Viva la revolution!
Set 50 years after the climactic events of the original Red Faction, Red Faction: Guerrilla allows players to take the role of an insurgent fighter with the newly re-established Red Faction movement as they battle for liberation from the oppressive Earth Defense Force. Red Faction: Guerrilla re-defines the limits of destruction-based game-play with a huge open-world, fast-paced guerrilla-style combat, and true physics-based destruction.
I’m unfamiliar with the Red Faction series, it completely passed me by during the last generation. Switching the focus from a FPS to a third-person game is a big risk, especially for a series like this which seems to be focused on pure destruction. Has the gamble paid off? I can say that it has. Guerrilla presents you the open world of Mars to do what you please…if you want, you can spend ages just mindlessly blowing up buildings and whacking enemies with your lovely sledgehammer. The physics engine is just incredible and very impressive, perhaps the best I’ve ever seen on a console, It’s THAT good to look at.
The campaign lets you tackle missions when you like in its free-roaming way and is a blast to play. The game has a good sense of humour, for example during the start of the game you take a walk with your brother and I hit him with the sledgehammer, then the screen popped up with a message “WTF! You killed your brother!” Then he gets killed shortly afterwards anyway, giving your character enough reason to hate the EDF and wanting to destroy it all.
Besides being on foot, you can also drive vehicles anywhere. The controls are fairly good and are easy to get to grips with. Weapons pack a punch, which helps when it comes to destroying everything in your path. I found myself just going off the path to demolish building after building, just because it’s fun. That’s not to say the missions aren’t fun either, since they usually ask you to do something along those lines anyway. To put it simply, you will be fairly impressed with just how good the game can be.
Perhaps the lack of other things to do hurts the game as a whole, but then there’s the multiplayer which is fairly deep. There’s a mixture of modes like CTF, territories and the standard types of Deathmatch. Then there’s the Wrecking Crew mode which is a competitive mode in which everyone tries to get tons of points by demolishing places, it’s probably the best mode that the multiplayer has to offer. The visuals are impressive, especially when it comes to the great physics engine. The open world looks good and the framerate stands up well. Voice-acting is fairly good as are the sound effects and music.
The Verdict
Red Faction Guerrilla takes a risk by changing the series perspective and it definitely has worked out for the best. It’s great fun to blow up your first building, then smash a bunch of EDF troops with your sledgehammer. It’s a visual treat for the eye and one that everyone should give a try.
