Red Faction
Red Faction
Game
Game2009
Red Faction II
Developer Volition
Red Faction II is a 2002 first-person shooter video game developed by Volition and published by THQ for the PlayStation 2, GameCube, Windows and Xbox. It is the sequel to Red Faction and the second installment in the Red Faction series. The game changed the direction of the first game by introducing a greater emphasis on action and a new setting on Earth, rather than Mars. From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
190 reactions from 2 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky) · newest Oct 29, 2026 · last updated Nov 4, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
43
Mixed
77 positive · 103 negative
95% range 36–50%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 77 | 103 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 1 | 4 | 5 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Mixed
389 of 779 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What players are saying
43% recommend · 77 yes, 104 no
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 181 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Mixed (666 of 1,286 positive).
Players are divided on Red Faction II, with many finding it a disappointing sequel. [1][2][3] Some enjoy its nostalgic value and bot multiplayer. [4][5][6] Others criticize its dated graphics, clunky gameplay, and weak story. [7][8][9]
Liked
Representative posts
- [10]
Red Faction II is a great shooter. The nice thing about the classic RF games was that with rocket launchers and explosives you could/had to blast yourself through walls. Something that had never been used before at the time! It was very cool, for example, to shoot a hole in a wall in order to emerge from behind your enemies. The game also works great on a steam deck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7EDDMp7Np0
- [1]
If you really love Red Faction 1 but haven't played II you're probably going to be disappointed. It seems Volition completely misread fan feedback and enthusiasm about RF1 and inexplicably went a very different direction with this sequel. When I picked this game up for PS2 back in the day I hoped for a continuation of RF1's story, more or better RF1 style gameplay, and more geo-mod fun. Story wise this game borrows …
- [8]
Replayed it in 2024 and ruined my childhood memories of it. Game is ass lmao
- [9]
A laughably bad game, this sequel changes everything for the worse. The gunplay is stale and lacks any impact, the ugly crosshairs cover the screen so it's hard to aim properly, the writing is just abysmal, the textures are a wild mix of qualities that clash, the defining mechanic of destructible environments feels like a gimmick they never capitalize on properly, and there's a painfully long and horrendously boring …
- [2]
Clunky gameplay and a sloppy storyline and characters. And this has little to do with Red Faction and Mars. This is the Fallout Tactic (or Brotherhood) version of Red Faction. Just get Red Faction 1 and then jump to Guerrilla.
Summarised from 34 of the 191 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 12, 2026. How summaries are made
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
The crowd is split on Red Faction II: 77 recommend it, 104 don't. Which camp are you in?
Critics, per Wikipedia
The PS2 and GCN versions received "favorable" reviews, while the Xbox and PC versions received "mixed or average reviews", according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. Many criticized the game's short campaign and lack of online multiplayer. Redeeming features include dual-wielding, great split-screen multiplayer, and improved graphics. IGN's positive side of their review called the PS2 version "a very solid, well-produced first-person shooter", but their complaints stated that: "Volition still shows some room for improvement when it comes to level design, spots of AI, and implementing the vast potential of the Geo-Mod concept." IGN was more negative about the Windows version,…
From the “Reception” section of Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Critic context only — not part of the audience score.
Reactions
60 of 190 · most liked firstRed Faction II is a great shooter. The nice thing about the classic RF games was that with rocket launchers and explosives you could/had to blast yourself through walls. Something that had never been used before at the time! It was very cool, for example, to shoot a hole in a wall in order to emerge from behind your enemies. The game also works great on a steam deck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7EDDMp7Np0
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So... Red Faction II is a 3.5hr game... I'm considering restarting from the beginning and try to rack up "Heroic points" for the best ending. We'll see if I play it through on Tuesday. Or I could shorten it and have a (hopefully) full session Thursday.
