Red Faction II (PS2) - Guest Post

Because the first Red Faction was so awesome and blurry, let's do it again!

"The world has abandoned us. We fight alone against an insidious enemy... an enemy who would DESTROY THE COMMONWEALTH!! ...who would have our nation crumble from within, but we are strong enough to fight the Red Faction. We are strong enough to prevail! You asked for greatness, I have given it to you. You asked for victory, it is within our grasp! Do not ask me to surrender to our enemies, I will not!"

"Don't screw up, Alias. What Chancellor Sopot wants, Chancellor Sopot gets."

We're working for Chancellor Sopot? Alrighty then. What is it that Sopot wants, exactly? Not gonna tell me? Okay, I'll work it out. Don't blame me when I get semi-skimmed instead of whole milk because you didn't say otherwise.

I start in a tiny walled off area surrounded by hills. I'm going... forward?

I stick around for a bit and big chunks of the wall are blown up by incoming rockets. The objectives text says I have to destroy some towers, so I'm shooting my alternate fire grenades wherever they'll go.

The walls fall, but I get shot to bits trying to jump on the jagged remains.

So long, buggy!

Alias is equipped with the most boring machinegun I've ever seen. Secondary fire is a grenade launcher, primary fire is a useless, slow firing, inaccurate rubbish mess. It takes up about a quarter of the screen and a quarter of a century to reload. (And you reload the machinegun and the grenades seperately.)

I'm trying to shoot whoever's in this tower, but the gun isn't making it easy. It doesn't seem like the precision aiming mode from Red Faction has made it into this game, so I'm firing magazine after magazine and hitting nothing.

There is a guy in there, I swear, he's only a pixel tall! Hey, is that a rocket to my left?

Bang.

So here we are, back in the bus again. Didn't go back to the title screen or anything!

Ignoring the helpful captions is not a good idea if you're trying to progress and it makes them feel bad.

I've given up on the automatic fire and cleared this area with just the grenade launcher. So far, only this wall directly in front of the starting position seems to be destroyable by explosions. That's rubbish.

After destroying all the towers, this guy comes along and fires at the door for a bit so I can go inside. I destroyed all those towers so you could use your guns? Why didn't you give me any explosive charges? I'm the damned demolitions guy! (According to the loading screen.)

I'm being shot at again! Where is the bugger?

Waldo's behind the crates to the left.

Step aside! Alias, demolitions! What Sopot wants, Sopot gets, and Sopot wants all these camoflaged bastards who hide behind boxes to explode.

I bet Volition put this moody room at the start of the game so that folks would use it for screenshots. It's working.

Someone's shooting at me... I killed everyone!

What?! You cowards! You were hiding in the control room next to the entrace the whole time? Why didn't you help when I first entered the room? You could have saved the lives of your comrades!

Grenades.

Anticlimactically, the wall remains perfectly intact. There doesn't even appear to be a scorchmark on it.

Next up, a crawling-through-vents section. You've got two choices: total darkness, or blinding nightvision.

On the other side of the vent I overhear two guards having a Hilarious Conversation. I don't have time to listen to them go through the motions (I'd have stayed if they had subtitles, like TimeShift, then I wouldn't have to pay attention.). I make myself known by spewing bullets everywhere except at him. He slowly swivels around the spot to face me.

I'm starting to think why Alias picked demolitions as his specialty. It's the only language these people understand.

MP picked up?

Machine pistols, for me? You shouldn't have.

No, really, you shouldn't have.

Ratatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatat! Machine pistols for everyone!

I'd prefer it if they were at all accurate, but they're lots of fun and make lots of noise. There's guys popping out around every single corner, even places I'm sure I've cleared, so I've given up aiming and started running at them.

They're running! RUN! YES, RUN from my terrible weapons!

This guy's running, but he's running into me and not shooting. Probably not the smartest guy around. That said, he's currently the second least dead person here, so he must be doing something right.

"We will sing at your funeral!"

??

I can check my objectives at any time, but without an arrow I could end up anywhere. I'm supposed to be getting something. Let's check out the mysterious corridor!

I can't believe how many times I'm getting lost in a linear game. There's little distinction between the doors that can and cannot be opened and the lifts that can and cannot be used. I'm sliding along all the walls and doors, trying everything in turn.

This is my luck: I take cover behind the one piece of destructible wall, in sight of the one rocket turret in the entire place. Before I register that whatever destroyed the wall is probably going to use the same weapon to destroy me, I get a screenshot of the rocket.

Luckily, Alias' health appears to be designed to withstand this. He's got one health bar and three health packs: lose all of one bar and you move onto the next but the damage sustained beyond your current bar is nullified. The most amount of damage any one weapon can do to you is one third of your current health. According to the manual (sorry Ray), I've also got recharging health. It takes so long to activate and works so slowly I haven't noticed it. There's health packs everywhere anyway.

