What is Red Faction?

Ported by GraphSim Entertainment.

Join the revolution.

Lured to Mars by the Ultor Corporation's promise of a better life, thousands have come to seek their fortune and work for the massive mining company. But all is not as it seems. A deadly plague is sweeping through the barracks, and miners suffer daily abuse at the hands of Ultor guards. Is a revolution on the horizon?

• Wage war through twenty vast levels.
• Utilize five fully-armed land, sea, and air vehicles, each equipped with their own weapons.
• Unleash fifteen weapons of mass destruction, each with its own secondary firing capability.
• Unparalleled multiplayer mode supporting up to sixteen players online. Wage war in Deathmatch, Team vs. Team, and Capture The Flag.
• Geo-Mod technology: For the first time ever, destroy and alter the environment in real-time.

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Red Faction, Graphsim’s intense new first-person shooter for the Mac, wastes no time getting to the action. You play Parker, a bright young man who came to Mars to work and do a little soul-searching. Less than a minute into the game, Parker witnesses a friend gunned down by a brutal guard, and the revolt begins.

You start the game deep in a mine shaft and unarmed, grabbing weapons as you make your way toward the surface. You’ll encounter 15 weapons, from pistols and shotguns to flamethrowers and rocket launchers. Learn to use them well, because you’ll do most of the fighting in the mine tunnels. Your fellow rebels die too easily to be much help. One or two shots, and they’re done.

Parker is the hero of Red Faction, but he shares center stage with a widely hyped new technology called the Geo-Mod engine. A dandy device tinkered for PlayStation 2, then adapted to the PC before coming to the Mac, Geo-Mod promises a whole new dimension for first-person shooters. Experts will tell you it’s a new generation of arbitrary geometry modification technology, but that’s just a fancy way of saying you can blow more stuff to smithereens — things like walls and bridges. Terrain and environments are fully destructible, depending on the strength of your weapon. If you meet a locked door and have no key, just blast the walls around the door with a rocket launcher and step through the rubble.

Sounds superior, huh? You bet, but it could have been better. True, you can knock down a bridge to drop an enemy vehicle into a chasm, or blow away a ledge supporting a gaggle of guards. You can even blast a hole in the floor to make an instant foxhole. But darn it, you don’t have to. You don’t really need Geo-Mod technology to advance. You can take out those enemy vehicles just as easily with a rocket, or shoot the ledge-hugging guards one at a time with a sniper scope. But hey, even if Geo-Mod isn’t required, you can still have fun with it. We never tire of blowing holes in things and watching scenery fly.

Another cool surprise is the presence of five controllable vehicles. As you fight your way through some 20 levels, you’ll have a chance to commandeer a drilling rig that can take you through solid walls; an ATV that resembles a Jeep; a baby submarine that fires torpedoes; an Aesir fighter for aerial combat; and an armored personnel carrier sporting a 20mm chain gun. The ability to drive these vehicles is a definite plus.

Geo-Mod technology is much more fun in multiplayer games, and a generous supply of maps provides a backdrop for the three standard multiplayer modes: deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture-the-flag. You’ll get more out of the game if you gather a few friends (up to 16) for a LAN party or hit one of the Maccompatible Internet services (such as GameRanger...) for online play.

Eitherway, singly or in multiplayer, you’ll enjoy Red Faction. It may not be the most original shooter, but it has a good storyline, efficient level design, handsome graphics, and an easy learning curve. Add the Geo-Mod ability to blow stuff up and the five drivable vehicles, and you’ve got loads of adventure and excitement in store.

Lee, John. (April 2002). Red Faction. MacAddict. (pg. 58).

Download Red Faction for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

Compatibility notes

Compatibility report

• Dual G5 2.3 GHz, Quadro FX 4500, OS X 10.4.11: Game-breaking issue with Classic, where mouse will only move a little bit at a time. Updated to 1.20b3 and using new OS X app, it works quite well. There are some issues with sound here and there, but on the whole the game is playable and enjoyable from start to finish.