Red Faction: Guerrilla

June 10, 2009 by Steve Milward
Filed under PlayStation 3, Reviews, Xbox 360

The year is 2125 and the Earth Defence Force are ruling Mars with an iron fist in order to increase the productivity of the red planet, EDF guards man checkpoints and patrol the dusty makeshift roads of the martian surface. In a further attempt to sap the resources from Mars the EDF send more miners to the planet to assist with their desire for more minerals and one such miner is Alec Mason brother of Mars resident Dan. Tales of oppression and hardship greet your arrival but hold no water with you but all that soon changes when the EDF kill your brother and see you as a collaborator with the people who oppose the EDF known to the inhabitants of Mars as the Red Faction.

Red Faction Guerrilla is the third game in the franchise from Volition and THQ and moves away from the first person shooter that made the franchise so famous and opts for a third person perspective, a bold move in our opinion but one that Volition have taken and executed perfectly. The game is built on the Geo Mod 2.0 engine and the ability to destroy everything on the landscape is not just a bold PR claim aimed at selling the title its a fact. From the minute you start playing its not long until your starting to destroy buildings in fact its one of the first thing you do and its a theme that runs through the game and one you better get used to as flattening the buildings, chemical tanks and generally anything that’s standing is so addictive, don’t get too carried away though as the EDF soon appear in droves to stop you and a fire fight ensues which is heavily stacked against you and its also this constant barrage of EDF soldiers that make Red Faction: Guerrilla stand out from other games.

Wave after wave they just keep comin

Too many times we have seen games that have trigger points the stop the onslaught of the enemy or imaginary ‘lines in the sand’ that trigger the next wave of soldiers, not so in Red Faction: Guerrilla. The only way to stop the battle is to win by completing the objective and soon after starting to demolish a target the EDF arrive and its soon apparent that its not going to get any easier. The single player campaign is based around completing various side missions to force out the EDF from the current zone that you are located in and boost the morale of the Red Faction, this will also have the opposite effect on the EDF’s morale and when their morale is low enough this unlocks one or more of the games main storyline missions which when completed demoralise the EDF further until they are forced out of the zone. Of course you don’t have to follow the storyline straight away and the more missions you complete prior to tackling the main missions the higher the Red Faction morale and so the more support you will have when the big battles start.

The games storyline is good and follows Alec Mason as he attempts to free Mars and lead the Red Faction to victory and avenge the death of his brother, the immersion of the sandbox environment for the story is made all the more real by the NPC’s and vehicles going about their daily business whilst you plan your next move and try to work out how to take out the next target in the most spectacular way. The destruction capabilities of the game and the Geo Mod 2.0 engine are where the game shines though and blowing up buildings and structures is key to everything and never the same twice. When a building is damaged or destroyed then this remains the state of the that building for the rest of the game unless it is a key building to the main story line and then it will be rebuilt for you to try again. The games engine is constantly scanning the state of damaged buildings on the landscape and even though a building may remain standing it may topple some time later due to a change in the environment or sometimes by just driving past it so care has to taken when trampling through the ruins.

Creating a Diversion, Alec Mason style

The weapons available have also been well thought out and the hammer which has become the symbol of the game although basic is extremely effective and where you would normally look for a door to enter a building the hammer in Red Faction: Guerrilla is ideal for making your own. Other basic weapons include the assault rifle and pistol and also landmines but some of the more elaborate weapons have a theme of industrial engineering about them and so fit into the mining theme of the game very well. The Arc Welder can be used to great effect on vehicles as it electrifies the shell of the vehicle and thus kills it driver but then leaves the vehicle ready for you to take, then there is a grinder that fires grinding discs which are cutting to say the least. Put all these together with the games futuristic Gauss rifle, Nano rifle and Thermo-barbaric rocket launcher and you really do have the tools for destruction.

Thermo-Barbaric Tools for Destruction

The game itself also has a multi-player mode which sports all the modes you would expect such as Capture the Flag, Anarchy (Deathmatch), Team Anarchy (Team Deathmatch) and Damage Control which sets various control points on a map that have to be attacked, rebuilt and defended. With 21 maps and up to 16 players and the use of the games weapons then the multi-player is a whole different game in itself and also adds backpacks into the mix to give players an extra advantage. Backpacks can be collected from stations around the map and effects such as stealth, fleetfoot and rhino can be used in combination with all the weapons to give you some great abilities and the extra advantage that multiplayer games thrive on. Its interesting how the destructive capability changes the way we play online and there really is no hiding place as the scenery explodes around you and exposes your once strong vantage point, removal f snipers is also easy as you dont even have to climb the building to kill them, just destroy the building.

We are not finished there either as there is also a multi player mode called Wrecking Crew which takes the form of a party game and players compete to cause the most amount of damage to any particular map in the given time. Players are armed with one weapon and one backpack which are chosen at the beginning of the game, it makes for a completely different take on the game and is all about the games destructive quality.

All in all when you look at Red Faction: Guerrilla with its 15 hours of single player open world story based game and the multiplayer modes which are effectively another game in themselves then you have what we as gamers expect from video games company’s in terms of product quality and quantity and that is why we rate Red Faction: Guerrilla so highly.

Lost Gamer Verdict 9/10