Dom Robinson reviews

Distributed by
THQ

Price: £39.99 Released: November 15th 2002 Players: 1-4 Red Faction II starts with a bang - several bangs to be precise.. Your team of soldiers drops in to infiltrate a compound and what you want in particular is just beyond that wall in front of you... but how to get past it? If you'll remember the "Geo-Mod" technology from the first game then you'll remember that if there's an obstacle, blow it out of the way as violently as possible - just shoot, blast or bomb the fuck out of it for as long as it takes. I try to sneak through the wall but the enemy's raining firebombs down on me with startling accuracy. I shoot one bad guy in the head and take refuge in a small sheltered area... but not for long because those firebombs don't get on too well with walls... The world's gone to rack and ruin, not because Tony Blair's in charge, but because of Chancellor Victor Sopot - imagine Hitler controlling "1984". You join the mission to put him out of our misery as "Alias"... No, not an engaging American TV series brutally hacked apart by Channel 4 "Angel"-style to fit the teatime slot for kids, but it's your position as a demolitions expert amongst a team of six, the rest being Molov, Repta, Shrike, Tangier and Quill, each possessing unique attributes and specialties.

There's plenty of weapons to choose from, such as grenades, dual pistols, dual machine pistol (ooh, yes!), assault and sniper rifles, a rail gun and a grenade launcher. You know what to expect from a first-person-shooter (FPS) but while the game feels a bit more plot-driven, when it comes to battles there seems to be too much going on - just endless shooting without enough time to sit and solve puzzles or take baddies out cleverly from different positions, just too many onslaughts as opposed to spreading them out a bit. The graphics are a slight improvement on the original game and move fast, but I do get the feeling that an Xbox release would have the edge. As I type (Sept 2002) I don't see one on the schedules but I can hope. One gripe I have is that when you throw grenades or rockets, not everyone in the vicinity gets blown apart. Kill someone in a door, but the guy hiding just to the left of it won't die because you couldn't see him at the time, even though in reality he'd be sawdust. Another is that reloading weapons takes too long, especially as you run out of ammo and then it cycles through the others you have, checking to see how much is left in those. Takes ages and you get shot to pieces as a result!

The soundtrack is great, like an electronica theme from a US TV stealth/drama series. All the typical explosion noises are back and as loud as ever, but it loses a point here as it's basically the same thing over and over again. The multiplayer aspect is a bit of fun, but it's far from a Quake 3-beater. Never mind, I'm always bloody hopeless at those anyway. Overall, this is fun but it is really just more of the same, with the only thing letting it down being that it is rather too relentless, making it like the computer game equivalent of Black Hawk Down. I did enjoy the gunship section a bit later on in the game, but when up against a sort-of Mechwarrior baddie it was no contest and I was no competition, sadly. PLEASE NOTE: This is a look at the preview version of the game, for which some of the elements will be due to change before the final version is released on November 15th 2002.

This page: Copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2002.

The following is a list of the Red Faction games reviewed online to date :