By PsiCoNaut
Overview
Massive Destruction, in a large open world, 3rd person environment, is what this game is about. Having all manmade items in the game been fully destructible, makes it rather enjoyable, and all this in wonderful 1080 resolution (or at least a resolution higher than 720). The story is a fairly simple one, set in the year 2125, you, as Alec Mason, takes a trip to Mars to meet up with your brother. After the initial tutorial, the Earth Defence Force (EDF, which are the bad dudes) finds out that your brother is a Red Faction member. With which they decide to enforce their discovery by executing him. Alone, your brother gone, revenge flowing through your blood, the only friends you can turn too are the Red Faction. So it’s time to go ‘guerrilla’ (which is far worse than ape).
Features
The main feature of the game is the destructible environment, and been destructible you will need to destroy a very large portion of the structures, which is actually quite fun. In order to achieve this, there are a few weapons at your disposal: a sledgehammer (which is a very powerful melee attack), remote detonation charges (multiple of these can be placed on structures and remotely detonated at will), rocket launcher, nano rifle (nanobites eat away at the walls, or people and vehicles), thermobaric rocket ( a very large rocket that can be detonated at will or impact), singularity bomb (never picked one up myself, but watched it create a black hole which sucked up everything in close proximity), tanks, etc. There are also various ways to destroy a building, as they apparently have been designed using standard structural engineering concepts, so taking out the exterior walls does not really help, you need to destroy the support pillars and maybe some interior walls. Besides all the destruction and slightly weak story line missions, there are quite a few other things to do. There are guerrilla side missions, over 100 if I remember correctly, but only about 10 different ones, which makes the game rather repetitive. These missions range from house arrest (rescuing people from the EDF), guerrilla raids, destruction training missions, drive vehicles to a safe house etc. There is also ore to mine. The more ore you mine, the more salvage you get. Salvage can also be accumulated by destroying vehicles, buildings and collecting scrap. This salvage can be used to upgrade your weapons and armour. It would have been nice to have the vehicles at your safe house upgradable as well. One can also hunt down and destroy propaganda, which are basically road side ad boards for the EDF. The few radio tags scattered around can be collected and every few will give you the location of the mother of all bombs, which gets attached to your vehicle for a massive mobile bomb. EDF crates are also scattered around for your destruction. The cool thing about the radio tags and the ore is that they show up on your mini map resulting in an easier collecting spree. The map is rather large and by large I mean a few game kilometres. With the large map and it been on mars, you do tend to see a lot of red rocks. There are basically six areas in the game which need the EDF booted out. As you destroy more EDF property and complete more guerrilla actions, the EDF lose control and morale increases. The higher the morale is, the more likely that other red faction guerrilla members will help join the fight. This really does add to the game as you are not left alone to handle all the EDF on your own. Besides for vehicles with weapons mounted on then, tanks etc, you also get a few unique weapons. Other than the basic rifle and pistol, there is the arc welder which fires off a few lightning bolts stunning and killing multiple enemies, the grinder shoots razor sharp discs and if upgraded, exploding ones. But my favourite was the rail driver, a weapon that is capable of showing an x-ray vision of people inside vehicles and buildings as well as taking them out. Also, not all weapons can be bought via salvaging upgrades, some need to be picked up on the battle field left over from disposed enemies. With a title of guerrilla, you can imagine that guerrilla tactics should be used. Now it is not 100% necessary, to attack and run away all the time, and if you die you just respawn at the nearest safe house. All in all, the worst that does happen is each time you die; the morale does lower, leaving you with less guerrillas coming to your aid.
Best Bits
- Destroying as much as possible
- Large map
- Red Faction Guerrillas fighting alongside you
Worst Bits
- Side missions can be quite repetitive
- Not that much of a story or cut scenes
Conclusion
In the end, this is quite a fun game. Besides for the rather repetitive side missions, the main missions are interesting with some very unique weapons at your disposal. Having to continuously destroy buildings may seem tiresome as well, but yet the unique ways that they are built and fun ways to destroy makes this far more interesting. Let’s just say, I am not sorry that I bought and played Red Faction Guerrilla.
Also released on Xbox 360.
Link to site for more info, screen shots and videos: Red Faction
