Red Faction Updated Preview
We take a look at the game's new weapons, characters, and environments.
Although both Monolith's No One Lives Forever and Gray Matter's Return to Castle Wolfenstein made a showing at last year's E3, the most promising first-person shooter on the show floor at the time was arguably Red Faction. In development at Champaign, Illinois-based Volition, the game was originally supposed to be Descent 4, but a licensing conflict with Interplay prevented the developer from using the famous space-simulation reference. Instead, Volition took its existing technology and reshaped the game into a sci-fi shooter that seems to borrow heavily from the likes of Total Recall. You play the role of Parker, a miner who works the caverns of a Martian colony and takes part in a rebellion against the Ultor Corporation after a deadly virus is unleashed within the mines. Since seeing it for the first time at
As we noted earlier, the centerpiece of Red Faction is undoubtedly its 3D-engine technology. Called Geo-Mod, which is short for geometry modification, this technology finally allows for truly interactive environments and deformable terrains, the likes of which similar games have been able to only approach in the past. Through its Geo-Mod engine, Red Faction will basically let you use your weapons to change the face of your surroundings in the game. Come to a dead end? Pick up a rocket launcher and make your own door. Can't find the key to open that locked door? Blast right through it with a satchel charge. Each object in the game can be given a different level of deformability by the designers, so, for instance, material like sheet metal will have a tendency to bend and shatter much more than solid rock will. This not only lets the Volition level designers breath easier - just imagine if the game gave you the ability to tunnel anywhere - but it also makes deformable objects of various compositions react differently; and, more importantly, it makes them react in a realistic manner.
Despite the fact that Volition programmers have been working on the Geo-Mod technology for years now, they're still spending all their time getting it just right. In fact, the Geo-Mod engine has been updated since the last public showing of Red Faction. Now, when you fire a rocket at a deformable wall, a close inspection of the resulting explosion will reveal two types of debris. The first simply falls straight down to the ground from the newly created crater. The second layer of debris, however, actually ejects outward from the face of the wall. Especially impressive is that the engine takes into account a number of factors such as the speed of the rocket, its trajectory, the type of material it impacts, and the force of the explosion, all of which determine the size and direction of this other layer of flying rock and debris. The physics engine has also been reworked to accommodate for large, falling structures. If you shoot out the base of a tower, for example, the structure will crumble as it falls to the ground instead of falling over as one, large piece of cement. Likewise, water will now affect falling objects as well. Dislodge a stalactite from a cave ceiling, and it'll splash down in a pool of water, only to have its rate of descent impeded by friction from that water. All these additions might seem trivial, but when they're combined, they go a long way in giving the Red Faction environments a realistic look and feel.
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- GameSpot Score7.9good
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