It's been a while since we joined the revolution back on Mars, this time we're fighting on a whole new front, attempting to remove the insane dictator Chancellor Sopot on Earth. You play one of 6 nano-enhanced super soldiers who have allied themselves with the Red Faction and are on a mission to take out Sopot at any cost.

At first glance you'll notice that everything seems a lot smoother and slicker than the first game - the graphics have definitely been improved in every respect from the scenery detail to the animation of your enemies and of course the weapons effects. The sound effects are as beefy and impressive as ever, but the music takes a back seat, seeming less stylish and prominent than before. The patented Geo-Mod technology is here in abundance, meaning that you can blow up and destroy all manner of scenery, ranging from coffee cups and furniture right through to vehicles, walls and floors. Most computer equipment in every room you come across can be blasted into pieces and the explosion effects are more impressive than ever. Also, most of your missions now require you to blow up walls and find alternative routes, rather than just being a neat idea that you can use on occasion. It adds to the fun when you can work your way through a military compound without using a single door, blasting holes in walls and killing the guards on the other side before they know what's happening. Although there is more variety to the enemies than before, they're still not particularly intelligent or difficult to kill, it's a simple case of mowing down everyone in sight without putting too much thought or strategy into what you are doing.

This brings me to what I feel is the sequel's main failing - it's all very well done, but you just feel like you're going through the motions and it isn't quite as exciting as it should be. Part of the problem is that in the original game you played a hapless miner who gets caught up in the conflict, whereas this time you're a super soldier and there is less fear for your life as you blast all that oppose you. Also, the game seems to be shorter than the original, which was absolutely massive - it certainly ends leaving you wanting for more. The story is a little bit dull and the characters are quite cliché, there is little intrigue or mystery to the story as you move through mission after mission where the sole objectives are those of destruction and assassination. And the ending is a huge disappointment - without wanting to spoil it, the end of game boss is the most stupidly unfair and irritating no-brainer I've come across in a very long time. You have no choice in tactics other than to run around dodging and blasting until your enemy is finally dead. What compounds this situation is Chancellor Sopot's speech playing throughout the battle, which is tedious beyond belief as yo ulisten to it for the tenth time. Then you get to listen to it in the credits again. I don't mind people making a political statement in games, but this is just too much.

However, with my griping aside I will happily admit that the range of weapons you get to use in this game is fantastic. You get double handguns and machine guns to begin with, soon you'll have a grenade launcher, assault rifle, combined machine and grenade gun and that's just for starters. The rail gun makes a welcome return, but the new rocket launcher isn't quite as good as the old one. The heavy machine gun and sniper rifle are here again, with all new additions of an anti-personnel launcher that fires 5 bouncing grenades at a time and nano-guns, super lethal rapid fire guns. A double action shotgun, the secondary function of which fires flaming shells is awesome and the burning guards run around screaming for quite a while before finally falling to the ground! The short-range nuclear missile launcher doesn't make an appearance and the precision rifle that played such an integral part of Red Faction isn't half as good to use, which is a crying shame. There are more types of grenades to use as well, including frag, incendiary (great for setting fire to a crowd of guards), time-delay charges and shock grenades. It's an impressive arsenal, but somehow not an improvement over the original.

What is definitely improved, however, is the range of vehicles you get to use for causing some mass destruction. You get to man the guns of a tank as vehicle expert Shrike drives it around town and through buildings! The machine gun and cannon are both awesome weapons. You also get to do it again in an airborne assault craft, blasting an office building to pieces and all the guards within, whilst taking out other enemy craft attempting to block your path. This sequence is one of the most impressive graphically as you fly around the towering skyscrapers of the city. You get to use a submarine, a sequence that is very exciting and quite tough as you dodge other subs, homing mines and depth charges. But by far the greatest new addition is the walker suits - 10 foot tall armour-plated monsters equipped with double heavy machine guns, rocket launchers and incendiary grenades!! When you walk around in one of these, dozens of guards will fall in the wake of your wanton destruction, it is by far the most fun and satisfying part of the game to use one of these bad boys!

The multiplayer part of Red Faction II adds a lot, with a good range of well-designed levels. It's no Timesplitters 2, but the weapons are never more fun than when you're using them on your friends and seeing them explode into chunks of flesh, sometimes their leg stumps being all that is left behind! Up to four players can frag each other senseless in a split-screen mode with no slow-down and bots are available to join the fracas as well. Finally, although the autosave function saves on frustrating saving and loading all the time, something that plagued the first game, there are still regular intrusive loading times. Having just played Haven, a PS2 game with no loading times at all throughout the entire game, it strikes me that some kind of behind the scenes loading or less intrusive transition could have been used, rather than the action abruptly halting for the next bit to load in.

Red Faction II is a solid, by-the-book shooter that has attempted to improve upon the original with mixed results. There are few games that allow such massive amounts of destruction and slaughter with such impressive explosions, great weapons and awesome vehicles but it comes off feeling a little soulless and isn't half as long as it could have been. Those of you who love the FPS genre should give it a try, but it won't be to everyone's tastes.

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).