Futuristic first person shooter. You are part of a squad of super soldiers(Nothing to do with Captain America) that work for a country leader called Sopot. But now Sopot decides to hunt down all the super soldiers he created because he is scared of their power. So your squad is now very angry and plan on assassinating him.

Release Date

June 2003.

Pros

The Geo-Mod game engine has been improved since the first Red Faction and more things can be destroyed. It is still nowhere near the amount of Crysis or Stranglehold but the battles look a lot better with more things being destroyed.

Just like the first game, it has a good assortment of weapons and they work quite realistically.

There are team member NPCs that help you and their AI is quite good. They do actually help, not very much but still some help.

The AI has improved since the first game. They are now more unpredictable. Now they know how to sit and wait or even run further into hiding.

The graphics and animations are good and have improved since Red Faction. Although it is still nowhere near the likes of Bioshock, it is still good considering it is an old game.

The music is good and matches the game. There is some tunes that are taken from the original Red Faction, but they are not the weird tunes.

Voice acting is also good. It has definitely improved from the first game. There is even some humour in what people say.

You get to drive vehicles and use turrets!

The level designs are just as good as Red Faction with variety of combat environments.

Cons

The story is not as good as the first Red Faction. But still better than Painkiller Overdose.

The graphics support wide screen, but the scale is not correct. So when I played it at 1280×800, everything looks fat. I play with 1024×768 because of the wrong scaling. It is quite poor how they do not have proper wide screen support where as Pure Faction a free community patch for Red Faction does.

The stealth gameplay in the first game is not in this one. Maybe because it doesn’t fit the story but it means less variety in gameplay.

Not Moddable! A big no no considering that the first Red Faction is moddable.

There is no multiplayer. There is single player bot matches with the usual death match and ctf etc but it is pointless since you cannot play multiplayer.

Other Points

The story is a very loose sequel of the original Red Faction. The only tie in with the original story is the mention of Ultor, the Nano-technology and the rebellion that happenned in the first game.

Just like the first game, this is not a simple run and gun game. The weapons are realistic and thinking helps you survive.

There are four endings. I read that they are just different narrative over the same video though.

Overall, Red Faction 2 is moderately entertaining but if I had to choose between this and the original Red Faction, I would choose Red Faction.

Biases

Reviewed version 1.01.

I really liked Serious Sam, all the Doom games and Quake 2.

I also really liked Stranglehold, Red Faction, Bioshock, Alien Vs Predator, Soldier of Fortune 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl and Call Of Duty 4.

I also liked Painkiller Overdose, Battlefield 1942, Delta Force and Spec Ops 2.

I have completed the single player story campaign to get one ending.

DRM

The disc must be in the drive to play the game.

Red Faction 2 is available DRM free from GOG.com.

Patches

1.01 – No comments.

Minimum Requirements (as stated on the box)

Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP
500 MHz Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon Processor
DirectX 8.1 (included on disc)
DirectX 8.1 compatible 3D Hardware Accelerated 16MB NVIDIA TNT1 or ATI Rage 128 video card
128 MB RAM
8x CD or DVD drive
2 Gb of Free Hard Disc Space
DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card
100% Microsoft compatible mouse and keyboard

Computer Played On

Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz
2Gb RAM
ATI Radeon X1600 256Mb RAM (laptop version)
Realtek HD Audio(no idea what model) with laptop speakers or Logitech ClearChat Premium PC Headset.
Win XP Pro
Graphics settings are set to whatever I feel comfortable with playing on this PC. They are usually not set to the highest settings. All screenshots are taken with my settings.