Red Faction: Difference between revisions

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''[[File:red_faction_guerrilla_logo.png|frame]] ''Red Faction]]'' is a video game series developed by Volition, Inc, set in the future of [[Canon Welding|the same universe as their]] ''[[Saints Row]]'' series (and possibly the past of their ''[[Descent]]'' series,) where [[Insignificant Little Blue Planet|Earth]] has exhausted its supply of natural resources, and depends on mining operations on [[The Red Planet|Mars]] for the survival of its economy. The main gameplay draw of the ''Red Faction'' series is the Geo-Mod engine, a [[Stuff Blowing Up]] simulator ''par excellence''. Geo-Mod 1, used in ''Red Faction 1'' and ''Red Faction 2'', was based primarily around terrain deformation: Rock could be torn away with your weapons, but metal surfaces were usually safe. Geo-Mod 2, used in ''Red Faction: Guerrilla'', reverses this, enabling the player to destroy buildings using a physics system so realistic the game developers actually had to [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ6XM7NfGr8 study architecture] to get the buildings to stand up.

''Red Faction 2'' is set on Earth, in the [[People's Republic of Tyranny|Republic of]] [[Department of Redundancy Department|the Commonwealth]], a corrupt dictatorship that has used captured Ultor technology to manufacture [[Super Soldiers]]. [[Beware the Superman|Fearing the potential]] of these [[Super Soldiers]], [[Evil Overlord|Chancellor Victor Sopot]] orders them killed. The survivors form [[The Squad]], and join forces with a local resistance named after the Martian Red Faction in an attempt to overthrow Sopot. ''[['''Red Faction]]''' 2'' is generally considered a [[First Installment Wins|step down]] for the series, due to its unrelated plot, removed features, and Geo-Mod unfriendly terrain.

''Red Faction: Guerrilla'' is a departure in terms of gameplay - a [[Wide Open Sandbox]] [[Third-Person Shooter]] similar to Volition's ''Saints Row'', as opposed to a [[First-Person Shooter]] - but a return to the continuing narrative. Fifty years after the original ''Red Faction'', the Earth Defense Force have [[Full -Circle Revolution|turned from liberators to oppressors]], more concerned with exploiting Mars than helping it rebuild. A newcomer to Mars, Alec Mason, joins the reborn Red Faction to fight against the EDF after his brother is gunned down by an EDF gunship.

There's also ''Red Faction: Battlegrounds'', a top-down, twin-stick [[Shoot'Em Up]] for the Playstation3 and Xbox360 designed as a tie-in to ''Armageddon.'' It consists of various challenges narrated by ''Armageddon's'' Sergeant Winters, and multiplayermulti-player where up to four players can control a variety of vehicles from ''Guerrilla'' and proceed to blow up ''everything.''

The fourth game in the series, ''Red Faction: Armageddon'', follows directly from ''Guerrilla'', taking place fifty years afterwards. Like ''Guerrilla'', it's a [[Third-Person Shooter]], but features tighter [[Gears of War]] style corridor-shooter gameplay in contrast to the [[Grand Theft Auto]] style [[Wide Open Sandbox]] gameplay of ''Guerrilla''. After the planet's atmospheric terraformer is destroyed by cult leader Adam Hale, a descendant of the defeated EDF and long-time nemesis of the Mason family, the people of Mars are forced to take shelter underground from the now hostile surface. The game stars Darius Mason, the grandson of Alec Mason, who is tricked into opening an ancient sealed Martian temple by Hale, releasing a long-buried malevolent alien species and unleashing armageddonArmageddon upon Mars.

A [[Live Action Adaptation]] called ''Red Faction: Origins'' aired on [[Sy FySyfy]] on June 4, 2011. The movie bridges the gap between ''Guerrilla'' and ''Armageddon'', with Robert "[[The Terminator|T-1000]]" Patrick as Alec Mason. [[Stargate Universe (TV)|Brian J. Smith]] plays his son Jake Mason, the main protagonist. The movie's plot has Jake tracking down the mysterious White Faction, {{spoiler|1=a secret [[The Remnant|remnant]] of the defeated EDF,}} who are plotting to take Mars for themselves.

As of the 27th of July 2011, the series [[Screwed Byby the Network|is cancelled]], due to dramatically poor sales of ''Red Faction Armageddon''. This might not be the end of the franchise - the same thing did happen after Red Faction II - but for the time being it's shelved.

* [[Awesome but Practical]]: In ''Guerrilla,'' the sledgehammer is your best friend. It does more damage than any other weapon, insta-kills infantry (even multiple infantry, if they're bunched together) and can usually smash both the cover and the guy hiding behind it in one swing. In addition, it prevents the noble Martian people from being constrained by the enemy's fascist walls. It's also one of two silent weapons in the game -- thegame—the Nano Rifle being the other -- allowingother—allowing you to take out lone patrolling soldiers without alerting their comrades.

