The original Geo-Mod shooter gets the PS4 treatment…
The Red Faction series has gone through a number of changes, starting life as a FPS for two games before changing to a third-person view for 2 more before the liquidation of THQ. While we hope the series will return at some point through THQ Nordic, they’ve brought the original game to the PS4 with 1080p and Trophy support…but how has the game aged compared to modern shooters?
Red Faction introduced us to areas that were mostly destructible thanks to the Geo-Mod tech at the time and it still impresses, but I would highly recommend going into the game settings and changing the controls as the default setup is madness and word to the wise, inverted controls are already enabled so if you prefer them without, you’ll need to change that too.
Time hasn’t been too kind to the game in terms of visuals, but considering the original dates back to 2001, it’s not hard to see why. Despite that, the framerate is consistent throughout and while the story isn’t anything special, you’ll be thinking it’s a nice hybrid of Half-Life and Total Recall. Load screens pop up between areas, but the load times are thankfully short. This is one of the old-style shooters that doesn’t have regenerating health, so you’ll need to track down health and armour packs to stay alive.
Enemy AI is a bit dated too, plus you can save at any time which means that you can abuse the save system to overcome some of the harder moments, as well as the harder difficulties for the trophies. As with the older shooters, you can carry multiple weapons like pistols, rifles and rocket launchers, so there’s plenty to use and using the more explosive ones makes blowing up walls all the more enjoyable.
The Verdict
Red Faction is as memorable as it was back in the day, but perhaps hasn’t stood the test of time like other shooters. Still, it was groundbreaking with it’s Geo-Mod tech and for £12 you can relive it with trophy and 1080p support. It’s good value and well worth either revisiting or if you missed it the first time round, there’s no better time to do so.