neutral · AI labelView post →Renegade has these stored locally in .BIK format Finally, a game to dethrone Red Faction II in me goofing with it's pre-rendered cutscenes
neutral · AI labelView post →Replayed it in 2024 and ruined my childhood memories of it. Game is ass lmao
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Better than a lot of reviews.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Clunky gameplay and a sloppy storyline and characters. And this has little to do with Red Faction and Mars. This is the Fallout Tactic (or Brotherhood) version of Red Faction. Just get Red Faction 1 and then jump to Guerrilla.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A laughably bad game, this sequel changes everything for the worse. The gunplay is stale and lacks any impact, the ugly crosshairs cover the screen so it's hard to aim properly, the writing is just abysmal, the textures are a wild mix of qualities that clash, the defining mechanic of destructible environments feels like a gimmick they never capitalize on properly, and there's a painfully long and horrendously boring turret section early on. The game just an unpleasant experience all around.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I am a big fan of the original Red Faction. I have beaten it at least 15 times since 2001 and prefer to play on the highest Impossible difficulty which is quite challeging and interesting. When RF2 originally released I tried it in on a friend'd PC once and didn't like it. Especially because of the lack of quick saves which I use constantly in RF1. After that I completed Guerilla and Armageddon once but never touched RF2 again. Only heard some of its reputation. Recently I finished RF1 again…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I kinda feel a little bad even writing this because I knew that it's gonna suck way before even buying it. I dove in because of morbid curiosity alone. This isn't a case of broken hopes and dreams; I was aware that it's a 4/10 game, and lo and behold - it feels like 4/10 after finishing it. But it is still kinda funny how much of a shovelware it is. Any kind of weapon impact from anything this side of a rocket launcher is straight up not there - you just click on enemies a bunch and then they…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's a drastic downgrade from the first one, only play it if you wanna know how it plays like, the plot is bad, the gameplay is bad, the level design is bad, the vehicle sections are either pretty bad or just some stupid rail shooter levels and to top it of, the destruction has been tuned down to being merely a gimmick. This is by far the worst game in the series, I don't think it has much redeeming qualities... The only reasons to play this game is if you're a completionisit, a curious…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I dont care what anyone says, this game is my childhood
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →🕘 IMPRESSION: * Year 2002: Game released * 5 hours later: Feeling this is not a Red Faction game * Year 2022: I wanted to collect those series on my Steam account * Year 2023: Start again with 0.0 playtime * 5 hours later: Nice nostalgia ;) * 10 hours later: The game should be named something else, since the story doesn't have much connection, so that avoid disappointed our expectation 🟢 = Available +1 🔴 = Not available -1 EXISTING CONTENT: 🟢 Explosive may destroy…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Don't bother with the single player, it's terrible... The multiplayer with bots is a 10/10 experience.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Red Faction II is an old-school first-person shooter that I enjoyed back in the day on the PS2. Now that I had the honor of playing this great shooter again on PC, I was happy. It was developed by Volition and published by THQ for PlayStation 2, GameCube, Windows and Xbox. I recommend it.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →TLDR: Still bad, but not as bad as I remember. General Thoughts/Overview: Ahhh. Red Faction 2 was the first game I ever returned in disgust. I actually waited to pick it up on release, completed it inside the business day, and returned it before closing. I wouldn’t even own it on steam were it not part of a bundle, but as I do own it I decided I’d give it a second chance, having been interested in how differently I viewed RF1. The sad fact is, this game is a downgrade in almost every way…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If you really love Red Faction 1 but haven't played II you're probably going to be disappointed. It seems Volition completely misread fan feedback and enthusiasm about RF1 and inexplicably went a very different direction with this sequel. When I picked this game up for PS2 back in the day I hoped for a continuation of RF1's story, more or better RF1 style gameplay, and more geo-mod fun. Story wise this game borrows one macguffin from RF1 but is otherwise completely unrelated and the game takes…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Overall: While it’s a solid FPS for its era, modern players may find it a bit underwhelming. In my opinion, it is the weakest entry in the series, but it still has redeeming qualities that make it entertaining. Because it is short and lacks any majorly frustrating moments, it’s worth a playthrough, just keep your expectations in check. Pros: Decent story that keeps you engaged. Good combat and solid controls. A wide array of weapons to experiment with. Great gameplay variety and…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A very old RF game, but at least its' functioning unlike the 4th entry in the series. Most reviews seem to have a "skill issue" problem and are not tied to the tech limitations of early 2000s.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →ATTENTION: First of all, I must clarify that I've been familiar with this game for a while. I got it thanks to a complete Red Faction pack (if you count the titles in that one), so I bought it and gave it a try, and it felt just as bad as the first time I played it. I wanted to play this game because I played the original RED FACTION, thanks to a magazine called MICROMANIA, which included that game among the CDs they gave out at the time. Then I became quite interested in the later ones, and…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Played a hell of a lot of this on the original Playstation 2. Campaign good and certain elements cheese-able. Offline bot multiplayer fantastic. Game is incredibly old. Pick up on sale if you can stand the graphics!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Not quite as good as Red Faction 1, and certainly shorter than most shooters of its era. Story is pretty cheesy, and weapons are quite unbalanced. Dev's idea of difficulty increase is just increased health pool. Still, I would recommend it on sale - it is part of a defining series, with at least adequate story and game play. Would have been quite frustrated on release, admittedly, if I spent my hard earned cash.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →red faction writers be like: (╯°□°)╯ random bullsh*t go⠀
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Feels like a background game in a 2000s tv show
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Painful, i dont hate games very often but i do with this, that boss fight at the end made me want to die :'(
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →entire point of franchise is that its set on mars: game isnt on mars
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →what happened again?
