Publisher/Developer: THQ/Volition Inc
Genre: Third-person shooter
Price: $59.99
Verdict: Buy it Now
Pros: Fully destructible environments, sandbox mission structure, compelling story
Cons: Useless friendly NPCs, lack of lock-on, not enough rockets
I remember playing the original Red Faction on PlayStation 2 way back in 2001. The greatest achievement was the Geo-Mod engine, allowing players to destroy environments. When I approached a door that I couldn’t get past, I simply blew up the frame surrounding the door and watched the physics take over.
In Red Faction: Guerrilla, the Geo-Mod engine has reached 2.0 and it shows. 99.7% of the objects in the world of Mars are destructible. Everything from the vehicles, buildings, and even people can all be destroyed or demolished. Only very specific objects cannot be destroyed, and the explanation of why actually makes perfect sense. If the game was Adults Only, I’m sure there would be body parts flying everywhere.
Players start the game as Alec Mason, newly arrived on Mars to start hard labor as a mining engineer. When his brother is murdered in the first five minutes of the game, Alec is pushed into the Red Faction, the freedom fighters on Mars, against the Earth Defense Force (EDF). From that moment, Mason is charged with assisting the Red Faction in vacating the EDF from the different sectors where the EDF control the citizens with fear and violence. The game is a sandbox title, allowing the player to freely move inside open sectors and complete missions in any order desired.
The way the game opens new sectors is by weakening the control of the EDF through destroying specific targets, helping Red Faction members with missions, and rescuing captured members of Red Faction along with others. I avoided most of the rescue missions because the NPC AI for the Red Faction members got so bad at some points that they would walk into my line of fire. Once the control of the EDF is gone, Mason must complete a mission that brings him to a new EDF-controlled sector. Completing missions gains salvage, the currency required for upgrading Mason’s weapons. While his sledgehammer is a required item in his four-weapon load, the other three can be chosen by the player at the safe houses or the item boxes scattered in each sector.
The plot moves fast, but still gives the completist gamer more than enough to do. Since the player plays through the game as Mason, it is obviously important that the player connects with him. Mason’s original focus in helping the Red Faction is revenge against the EDF and that is apparent in the early missions. Revenge is a great plot point and one that I immediately followed. The senseless murder of Mason’s brother fuels the pursuit of destroying everything the EDF owns in the game. And when Mason translates his revenge into a full campaign of destroying the EDF in all of the sectors on Mars, I wanted to fulfill it.
The best combination of weapons I found was the remote mine, sledgehammer, nano rifle (which eats away anything like the flesh-eating virus), and the homing rifle. Each weapon is can be upgraded with a higher ammunition count or lowered charging time, which is necessary in the later missions. Be sure to throw a remote mine on an EDF soldier and wait for them to run towards their comrades before detonation. The sledgehammer is the best weapon in the game. Destroying buildings is fun, but smashing an EDF soldier through a wall was a great thrill that I worked to repeat as many times as possible. Even more so when I would sprint into a group of EDF soldiers and swing away, resulting in a pleasurable crunch of bones along with a scream from the soldier I targeted.
Players choose missions through the map, and have to travel to specified areas to receive the mission requirements. Most of the time, grabbing a vehicle is the best way for transportation. Once a mission is selected, the path will be illuminated on the map while driving which will lead the player to the designated area. However, the given path is not always the best one. Numerous side missions raise morale, which increases the amount of ammunition in the item boxes around the sectors and will cause citizens to join in your battles against the EDF. Fighting continuous streams of EDF soldiers along with citizens and Red Faction members creates great small scale battles and was something I enjoyed. Even though the deaths of civilians or Red Faction members lowers the morale of a sector, completing a new mission would easily raise it.
The later missions are mainly the destruction of key EDF facilities. However, even with upgraded weapons they are still challenging; planning is required to complete these with any hope of success. When the control of a sector is low enough, the citizens of Mars will fight alongside of you, but don’t think they are too useful. Most of the time, they will blindly follow you, even when the mission is to destroy a building. The poor AI will have the guerrillas fight from the interior and be crushed by debris from the building as it falls to the ground. During the last set of missions directed at EDF central, the journey to a designated target was a challenge by itself and those were the battles I enjoyed the most. The Geo-Mod 2.0 engine showed its capabilities when I would throw multiple remote mines on buildings, EDF soldiers, EDF vehicles, and sometimes on Red Faction members (accidentally), detonate the mines and watch them in sequence without an slowdown in frames per second. Simply put, the massive amount of chaos that can be caused makes the game that much more fun, besides the great story.
When I took breaks from the plot, I would slowly venture to the outside of any EDF base and sneak my way in, using the sledgehammer for “stealthy” kills. Once inside, I would attach remote mines to anything in range, sneak out, and then alert all the soldiers in the area. One click of the circle button and the mines exploded, I would sprint back into the carnage and take out anything in my path. This is where the game excels. Missions are good, but being allowed to destroy things at my own pace made the game so much better.
