A solid sci-fi shooter that gameplay-wise draws from Half-Life.
Red Faction is one of the better shooters going back a decade. It is nothing spectacular, and by no means a classic. However it holds its ground even today as a fun corridor shooter with a good campaign.
Since this game is relatively old, I will try and keep the following in point form, to speed this review up:
The Pros:
+ destructible environment gives new life to grenades and rockets
+ good amount of ammo so you are free to fire at will
+ fast paced action that is constant the whole way through
The Cons
- basic pistol has perfect accuracy; can act as an early game sniper rifle (cheap)
- all rifles have perfect aim; can breeze through the game via easy headshots
- enemy AI does not pressure player out of cover
- cliche one liners from enemy guards can take away any elements of surprise via ambush
Now to give you an idea of what to generally expect from the gameplay:
The game is for the most part constant-action and a corridor shooter, however often times bases will have multiple paths instead of being a strict path, which is a good change of pace. There are also a couple 'stealth' levels where you walk around disguised as the enemy, and are able to pick up and hide bodies while using your silenced pistol. This is quite fun, because it is done so sparsely that it is a welcome breather. There are several vehicle levels which are subpar in my opinion. The submarines are pretty good, but the armored vehicles are slow and clunky.
The enemies are almost exclusively guards, which is disappointing. The devs had the opportunity to expand on mutated enemies via enemy experiments, as well as natural Mars alien foes, however they chose to keep these enemies quite sparse and underwhelming.
Although Red Faction has much less depth storywise, there are still many parallels to be drawn to Half-Life. There is a tram level reminiscent to the intro to Half Life. Bases are similar, in that you will be climbing up and down many ladders, navigating through air ducts, and pushing many buttons to open doors. These seem like nods to Half Life, and are appreciated.
Overall, this is a fun single player game with a plot that will probably interest you enough to hold your attention, but not memorable enough to keep you thinking about it afterwards. If you enjoyed playing the original Half Life game, I would recommend picking this up.