Red Faction II

Already one of the better fir-t person shooters for the PlayStation 2, the Xbox port of Red Faction II improves on the first Red Faction on almost every level.

Already one of the better first-person shooters for the PlayStation 2, the Xbox port of Red Faction II improves on the first Red Faction on almost every level. The graphics are superb, the action is relentless, and the Geo-Mod aspects play a more integral role in the game. This time around, you play as Alias, a soldier who fights alongside the Red Faction against a fascist dictatorship in the process of creating a nano-enhanced army. The story is standard fare, to be sure, but the relentless pace of the game does more than its share of picking up the narrative slack. Though you mostly go solo, teammates will fight by your side from time to time, giving you a little breathing room. You?ll acquire a robust arsenal of weapons, most of which feature alternate firing modes with which you can take out foes in spectacular ways.

We Fight Alone
The highly touted Geo-Mod feature, which enables you to alter/destroy parts of the environments, is what separates the Red Faction games from other shooters, and the potential introduced in the first game is fully realized in the sequel. Blowing chunks out of walls and floors enables you to find hidden weapon caches, access secret areas, and sneakily attack enemies from behind. Piloting vehicles also adds more variety to the formula, and though the gunship and tank move along rails, you do have full control over the submarine and battle armor.

If They Move, Kill ?Em!
The Xbox build looks great and suffers from none of the frame rate dips of the PS2 version. The futuristic environments feature awesome textures and details; the character animations look great; and the lighting and explosion effects are impressive. Lance Henriksen's gravelly voice acting is disappointingly stale, but at least the rockin? music matches the gameplay?s intensity. The controls are solid, and thanks to the design and sensitivity of the Xbox controller, getting a bead on foes is a snap, despite the lack of the auto-aim feature used in the first game. FPS fans can't go wrong with this one.

Comments [0]

post a comment

Post a Comment