Red Faction: Guerrilla - Steam Edition

Set 50 years after the climactic events of the original Red Faction, Red Faction: Guerrilla allows players to take the role of an insurgent fighter with the newly re-established Red Faction movement as they battle for liberation from the oppressive Earth Defense Force.

Shooter

Time to beat: about 21 hours

Overview

Red Faction is a first-person shooter video game developed by Volition and published by THQ for PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Windows in 2001, and Macintosh platforms in 2001 and 2002. A version for the N-Gage was developed by Monkeystone Games, and the mobile version was developed by Blue Beck. The game was ported to PlayStation 4 by Plaion and published by THQ Nordic in 2016 and released in both physical and digital copies. The game was inspired by several works of contemporary science fiction.

Red Faction takes place on Mars in the late 21st century. The player controls a miner, Parker, who helps lead a rebellion against the Ultor Corporation. The premiere feature of the game is its "Geo-Mod" technology, short for "geometry modification", which provided destructible environments, allowing the player to destroy certain sections of the scenery in the game. For example, instead of opening a door, a player could blast through the rock surrounding the door. The game sold more than 1,000,000 units by 2002.

The game features GeoMod technology, which allows players to significantly alter and otherwise affect the surrounding terrain and buildings, either with explosives or otherwise. Past games allowed limited alteration of the environment through scripted means or special triggered areas that added or removed certain predefined level elements. Red Faction was the first video game that allowed players unscripted level-altering possibilities.

Red Faction takes place on Mars around the year 2075. Earth's minerals are being depleted and humans need more of them to survive. The vast Ultor Corporation runs the mining operation on Mars. The living conditions are deplorable, human rights for the miners are few, and a disease called "The Plague" is running rampant throughout the colony with no known antidote available, predominantly within the confines of the mine complex. Parker, a downtrodden miner, came to Mars to make a new start in his life, taken in by the promises and advantages Ultor has to offer in the mines of Mars.

Descent 4 was a game being developed by Volition as part of the Descent game franchise, as a prequel to Descent. However, it was cancelled and the technology behind it and some of the plot were incorporated into Red Faction. Examples include the main character Parker as well as the GeoMod engine.

The PS2 and PC versions of Red Faction received "generally favorable reviews", while the N-Gage version received "mixed or average" reviews, as reported by the review aggregation website Metacritic.