Having completed it once on easy, I immediately then decided that it was too easy... so have just started again on Insane difficulty, in the hopes that this might prove slightly more challenging.
For those who haven't played before, it starts off quite promisingly, with this shot of a ship heading towards mars
There's a couple more establishing shots during this opening run, including one of the EDF's (that's the bad guys) checkpoint at the port
Our first view of the main character, Alex Mason, a mining engineer with a penchant for blowing stuff up
And our first viewing of Samanya, technician, main member of the Red Faction (the good guys) and eventually one of the more important plot points and potential love interest for Mason. I think.
After all this, we meet what may be the quickest named character to die in any game I've played. Mason's brother, called Jason Mason.
I'd like to say that he's a likeable guy, but given the (admittedly brief) dialogue between him and his brother, he seems like a fairly nasty character, with pent up anger towards Earth, the EDF and anyone that supports them. He's already trying to recruit his brother.
Then again, you drive past a few moments (that remind me a little of CoD4, should anyone still play that) with EDF troops breaking into a house
And a few more EDF troops executing some civilians who may or may not be insurgents. It isn't clarified. It's not really even important, it's just more of the same 'EDF is evil' propaganda which is throughout this opening sequence.
I'll be honest here, it's nothing we haven't seen before, except that the ground is red, it's all very dusty, and it's quite atsmospheric, and lacks the gunshots, as we're in a soundproofed vehicle. That's always nice. The screams of the dying grate on your nerves after a bit. Finally we get to 'home', a place who's name is never given, and which gets destroyed in only slightly more time than Jason dies.
Your brother tries to recruit you into the Red Faction
And then HIS boss shows up (who looks familiar, for some reason)
That done, we're into the tutorial. And when I say that this tutorial is short, I'm not lying. Literally, we get given a pop-up window saying WASD to move, another one explaining that to swing our sledgehammer we press such and such a button, and another one explaining how our remote charges work. It's all fairly simple, albeit not the friendliest of tutorials to a new player, but to someone who has been playing computer games for some time, it's refreshing. The lack of a tutorial means more time for blowing shit up.
It's worth noting that my brother stands around doing nothing
And that the police are already here
I was kind of expecting, the first time I played this game, it all to be a lie. It'd turn out that this apparently 'abandoned' facility would be armed to the teeth with guards, scientists, tanks, airships and generally provide a nice bit of fun. As it turns out, you literally just have to blow up a couple of buildings, which doesn't take long, before the inevitable happens.
The gunship arrives, complains that we're blowing stuff up, and then proceeds to attempt to arrest us. Jason refuses to be arrested, so he dies.
And the tutorial is over. Short, sweet, to the point, and most importantly, is followed by another cut scene.
Like backgrounds? Here's a nice one
We follow Mason back 'home' where we discover the EDF have already moved in on it
Thankfully for anyone that has played video games, we all know that killing your main character BEFORE the first mission is generally a no. So when Mason dramatically escapes from situation thanks to some friends, and is promptly recruited into the Red Faction proper, it's no great surprise.
We meet Samanya again (with mysteriously differently coloured hair)
And she tells us to keep our head down.
Being me, this means that I restrict myself to one massacre, and blowing up one of the low importance targets in the area
This done, it's back to the base and time for a break.
I didn't even die, which given my luck with Gareth in Oblivion is somewhat nice. Dying in video games tends to get depressing eventually.
Red Faction is one of those games which, whilst you're playing, you kinda get a lil bit addicted to. The storyline presses forward, the explosions get bigger (and better), there's a new gadget every so often that you have to play to unlock, and failing that, there's a seemingly unlimited number of upgrades for the amount of remote charges you can detonate at once. Not that I'm complaining, 2 was a bit small. The 4 or 5 that I immediately pushed it up to is better, but I'm aiming for about 15, so that I can blow up the larger buildings in one go, without having to explode a set and wander around a collapsing building to place the remaining charges.
The graphics tend to be quite slick, the gameplay is relatively intuitive, and given that nearly all the weapons either are explosion based, or punch holes through walls, or are simply things designed to rip through the enemy soldiers as fast as possible as to allow you to explode their barracks before the next wave spawns, there isn't much to complain about.
I'm just pushing forward as fast as possible so that I can grab the nano rifle. There's nothing quite like watching an enemy army dissolve in it's tracks.
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