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  As you know, Red Faction was originally made for PlayStation 2.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.