Red Faction is a good, if not great, sci-fi themed FPS with many challenging "traditional" FPS missions.
The game, as most FPS outings, is very much mission-centric, spanning 19 challenging levels. The game is relatively difficult even though you can carry an array of weapons and can find numerous health boxes. There are a scattering of boss fights, of which I am not a fan, but not too many to spoil the fun. You also get to pilot/operate various craft, notably a mini-sub.
You are essentially a one man army/operative who needs to complete sabotage and other missions to assist the revolt. The game is very much a corridor shooter, although there are some open areas you do spend most of the time under ground in tunnels or facility corridors. The final part of the last mission of the game ... defusing a bomb is somewhat painful unless you have a good short term memory.
Like many FPS games of this era you/Parker carry the veritable kitchen sink of weapons, most similar to Earth-based games, though some unique to the games sci-fi feel. Best of all are the rocket launcher and remote charges, not just as combat weapons, but also because they allow you to blast openings in the physical environment of the maps. This allows you to develop tunnels or shafts, much like a miner would. This ability to change/destroy the game environment is a unique gameplay feature and adds a lot to the fun of this title.
Graphics and sound are quite good for the era ... which brings me to a very important point, namely getting the game to run on newer PCs or recent (post-2003) graphics cards. There is a "patch" (or add-on) called Pure Faction which replaces certain key files, including the executables, in vanilla Red Faction (and which additionally must be set to Win95 compatability if using XP or more recent). Without Pure Faction you will get a graphical mess on your screen (feel free to YouTube and see for yourself). You can find Pure Faction readily on the internet and version 3.0c seems to be the latest.
Multiplayer, while not a favourite feature with me, is still active with the usual FPS MP modes available. Alas one cannot play solo LAN vs bots, as there are no bots.
I'll be playing Red Faction II and Guerrilla in a short while to see the story unfold further, though I understand these take place in the future with different characters.
Finally, I should mention factionfiles.com, a website that has lots of fan made mods, maps, patches (includine Pure Faction) and stuff for RF, RF2 and Guerrilla.
OVERALL: Red Faction is a good, if not great, sci-fi FPS with lots of challenging missions to while away a few hours with a keyboard and a mouse.