RAF - Rocking action frequency

With Red Faction another uncompromising shooter from the 2000s comes to my dissecting table. It was developed by Volition, the later makers of Saints Row, and with a Metascore of 88 and a User Score of 7.8, it seems to have been quite presentable for the PS2 era. Of course, as a person who hasn't played the game in the past, all I see is a generic sci-fi shooter on Mars that shines in all shades of brown and, garnished with a mediocre to bad voiceover, reminds me of Chaser from 2003 - which, by the way, only has 66 points on Metacritic.

Never mind the game, let's move on to the soundtrack. Untypically for the time, there is actually an OST, as this was part of a Limited Run campaign from 2019. With 20 tracks, it is quite compact. In it, Dan Wentz, who is probably best known as the composer of the Red Faction-games is probably best known as the composer of the Freespace-games, combines sci-fi synths with what you would expect from the name of the game and its red cover with a pickaxe raised in the air: Communism vibes.

Well, at least when it comes to me, tracks like Redrum or Grinder evoke memories of the stereotypical USSR depictions we know from games like Red Alert or the Cybrans from Surpreme Commander . In general, however, the score is more classic 'action fare', similar to Borderlands (Accused) and Wolfenstein . Or to put it another way: If we strip the first Mass Effect score of all the motifs and theme and just take the shooting music, we end up with Red Faction.

In fact, it's not even that big a deal, because the mixture of rock, electro and ambient works and offers a more pleasant listening experience than Kelly Bailey's score for the first Half-Life, for example. Conversely, Gustaf Grefberg manages to give games like Enclave or The Chronicles of Riddick their own identity - something that is missing here despite experiments such as the use of piano (Umbra Pogo, Tensionitis) or strings (Synergy). Nevertheless, the OST is definitely worth listening to, especially as it lasts just under an hour.