I thought there was a suspiciously large number of enemy troops in here... they're just dropping in from the ceiling! I'm supposed to be opening a 'thing' and picking up a 'thing', but I don't know where that would be. I'll try to get on those walkways.

Volition forsaw that players might not immediately realise what they're supposd to be doing, so they added a caption that appears if you start heading backwards, telling you exactly what you're supposed to be shooting up here. I'm supposed to be blowing up these pink things. I had no idea.

Alias, the mega hero that he is, grabs the Amazing Nanotech Thing and runs to safety while everything explodes behind him.

Just like Mace Griffin!

And just like Mace Griffin, everything goes horribly wrong. Sopot decided that having a nano-enhanced army of super soldiers wasn't fun any more, so he made an army of 'abominations' to destroy his army of super soldiers.

The remaining super soldiers aren't too happy about being declared enemies of the state so they team up with the Red Faction, who also came to the conclusion that Sopot was a jerk independently and devised a master plan whereby the super soldiers do all the work and the Red Faction take all the credit.

No saying exactly why or how a bunch (TWO to be exact) of frustrated miners on Mars got to be so powerful and so organised that they think they have the authority and will to kill the most powerful man on whatever planet this is, or what their big plan to run the Commonwealth after he's gone is. Maybe 'Red Faction' is just a cool name that means nothing but everybody uses.

The super squad sneak up by boat and infiltrate the TV station where Sopot is broadcasting live to the nation.

"Sopot dies tonight!"

Our team of super soldiers consists of Molov: leader guy, Shrike: vehicle guy, Tangier: stealth chick, Quill: sniper chick and Repta: gun guy. Which one do you want to play as?

You picked Tangier, right? Tough. In Red Faction 2, we're stuck as Code Name: Alias, demo guy. Perhaps the most literal code name ever devised, but still nowhere near as cool as Callsign: Wildcard. It makes sense that in the Sequel To The Legendary Red Faction™, you'd play as the demolitions guy, but I hope the upcoming levels have something that I can actually destroy.

Speaking of Repta, where the hell were the other guys when Shrike and Alias were stealing the Amazing Nanotech Thing?

Repta would have loved it in there.

After gaining entry to the building, Leader Molov and Alias plot their next move in secret. We absolutely cannot and must not mess this up, for the glory of the Commonwealth!

"You! Inside! Come out with your hands up!"

Busted!

The damn idiots were hiding in a broom cupboard and talking out loud. Not the best way to plot an assassination. Here we go!

"These guys have more guts than sense."

That's nothing, Molov. Alias, the unfathomable pillock that he is, picked a grenade launcher as his standard assault weapon!

No.

What's the other thing he's got?

Oh yeah! It's the standard Red Faction pistol! Considerably less useful than last time because Alias CAN'T AIM. Nano-enhanced super soldier, my ass! You can't even aim a weapon!

Parker is shaking his head right now.

In the middle of this lobby, there's a plaque that reads:

Sopot City Communications
Victor Sopot is one crazy mother you gotta love the guy
"Through service To the State Shall We Find Peace"

I thought this room was some kind of incredibly creepy supercomputer when I entered it, but it's just a bunch of lift-shafts.

Which I immediately walk into, shoot the glass and accidentally walk right out of. Damn it, Alias!

I don't remember the controls being this unresponsive in the first game. Alias controls like you're trying to shake a loose screw out of a box. Slide the analogue sticks and Alias'll get round to it when he feels like it.

There's an obvious ladder leading right to the objective down here. It's almost as if Volition had trouble staying in the lifts too...

There's only one force more destructive than the Red Faction pistol, and that's TWO OF 'EM!

Stealth chick Tangier's popped in to help.

She very wisely keeps her head down while I set to work exploding everybody who tries to enter the room through the doors at the far end.

After a fair few minutes bouncing around, killing and re-killing everybody, I shuffle off down the corridor, through the double doors and immediately get killed by this bugger.

It's not a mistake I make twice.

Where do the stairs go? They go up.

We've reached the TV studio itself! Sopot's gotta be here!

First up, I fill the control room with fire, because I KNOW there's going to be some wise-acres in there who think they can shoot me in the back while I'm blasting the Chancellor.

Hey now, destroying the control room was a secret objective! Yay!

Eat grenade, Chancellor!

"Live, in the heart of Sopot City, inside the Public Information Building... This journalist is risking his life to broadcast from studio E-07. Where soldiers loyal to Chancellor Sopot are repelling an invasion by evil Red Faction forces."

That's odd. No Sopot. He's not here? There's MORE THAN ONE STUDIO? Gawd blimey.

Who's that talking, anyway?

"The gunman is fleeing from my position now, most likely driven off by brave Sopot forces. For those of you who have tuned in late, one of the big stories today is the heroism displayed by this reporter..."

