The Laser's newest writer, Pat Bradford looks at THQ's hit action title for the PS2, the exciting and entertaining sequel Red Faction II. In the game, players take command of nano-enhanced soldiers who are battling it out for supremacy against an evil dictator in the near future. Red Faction II mixes action and RPG elements to create a unique gameplay experience. Join us as we take a quick look at this recent release and let you know whether its worth checking out.

It is the 22nd Century. All war has broken out between the Republic of the Commonwealth and the Red Faction rebels. Chancellor Sopot of the Republic of the Commonwealth has used nano-technology to create a group of nano-enhanced soldiers. These soldiers are smarter, faster, stronger, and in every aspect superior to the average soldier. For fear of being turned on by his nano-enhanced soldiers Sopot declares them enemies of the state and sends out his elite guards to hunt them all down. With these nano-enhanced soldiers out of the way he can now create an army of nano-enhanced soldiers that are completely mindless and loyal. However, you and a group of other nano-enhanced soldiers have survived and have teamed up with the Red Faction to destroy Chancellor Sopot and restore order to the Republic of the Commonwealth.

This is where the game starts. The character that you play is Alias. An expert at explosives, Alias was in Sopot's Special Forces and was one of the numerous volunteers to become the first nano-enhanced soldiers. There are five other soldiers with you: Tangier, Shrike, Repta, Quill, and Molov. They will help you on your battle to destroy Sopot's mindless army and to restore order in the Republic of the Commonwealth.As an RPG this game is more ordinary than extraordinary. One thing that is unique to Red Faction 2 is its geo-mod engine. This engine allows the environment to be destroyed in real time. As you progress through the game you will need to destroy walls, floors, and other things so that you can further your game play.

At the core of RF2 is a good old shoot 'em up game. There are relentless enemies that will do whatever it takes to kill you. This doesn't mean that they're stupid though and will run straight at you. The AI was very good in this game and gets harder and harder as the game goes into the further levels. To help you hold off these enemies you will have a wide variety of weapons ranging from pistols to rocket launchers. You will also have four types of grenades that you can use which all do different things. What really made me like this game was how simple it was and all the vehicles that you got to drive in. RF2 has great vehicles that you can pilot and use to kill your enemies. These vehicles include tanks, aircraft, submarines, and mech armor suits.

The best thing about RF2's controls are the two fire buttons. For some guns the second fire button did an alternative attack, but for the dual weapons like mps, pistols, and nano mps the R1 button will shoot just the weapon in your right hand the L1 button will do the same for the weapon in your left hand. This was a nice addition to the game. Besides being a good single player game RF2 is a great multi player game. It has a wide array of multi player modes that include all the good ones like Capture the Flag, Death match, and Arena. It also has two original ones call Regime and Bagman which are really the same and not to fun as all you do is try to keep the bag for as long as possible without getting fragged. All of the modes except for Regime have team matches. The levels are also spectacular and there are a lot of them to choose from. This is essential for a good multi player game.

All in all this was a very good yet not very groundbreaking game. There were some levels in which the lighting wasn't good enough and I couldn't see anything. This was very annoying since I had enemies shooting at me from all angles. This is a very good game to get though if you like shoot 'em up RPG games.