The one major problem with the game is the lack of a dedicated lock-on feature. Since the game is so focused on the destruction of environments, the rifles lack the precision that is necessary to dispatch a large number of soldiers. It appears that the suggested route is to just blow everything up or hit it with the sledgehammer. This is a method that works for most of the game, but the last few missions require precision of the rifles to pass through certain areas, something that the game works around with the homing rifle. The homing rifle will guide rounds towards EDF soldiers to kill them. This weapon soon became the default rifle in my four-weapon load.
One other issue I found was there wasn’t enough variety in what to destroy. In the latter half of the game, bridges become targets but taking down a bridge took more time than destroying an entire EDF base. It’s still fun, but when a bridge is still standing even after I neutralized all the structure supports, the thing should fall, not just groan in agony. 75% of the game is all about buildings, but I wish I could have had more than one assassination mission and something other than the constant “take out the convoy” side quest.
Graphically, the game shines. I played this on a 32” LCD screen in 1080p (I know you can’t see any difference at this screen size), but the character models looked crisp and the textures differentiated from each other very well. The landscape environments stick out from the buildings and characters, the opposing images help cement the “settler” feel to the game. Each sector has a different look, and the transition between the sectors blends well. The NPC citizens are a little bland, but since most gamers won’t pay attention to them, it doesn’t really matter.
The Geo-Mod 2.0 engine is awesome. Just with a sledgehammer, most buildings can be brought down. Explosions light up the screen along with debris falling from higher stories in buildings. Even though the EDF buildings are all similar and destroying them is a key mission element, there is enough action in a scene that bringing down a command center feels like an accomplishment. Once the player acquires the more powerful weapons, destruction becomes more scientific, rather than a haphazard pursuit of carnage. Smarter players will look at structures and determine weak points. Just because the explosion is huge doesn’t mean it will obliterate everything, but it does look cool. Though try sneaking up on an EDF soldier on the second floor of a building and sledgehammer them out the window; it never gets old and there is just something disturbingly pleasurable about it.
Sound design is excellent as well. I heartily suggest gamers play Red Faction: Guerrilla on a surround sound system. If you’re inside a building as it is falling, you will hear the action around you. Though while driving, 90% of the sound is coming from the center speaker. The voice acting is top-notch too. Each character is developed well through the dialogue and even the NPCs have something to say to Mason. More than once, my subwoofer shook the ground when I was destroying everything in sight.
As for multiplayer, Red Faction: Guerrilla supports both online and offline multiplayer. Online multiplayer has the standard game modes along with some Geo-Mod focused modes. Gamers have to gain experience points to open new skins, weapons, and options in the online multiplayer. Again, the unfortunate lack of precision of the rifles turns most matches into a rocket fest. Smarter gamers will find ways to use the sledgehammer as the weapon of choice since a couple of gamers in the multiplayer matches I played took me out many times without warning. The multiplayer feels like an extension of the single player game, but the maps are smaller and a little cramped for even an eight on eight match. All the maps feature destructible environments, so cover is not cover for long against a rocket launcher. Exploration is important on the maps because there are high level weapons scattered inside buildings.
The offline multiplayer is more of a party mode. The modes focus on which player can destroy the most in a given time limit. All of the weapons are opened in the offline multiplayer, but aside from a few playthroughs with different friends, the offline multiplayer may get a little stale. The maps in this mode are much smaller than the online multiplayer, mainly to keep gamers inside specific boundaries to keep the destruction scores high. The announced DLC content packs could hopefully open up more for the offline multiplayer.
Red Faction: Guerilla is a solid title. All the elements that Volition meant to insert in the game from previous entries in the series are there except for actual environment modification. The Geo-Mod 2.0 engine is a beautiful asset because there is no other game that allows the player to destroy as much as this game does. The game is also longer than I originally thought, and the replay aspect is only extended since once completing the storyline, the game is still open for the player to complete all the missions they might have skipped over while playing the main story plot. The difficulty for these post-story missions is increased to match the level of the player’s character so the challenge is equal to the skill of the gamer.
Gamers who enjoy a challenge will enjoy Red Faction: Guerilla for the single player story. The multiplayer is solid, but lacks the polish of other shooter titles. The experience system is nice, but the amount of experience needed might not match the interest to keep playing. In my opinion, the multiplayer both online and offline are the weakest parts of the game. It is expected for titles to carry a multiplayer mode, but in this case it really isn’t necessary. Red Faction: Guerilla is a must have for fans of the series and should bring in a lot of newer fans who missed the earlier titles. The game is worth the $60 price tag, even with the small issues like the lack of lock-on and repetitive building destruction there is more than enough to keep a gamer interested beyond the twelve or so hours I played. I will be going back in to complete the missions 100%, it’s that addicting.
Popularity: unranked [?]
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