The intricate plot begins with an opening movie depicting the arrival of many miners to the surface of Mars, where they were promised by Omni-Tech a good job and an opportunity for a better life on this new planet. As in many stories, this was not the case. The miners were repressed and abused by hard-handed guards and officials and forced to work in unbearable conditions. The situation was ready to erupt into full-scale rebellion, when the sudden onslaught of a deadly plague provided the catalyst for the uprising. The Red Faction, led by the rebel Eos, is the group of militant miners that have broken from Omni-Tech and have decided to attempt to both stop the cause of the plague and earn their freedom.

You play the role of Parker, a miner that has proven himself to be the strongest of the Red Faction. You are constantly engulfed in groups of missions dictated by Eos and sympathetic Omni-Tech computer specialist, Hendricks. These tasks are all linked together in a long series that holds true to the general storyline. The missions are intense, and each one completed sheds more light to the ending of the game. In these missions many tactics are used towards their completion, such as stealth and espionage, hard-core assault, and logic in relation to figuring out exactly what to do in situations. In addition to tactics, you have a broad range of weapons ranging from a control baton to the deadly fusion rocket launcher, and a variety of vehicles to use at your need. These include submarines, airships, drillers, and ATVs.

The controls of the game are hard to get used to in the first moments of the game, but are easily learned and become natural within minutes. In addition to ease of control, there is the feature of the locked aim. I know that in other FPS, I have had problems shooting enemies long range due to the fact that my aim is slightly off. In Red Faction, the auto aim feature allows your target to briefly "lock on" to a target to enable a clear shot. This is not permanent enough to make the game "easy", but is helpful when in a room of enemies where keeping your distance is a matter of life or death. The save feature also makes Red Faction a user friendly game, as progress can be saved at any point in the game. There are not save points, but one can use their judgement to save often and therefore not lose their place after an unexpected death.

Another new aspect toRed Faction is the incorporation of the new Geo-Mod, which allows terrain to be completely shaped by the player. For example, there are several instances where doors are blocked. To remedy this situation one can merely blast through the walls to the other side. The amount of damage done to walls is dependent upon the weapon used, as well as the range from where you fire the weapon. Some walls need to be blasted sevearl times to be penetrated, and one can see the damage increasing on the surface of the area. Very cool stuff. I found myself jumping into the multiplayer game and blowing up walls for amusement. This is a very fun mod.

The multiplayer option to this game is decent. I did not like it as well as others reviewed it mainly due to the fact that it is hard to see in split screen. However, the multiplayer option versus bots is very well done. This is almost a mixture of Quake and Unreal Tournament with smarter bots and different settings. I spent quite a bit of time playing multiplayer by myself until my roomate saw me playing and took over my Playstation for the rest of the night.

In conclusion, I feel that this game is a must-try if not a must-have. It should provide you with many hours of amusement and fraggage....