* [[Canon Welding]]: There are several clues (most notably Ultor) that indicate that ''Red Faction'' takes place in the future of ''Saints Row''. For example, in Guerrilla Mount Vogel is named after the [[Big Bad]] of [[Saints Row]] 2. It is also suggested that the ''[[Free Space]]'' series takes place in the same timeline, with a reference to one "Subach Industries" after you destroy the AAX gunships in the Badlands mission ''Air Traffic Control''. On the other hand, it may just have been a passing [[Shout -Out]]. (Ahaha... there is a Radio Tag that belonged to Shaundi, a perpetually stoned Saint in Saints Row 2 that essentially acted as the Player Character's intelligence officer. It includes both her portrait and, unlike the rest of the Radio Tags, ONLY her first name. It's unfortunate that the Tag is found on a skeleton, though...)

* [[Continue Your Mission, Dammit!]]: ''Guerrilla'' would like you to think Red Faction missions are urgent. They aren't.

* [[Crapsack World]]: Nothing ever really gets better in this series; Earth is starving for resources so we mine Mars... but the corporation with a monopoly on it has zero interest in basic human rights. Parker brings them down... and then Earth itself puts things right back where they were. Mason liberates Mars...then the terraformer goes down, forcing everyone to live underground while everything Parker and Mason fought for on the surface is buried in red dust. Then the underground is harboring a [[Sealed Evil in Aa Can]] and it turns into something that looks a little like [[Dead Space (Franchiseseries)|Dead Space]]. And if you take the [[Canon Welding|shared universes]] into account? Everything you did in [[Saints Row]] is irrelevant, because all of ''this'' comes next. Everything you do ''here'' is just going to lead to [[Free Space|Sol being cut off from the rest of the galaxy,]] [[Fridge Brilliance|thus exacerbating the resource problem,]] while five-legged omnicidal aliens destroy everything else.

* [[Dead Character Walking]]: A glitch in multiplayermulti-player mode when the invincibility cheat was active; the flamethrower's alternate attack would set CPU-controlled players on fire, but never let them die. They would run around forever screaming in agony until you turned the cheat off. It was possible to inflict this cruelty on an entire level's worth of bots.

* [[Death Is a Slap Onon The Wrist]]: In ''Guerrilla'', all death does is subtract a mere four morale points and send you back to the nearest safehouse. When you die, you get credited for current kill streaks, property destruction and so on. It is common to have the "death penalty" refunded with interest before you even respawn. The only real penalty is losing progress on a difficult mission.

{{quote| '''Sgt. Winters:''' You ever notice how when bad things happen - I mean the absolute '''WORST''' things imaginable. ''Horrible'' stuff - there's always a Mason around? Now I'm talking about shit you couldn't even ''dream'' of happening... y'know, it never fails!}}

* [[Drop the Hammer]]: The sledgehammer in ''Guerrilla''. It can can singlehandedlysingle-handedly destroy enormous buildings with enough swings and one-hit kill many mooks in the game...

** Try multiplayermulti-player mode on impossible and watch the comp get a sniper rifle, I didn't know computers could hit you with their back facing you so well... [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|yea...]]

* [[Follow the Leader]]: Some have criticized ''Red Faction: Armageddon'' for taking a lot of cues from [[Electronic Arts|EA's]] ''[[Dead Space (Franchiseseries)|Dead Space]]'' franchise.

* [[Full -Circle Revolution]]: Red Faction 1's revolt wound up not changing much for the poor miners in the long run.

* [[Hit and Run Tactics]]: ''Guerrilla'' heavily encourages this. In fact, some structures and bases are nearly impossible to take down without using such tactics, as unless you're using [[Humongous Mecha|a Walker]], the EDF ''will'' swarm you and gun you down, even with the best weapons and armor, and given [[Stuff Blowing Up|the nature of this game]], cover never lasts long. As opined in ''[[Zero Punctuation]]'',<ref>"You get enough ammo to worry half a scout troop."</ref>, you run out of ammo in long battles when starting out. Even later, you tend to run out of the [[BFG|good stuff]].

* [[Idiot Hero]]: Parker in ''Red Faction'' is pretty damn dense, not to mention rather hotheaded. Funnily enough, [[Informed Ability|he was accepted into Harvard]] before the events of the game. He decided to become a miner to spite his parents. In ''Guerrilla'', it is fortunate Samanya is the brains of the outfit. Mason has the hitting power and intellect of a sledgehammer. This introduces an odd note of humourhumor when giving him the nanoforge is seen as putting it "in safe hands."