I'm not fleeing, I'm LOST.

"This reporter cannot believe the cowardice displayed by the despicable terrorist who held him at gunpoint."

Hey, it's you!

I blow up his camera to see if that'll get him to shut up.

"This, dear viewers, is exactly what we can expect from those who follow the RED FACTION."

Stop badmouthing the Faction!

And then I turned around and shot him.

This room's tiny and full of bookcases. The enemies all just ran at me. I guess they were trying to get into cover, but they should have thought about that before running headling into machine pistol fire.

These punks in the second studio killed me because this window was totally opaque until I'd already ran past it and they shot me in the back. Blah...

I'm on the roof!

Sopot is... broadcasting from the roof then, I assume?

Shrike pops up and whines about not being able to be very useful without a gunner. And then he flies away. See you then, I guess.

It's Sopot's most eliteiest troops! They're wearing the same armour that Alias was wearing in the prologue. Are these the abominations who replaced us? They look kinda... human.

Repta doesn't give me much of a chance to look at them before he helpfully explodes them with his own grenade launcher. Thanks, dude!

More guys, more corridors, no Sopot.

These guys got stuck in their covering animation and refused to shoot me.

Outside again!

Inside again! Inside, outside! Outside, inside! I'm not getting anywhere!

Just for fun, me and this guy agree to empty two full machine pistol clips at each other at point blank range. Neither of us are visibly hurt.

I open up the final set of double doors to reveal...

That's not Sopot! That's a gunship thing!

I sit there robotically shooting grenades and hiding behind the door. It's a thrilling, thrilling boss battle. The only good thing about this is the restart point is just before you open the doors. You're a bit buggered if you don't have any grenades. You could load an earlier save, but Red Faction 2 doesn't let you save at any time. NICE.

Worst of all, that's not the end of the level. Sopot was nowhere to be found. Damn it. I did what I was supposed to do. Everybody but me is an idiot.

What could be better to relax after all that fruitless tension than an on-rails shooting section?

Even laying waste to the inside of a building is joyless when there's absolutely no chance that you'll actually accomplish something.

More floaty ships. Point the cursor on them and hold the button down, Alias.

Hooray, I blew up something. I hope it was bad, because that would be good.

I hold the up arrow to view my current objectives. 'No Objectives'. Great.

Strike and some Red Faction idiot alternate over the radio. I'm supposed to be destroying all of Sopot's forces, so the Red Faction can be doing... something. I have no clue what the context for any of this, and I really don't care at this point. I wanted to assassinate Sopot and I'm NOT DOING THAT.

This is incredibly frustrating.

And then Shrike gets us shot down by something. Incompetents, the lot of them.

Sewers. There's only been one really good sewer that I can recall in all of gaming history: the one under Hell's Kitchen in Deus Ex. You're given an objective to do, and there's loads of neat stuff down there. There's hardly anything to it and every dead end leads to another way into the secret base.

This sewer is full of dead ends. It's dark. It's empty. It's rubbish.

This ramp here looks like it leads to a ladder leading to the surface. That's not a ladder, that's just some debris that's stacked vertically. There's a passage leading off to the right, but that leads to a dead end. The dead end explodes when you stand next to it, revealing a small hole leading to another room with some pickups on a small platform. You can't get through and your grenades don't make the hole any bigger. Stupid, pointless waste of time.

Next up is the abandoned underground railway station. It's great to explore, except there's NOTHING TO EXPLORE. The only thing that's down here is an endless supply of rolling spider balls that roll towards you leap up into your face and explode. Funny the first time, tense the second time, tedious the many dozen times past that.

Have I mentioned that hardly any walls I've encountered so far have been even slightly affected by my explosives?

There's light at the end of the tunnel! Surely this must lead to something productive!

"Sopot says: Please step back to allow others to board."

Sadly, it's not Sopot himself booming down the tannoy, but a generic female announcer voice.

Well, it leads to me testing out what the alternate fire on the shotgun does: it sets folks on fire!

And now I am completely stuck. There is no exit from the station. I recorded three and a half hours of gameplay to get these screenshots. Over half an hour of that is me scraping along all the walls, pressing X on everything, shooting the walls, throwing my remaining grenades randomly. There's even a map here, but the map doesn't show the exits. There are no exits. There are no winners, only losers, in Red Faction 2.

It runs on the same boxy engine as Red Faction and the music sounds exactly the same, but that's as close as you get. In Red Faction you play as loveable everyman psycho Parker as he blazed a path through the bowels of Mars, completing absurd missions with your paper-thin pals against ridiculous odds. In Red Faction 2 you play as cackhanded knucklehead Alias as he runs around in circles in a world that makes absolutely no sense and fails to do more or less anything of any use.

Crap.