US publishers have high hopes for Red Faction; a first-person from veterans Volition, creators of the Decent series, and more recently Freespace. But the genre is a crowded one, and the is fierce. Only the innovators can create games that capture the public's imagination and no game stays at the top for long. is perhaps still the strongest FPS out there for single-player gameplay, and it is this benchmark appear to have set their sights on with plucky up-start Red Faction. But can they deliver where so many pretenders have failed? We look more closely..

Much of Half-Life's durability and strength, lay in the quality of its narrative and unfolding plot, along with some particularly thrilling moments of cinematic-quality set-piece action. also enjoys this quality, and so appears to imitate it too. The plot revolves around a classic Communistic-style workers uprising, against the oppressive regime of the wealthy corporation they mine for on Mars. However the potential of this premise is not felt throughout Red Faction; as only half-baked illusions to the story are suggested. For example, after the promising opening sequence in which all hell breaks loose at the end of a workers shift, the player does not really get a sense of revolution continuing around him, other than by occasional screams and distracting and pointless messages. Other revolutionaries are rarely spied too, and even if you answer their calls for assistance they rarely have the intelligence to stay alive more than five minutes. One is left wondering why these distractive NPC's were added in the first place given they add so little to the sense of a gritty and torrid revolt. The player is left feeling like the last man standing, the plot being purely hokum - and a chance for strong plot-based having been missed.

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