* [[Impaled Withwith Extreme Prejudice]]: {{spoiler|Kara}}, in ''Armageddon.'' {{spoiler|She appears to have been [[Killed Off for Real]], though Darius [[Never Found the Body|never finds her body...]] It's a relatively small impalement, as they go.}}

* [[Mini -Mecha]]: ''Armageddon'' substitutes these for ''Guerrilla's'' much larger mining walkers, likely due to the cramped conditions of most of the levels. They may not be quite as destructive, but they do the job well- especially the Leo, a uniquely-styled mecha with flowing skirt-armor, a heavy machine gun and rocket pack.

* [[Nintendo Hard]]: In the first game, some of the late-game levels where you fight against the Mercs can be this, as many of them are armed with one-hit-kill railguns, and even their normal weapons can kill you in just 4 to 8 shots. ''Guerrilla'' can often be [[Nintendo Hard]], with its large number of [[Escort Mission|Escort Missions]]s and the fact you're often expected to fight 10-20 enemies at the same time with a character who really isn't particularly durable by shooter standards.

{{quote| Admiral Kobel: {{spoiler|This is Admiral Kobel of the EDS Hydra. What is your status?}}<br />

** ''Armageddon'' has a few sequences like this, most notably while riding a barge down [[Convection, Schmonvection|river of lava.]]

** In ''Guerrilla'', your fellow rebels can occasionally hold their own. Still, the average rebel devotes much of their time to a) shooting other rebels by accident, b) complaining because another rebel shot them, c) walking into the player's line of fire, or d) seeking cover by huddling in front of the vehicle you are driving. They get cover -- fromcover—from the top as you bump over their brave rebel skulls. Rebels in ''Guerilla'' actually have more than twice as much health as EDF soldiers, but they're usually outnumbers at least 10 to 1, not to mention the fact that EDF have seemingly limitless reinforcements.

* [[Ridiculously -Fast Construction]]: Darius Mason in ''Armageddon'' has a more powerful, arm-based version of the Nano Forge, and he's able to repair or rebuild just about anything (except explosives or explosive machinery) in a matter of seconds. This is actually quite ''necessary'' since odds are good you'll wind up destroying a bridge or staircase you needed to get to the next area.

* [[Sticky Bomb]]: In ''Guerrilla'', mining charges can be stuck to EDF soliderssoldiers, who then flail about in a panic before the player sets the charge off. ''Armageddon' gives the player a [[Grenade Launcher]] that fires similar charges, up to four at once.

* [[Shout -Out]]: References abound to other Volition games, movies and so on and so forth in mission names, dialogue and news reports.

** There's even shoutouts in ''[[Easter Egg|filenames]]''. In ''Guerrilla'', one of the most hyped and previewed missions involved the theft of a [[Real Robot|Mining Walker]]. The filename of the briefing video? [[Walker, Texas Ranger|walker_martian_ranger.bik]]

* [[Suicidal Overconfidence]]: In ''Red Faction'' and ''Red Faction 2'', injured enemies may turn around and start to run away, but after a few seconds they'll immediately spin around and resume shooting at you as though nothing had happened. In Guerrilla, trying to attack a base head-on like Master Chief will leave you and your idiot friends dead before you even get into firing range. Mason himself doesn't help matters: when an army comes in to help him at the end, he whines "I thought I was the attack force." The aliens in ''Armageddon'' [[Attack! Attack! Attack!|never retreat.]]

* [[Sword of Plot Advancement]]: The matter-dissolving Nano Rifle in ''Guerrilla'', which contains the one-of-a-kind Nanoforge which is the Martians' only hope of defeating the EDF. Your female sidekick outright states "It's not just a gun; it may be the future of Mars". <ref>"So... can I have my gun back?"</ref>

* [[Wreaking Havok]]: In one mission, you have to assassinate a group of corrupt government officials. You can sneak in and stealthily take them out, attack from long range with a sniper rifle. Or you can destroy the roof supports from long range and watch a growing cascade of rubble smoosh your targets.<br /><br />Or you can attach a shitload of demolition charges to a truck, crash the truck into the building, blow up the truck, then fire off rockets in every direction until the building is a pile of smouldering rubble, then hijack an enemy APC and drive off into the Martian sunset. Basically, ''Guerrilla'' doesn't often tell you how to do something. You want to smash a back door into an enemy base and steal a tank or two? Sure why not? You want to charge into an outpost and hammer away at the support struts until the entire thing comes tumbling down with you inside it? [[Zero Punctuation|Go nuts]]. Just try not to die in the process.

=== The film provides examples of: ===

[[Category:First -Person Shooter]]

[[Category:Play StationPlayStation 2]]

[[Category:Third -Person Shooter]]

[[Category:TropeGOG.com]]