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is not a marvel of storytelling but it is really fun and enjoyable. Lots of cool vehicles, weapons, and levels like the first game. Voice acting is hilarious and adds to funky charm.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →mouse does not work
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I remember playing this on the PS2 right after I beat the first game and wasn't really a big fan of it so I never finished it. I finally decided after many years to finally sit down and go through it on PC. It's honestly an alright game. It's a lot more linear than the first game and the destruction is scaled down which I wasn't a fan of. The game does have some big names for some of the characters. Lance Henriksen voices Molov and Jason Statham voices Shrike which is pretty awesome. I actually…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I spent hundreds of hours in the PS2 version growing up. Mostly in deathmatch with my cousin via couch multiplayer. I kinda wish they added multiplayer in the PC version, but the botmatch is still a ton of fun. Campaign is ok. Jason Statham as Shrike makes it feel more like one of those kinds of "its bad but good" action films. I play the campaign to unlock all the extra deathmatch maps, and still keep playing botmatch when I need some classic mind-numbing violence. I have most of my PC…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →RF2 always feels like a damn fever dream to play and replay. It has a few different endings based on small choices, clearing hidden and bonus objectives. The game itself is this attempt at telling a story from POV of Earth's Red Faction and then introducing and by the end removing the idea of having super soldiers with infused nanotech. For you Red Faction nerds (like me): In RFG if you look for all the radio tags eventually you find one from Alias. It's short but he goes into some thoughts…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It makes you think, how little effort was put into this? I don't care about the graphics, which are much worse than in the original, since I saw the screenshots before I bought it. But the cartoony visual style is not helped by the very uninspiring gameplay - weak guns, phoned-in level design, the world's worst ever boss fights, a poor save system, a shockingly bad story that promises very little for the next games, and a frankly embarrassing ending that mistakes TV-style exposition for a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I tried playing this after my playthrough of the first game, I can not bring myself to finish this game as its just terrible. Between the weird gameplay and the extremely cringy writing, I can't do it.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If you thought the first Red Faction was over before it began, just wait until you play Red Faction II! It is honestly shocking from a modern perspective how short this game is; each of the game's dozen or so chapters is broken down into several discrete sections that act as checkpoints (you can manually save the game but as far as I can tell you can only reload at the start of a checkpoint, sadly), and some of these chapters are so short that it is almost shocking. I actually thought the…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I forgot to post this review back in 2022 or 2023. This is a weird one. In some aspects Red Faction 2 is better than the first game, and in others it's worse and I'm not really sure I know what goes where. Also, this game is a bit of a pain to get working on modern pcs, as the fixes suggested on PCGW are hit or miss. However whatever shortcomings this game had, I forgave because it is so short. The game just became dumb fun, except for a couple of obscure parts and some terrible enemy…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →this game sucks
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Console version is superior in every way. Even at $2 on sale, I'd rather watch a Let's Play of the console version than play this. Enemies are stiff, several story moments are removed from the PC edition, and weapon balance is a mess, where several guns such as the entire pistol range are nearly identical in performance.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →4/10 not sure how many war crimes i committed, but the number wasn't 0 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3183390429 got it in a bundle for 1$ with 2 other games - no map or go this way indicator of any kind
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →An enjoyably brainless, highly destructive romp. It doesn't offer anything new but it does do everything well. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3113024076
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is better than Red Faction 1. It's less frustrating yet it's genuinely more challenging (at least for the boss fights). It has more weapons and they're FUN weapons. Your progress is rewarded with more and more weapons to pick from and use. The story is related to the predecessor but only on a "general" level. Still, I won't know what other reviewers are thinking when they say "it's not related at all". No, it's clearly related. The mad scientist's work from the first game is being…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Halo Faction - Generic Sequel without a soul So, 2 years after players rebelled against greedy employers back in the previous game - they've got another Red Faction game. Expectations were high, we continue our rebellion on the Earth, more stuff to destroy, more guns, more