Tony Hawk received
cheers, others received jeers, but N-Gage owners still had high hopes for Red
Faction. Red Faction was, by nature, a port of a PlayStation 2 game.
That didn’t matter to
most of the people who spent $200-$300; all they cared about was having another
cool game, regardless of how old it was.
Months of speculation
later, I am able to bring the anticipators some good news. I’m also forced to
bring along the bad new, but that was revealed by my overall score.
Let’s start from the
top. As you know, Red Faction was originally made for PlayStation 2. This
presented a dilemma to developers: how do you port a PS2 game to a mobile
console that is only capable of powering PSone titles? The developer’s answer:
you turn Red Faction into a PSone game. It’s only a PSone game in spirit, but
you’d notice the connection even if no one pointed it out to you.
Given how many
near-polygon shooters there are on the Game Boy Advance, Red Faction wasn’t as
much of a surprise on the N-Gage. It uses polygons, has much more detailed
backgrounds, smooth weapon texture, and superior characters, but the gameplay
isn’t too different from the more recent GBA releases.
The weapons are cool, to
say the least. You’ve got handguns and other standard weapons (the perfect New
Year’s present for those pesky guards. Or you could just give them a bullet, if
you know what I mean…). Better still are the gadgets, like a remote sticky
bomb. Toss one onto any surface, run far away, hit the weapon fire button and
watch that baby explode! It’s not the prettiest explosion, but it’s not bad for
the small screen. It looks even better if you’re standing right next to it,
though I wouldn’t recommend that since you’ll lose a big chunk of your health.
Controlling your
weapon-loaded hero isn’t as satisfying as expected. Default controls are as
close to matching a PSone setup as you’re going to get. N-Gage’s 12-button
keypad is shaped in such a way that you cannot mimic the wonderful setup that
the Dual-Shock controller has. To move forward and backward you’ve got the top
and bottom directional buttons. Pressing left or right will turn, but not
strafe the camera. To strafe you have to press the 4 and 6 keypad buttons.
Button 5 fires your weapon; 2 is used to jump. This is okay, but there’s one
problem: the 7th button is active, and its feature can cause a ton of
frustration.
If you don’t like the
control scheme, press 7 and you’ll get a revised scheme. The differences are
minimal but helpful to those who need a change.
What if you like the
control scheme but accidentally bump 7 while trying to strafe left (in which you
have to press the 4th button, which is very close to 7)? If you do that you’re
as good as dead. The game will switch control schemes, and it’ll be a good ten
seconds before you get your controls straight again. In that amount of time the
enemy could fire enough bullets to kill you. Not cool.
Red Faction has a
ridiculous story in which the game will tell you crazy things like, "You hear
voices coming from the other room." Then the game lets the player eavesdrop on
the potential enemies to see what they are talking about. I wish I could tell
you what they said, but I can’t remember what the conversation was about because
I was too busy trying to pay attention. Red Faction’s story is told via
slow-moving text boxes. Is the new millennium or are we still stuck in 1995?
Who can tell with games like this. The contents of the boxes comprised of some
of the worst dialogue I had ever seen. It was utterly pointless. Why haven’t
game developers learned that not every title needs a story? I really don’t care
why I’m trying to save the world as long as I’m having a good time. A story can
be great thing, but it can also be a total disaster. Given the choice, I’d
rather have no story at all than take the risk.
Red Faction has a few
winning qualities, but the overall package didn’t turn out to be the delivery I
was hoping for. The choppy frame rate creates choppy gameplay. Graphically the
game looks pretty good, but when an enemy dies your eyes have nothing to dilate
at. The enemy disappears, and in its place you get a cheesy-looking splatter of
blood. It looks like a rushed animation, which is strange considering how good
the rest of the game looks.
Gameplay: 6.5
Shoot bad guys,
blow up walls, win the game. That’s all there is to it. If the frame rate
wasn’t choppy and if the gameplay was more compelling, such simple objectives
would have been welcome. No one ever complained about a game’s simplicity if
the game is fun. People only start complaining if that simplicity somehow
damages the gameplay. Simplicity isn’t the problem here though — it’s the
other stuff that failed: the controls, the aiming, the frame rate, etc.
Graphics: 7
Good, but not
great. Red Faction could have looked better and played a lot smoother. Tony
Hawk is proof of that.
Sound: 6
Where, where has
everyone gone wrong?
They make us hear the
same old songs.
Repetition is the name of
the game.
That’s why everything
sounds the same!
Difficulty: Easy/Medium
If the aim wasn’t
so hard to control this game would be a breeze.
Concept: 6.6
The idea was
good, but the execution will leave you wondering why this game wasn’t executed
before it could be released.
Multiplayer: 5
You need two
N-Gage game decks and two games for this feature. The single-player mode isn’t
worth the price of admission, so how could the multiplayer mode possibly make up
for that? I suppose there’s got to be a way…but this game didn’t find it.
Overall: 6.5
Red Faction for
N-Gage plays a little like the early PSone shooters. It’s got similar graphics
(polygon characters, pixelated backgrounds, etc.), similar quality music and
typical first-person shooter sound effects. The controls are efficient at first
but quickly fall apart when anything exciting happens. Not your best bet for
the N-Gage. Wait for something superior to get your first-person shooter fix.
