auto. It holds 42 5.56 mm rounds per magazine. Firing single shots with secondary fire offers no accuracy advantage over the primary fire because the accuracy of secondary fire does not degrade as more bullets are fired, it is inaccurate from the first shot.
• USG-50 Ultor Sniper Rifle — A standard sniper rifle, outfitted with an UNVS-8 12x scope. It fires APFSDS rouds at a high velocity, from a six round magazine.
• URL-6T 'Big Earl' Ultor Tactical Rocket Launcher — Holds 6 rockets. Primary fire fires rockets with no lock-on. Secondary fire enables heat-seeking.
• FCA-26 Magnetic Rail Driver — A portable railgun, able to shoot through any solid object or even multiple objects in succession. The secondary fire allows you to see use infrared imaging to see silhouettes of people through walls and objects to find enemies. It kills enemies instantly regardless of the area of body hit (although sometimes it will leave the enemy with less than 10 hitpoints if shot in the leg or foot). It is a type of rail gun that fires a metal slug at hyper-fast velocities.
• JF60-HMG/BF Heavy Suppression Machine Gun — A belt-fed machine gun, with 99 7.62mm rounds per belt. Primary fire is full auto, while the secondary fire is slower, but posesses greater accuracy.
• UFT-1 Ultor Flame Thrower — This flamethrower shoots a stream of napalm that sticks on contact. The secondary fire allows the player to throw the canister as an explosive device. Secondary fire will cause an explosion just as large and damaging whether the canister is full or nearly empty. So for maximum resource efficiency, secondary fire is best used just before one runs out of ammo.
• MK/SG-1 Defender Precision Rifle — A highly accurate and fast-firing semi-automatic rifle used by the mercenaries. It is outfitted with a scope and fires 5.56mm explosive rounds. Each magazine holds 20 bullets.
• F-1TL Fusion Rocket Launcher — The largest handheld weapon in the game and takes up the right half of the player's view. It shoots a large shell that does tremendous damage, with a huge blast radius (which can also harm you) at the cost of a significant reload time.

[edit] Vehicles

• Drill Machine — A large vehicle usually used to carve out caves. Can short out electric fields.
• All Terrain Vehicle — A basic jeep, outfitted with a mounted GX240 medium class machine gun in the back.
• Submarine — A submersible used to get around underwater. Uses ULT-MK1 thermal guided torpedoes as weapons.
• Aesir Fighter — A nimble aircraft armed with ULT-AR4 Steeleye Tandem Warhead rockets and an ULT-8CG 30mm vulcan cannon.
• Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) — A large military-grade tracked vehicle used to transport soldiers and, in Ultor's case, mercenaries. Armed with a 20mm ULT-6AG vulcan cannon and a ULT-80mm mortar.

[edit] GeoMod

One of the main "selling points" of Red Faction was the game engine's GeoMod technology, which allowed players to significantly alter and otherwise affect the surrounding terrain and buildings, either with explosives or otherwise. Past games had allowed limited alteration of the environment through scripted means, or special triggered areas which would add or remove certain predefined level elements. Red Faction was the first game to allow players relatively limitless level-altering possibilities. In fact, many of the areas in the first few levels, such as a hidden underground lake, serve little purpose other than showcasing the capabilities of the GeoMod technology.

GeoMod allows the player to alter (and destroy) the environment so significantly because of the way it designates altered (or "GeoModded") areas. Whereas other game engines would have to modify the shape of the altered object to create a similar effect, GeoMod creates special objects which represent empty space. When, for example, an explosion blows a hole in a rock wall, the GeoMod technology creates an "empty space" object which is the approximate size and shape of the explosion. The training level uses a much larger "empty space" object than the rocket launcher is able to produce in other circumstances, simply because tunnelling is required to complete part of the level.

The use of these "empty space" objects is not limited to in-game environment alteration. Some of the objects in the game, such as the wastebaskets found in certain office areas, are stored as one solid shape with another "empty space" shape defined within it.

Geomod has become popular in multiplayer as players tend to build "tunnels" with explosive weapons. This is done by repeatedly shooting a wall with the rocket launcher or using the remote detonators (or occasionally the fusion rocket launcher and grenades). Some players build tunnels for an advantage because they could hide in them and use a sniper to pick off enemies. In CTF games, players build tunnels as a shortcut into an enemy base to gain an advantage in capturing their flags.

One of the main criticisms of the game was inconsistency in the use of GeoMod, mostly owing to the design limitations of linear first-person shooter. Where the game needed to halt the player's progress, locked doors and appropriate nearby walls were invulnerable to attack; players were not allowed to circumvent the obstruction using their own initiative, except in a few cases presumed to be glitches. Other, less justifiable inconsistencies in the use of GeoMod could be found in the game; some players noted how it was possible to blow holes in the rocky caverns of the mines, yet at the same time the partitions in office cubicles were completely indestructible. Despite these and other GeoMod issues in the singleplayer game, critics were essentially unanimous in their praise of the system in multiplayer matches. For example, in the warlords mutliplayer level, players could create caves using rocket launchers.

In the extras menu there was also a small level called "Glass House" which allowed you to create endless tunnels and caverns and really experiment with the Geo-Mod technology more than you could in any other part of the game.

[edit] Online Multiplayer

Red Faction's included online multiplayer game component is popular among fans of the game, but suffers from numerous technical issues. At the forefront of the issues is the lack of server-side dominance; a running multiplayer server will accept most data given to it by any connected players (information like player position and ammo counts) without checking to see if that data is permissible or possible under the rules the server is using. Initially this allowed for numerous cheats and exploits (e.g. players who can fly, walk through walls, automatic fire for all weapons, and so on) to be used on multiplayer servers, in some cases unintentionally. The version 1.2 patch was produced shortly after the game's initial release to fix some of these issues, but numerous exploits and cheats are still possible even with the patch applied. No further official patches have been released for the game, though a subsequent, third-party, "version 1.3" patch was released which addresses most of the remaining exploits left in version 1.2. Nonetheless the Red Faction online multiplayer community remains at a low and still-shrinking level of activity.

[edit] The cheat code controversy

According to some players, the PlayStation 2 addition of Red Faction was rumored to have "cheat codes". However, the cheat codes posted on some websites were fakes. Most allegedly involved going into the menu by pressing start and pressing the required buttons until Parker says, "Cheater," turning the main menu blue and causing a cheat menu to appear. However, many Red Faction players complained that the code never worked. As a result, most websites offering cheat codes now show only the codes that are obtainable through GameShark.

[edit] Sequel

Main article: Red Faction II

The sequel was released for PlayStation 2 in October 2002, and then PC, Xbox, and GameCube. Unlike Red Faction it did not receive the greatest hits title. It takes place on Earth and tells the story of a group of super soldiers including the main character who were physically enhanced by the nanotechnology originally developed by Capek on Mars. Aside from that tenuous link, the only relation to the original Red Faction is the presence of nano-technology, the name "Red Faction", and the organization Ultor. Red Faction II does not support network gaming, but provides some multiplayer-style games with 'bots'.

[edit] External links

• Red Faction, official site from Volition
• Red Faction II, official site
• Codename: Iron Sun - a special-operations modification for Red Faction
• IGN review
• Red Faction at MobyGames
• Red Faction at Levels 4 You - One of the largest surviving Red Faction Communities with over 3900 Red Faction files to download.
• Speed Demos Archive Speedrun of Red Faction.