vehicles, better graphics, cooler fights. Aaaand its all gone to shet. Modern experience is basically the same as back in the day - but now you need to fix Widescreen first, deal with horrible audio on PC version and…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Nanomachines, comrade. This game took a sharp turn to different more cartoonish direction and I can kinda started to like it around the middle part of the game. Somethings were improved (guns and bosses) and somethings got sidelined (destruction mainly). Game length is also shorter and there's a morality system for different endings (which doesn't matter because they are just few different lines with same cutscenes) and I think this is the only Red Faction game that's based on earth, which…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Playing this after Red Faction is like playing Deus Ex, and immediately playing Invisible War after it. The story is out of place in the series. The platforming in the game is meh. The level designs are meh. The poor color schemes make it hard to see what's what. The shooting feels worse than the first game. The checkpoint system is worse. It just seems a downgrade in so many ways. the GeoMod engine is absolutely over-rated at this time. It's nothing special, and had I bought this off of the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is one the bad red faction games. If you want to put on a podcast and just run through it, it's fine, but it's not engaging enough to ever stand out in the pantheon of shooter history. That was the reception on release and that's the perception now - they made up for it with Guerilla of course. Go play that.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Doesn't work well on a modern PC and sometimes crashes. It has worse AI, story, level design and gameplay. It's just a bad sequel. Get the GOG version instead which runs way better
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Unplayable. Don't bother trying to fix it just get the one from GOG, it runs out of the box perfectly fine. Hate having to leave a negative review because I really enjoy Red Faction 2 but the one on Steam just wont run.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Played some Red Faction II today. Did you know that game defaults to R3 for jumping? Fucked up.
negative · AI labelView post →Shrike absolutely went to the Prometheus school of running away from things.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game 111: Red Faction II This was fun, played the first one a bit back and tbh, we were concerned about this one Safe to say, this was amazing, its better than the first and was a really fun game to play Aside from.some confusing parts and a easy final boss, its great 9.5/10
positive · AI labelView post →What a disappointment. Everything that made the original Red Faction interesting is missing here. The story isn't as engaging. The setting, now on boring old Earth, isn't nearly as fun as playing on Mars. The characters are even more generic and forgettable than in the first game and now their performances are even worse. The music doesn't stand out at all. And geo-mod is barely used. There are whole levels where it's missing and all the walls of the boring tunnels are indestructible. What a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →i did'nt hate it but i did'nt love it either its clearly a product of its time being a base shooter it played ok and i didint see any game breaking glitches so meh?
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I liked all of the others but this I just had to force myself through. Wasn't fun at all
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →bishop from alien as voice actor for the classic character molov is very funny however this is possibly one of the worst fps games ever created, but its funny to play and works sort of, so a thumbs up but a 1/5 nothing game thank you
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Red Faction II An FPS game with mainly explosives that takes place mostly indoors with NPCs that love to jump right in front of you. (Read Full Review)
neutral · AI labelView post →Actual slop. Do not play.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game from my childhood, just as hard as I remembered it even on the lowest difficulty. One of the first games with destructible enviroments, just like the first red faction.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's a 5/10 bosses are really hard towards the end of the game the alternate endings are worth a look though
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Red Faction II feels like a budget knockoff of itself and that’s impressive in the worst way possible. The destructible environments are still here, but now they’re just decoration for a bland shooting gallery.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Unfortunately, this game is such a mess that it’s not even comparable to its previous title. The story is vague and has little meaningful connection to the previous game, your objectives in each level are unclear and confusing. Like the first title, you're supposed to find your way by paying attention to dialogues and your surroundings, which was actually a nice touch back then because you didn’t have to constantly stare at a map. But here, it’s handled so poorly that you’re constantly lost…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If your in the know, you know this game is a classic and cant recommend enough. Would love to see a new game one day.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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