Should you get your ass to Mars, again?
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 still defines the limits of destruction-based game-play with a huge open-world, fast-paced guerrilla-style combat, and true physics-based destruction.
The original Red Faction Guerrilla was a step in a new direction for the Red Faction series, switching from 1st person to third-person was a big risk, but one that ultimately paid off. It got decent reviews and gamers loved it…sadly the same can’t be said for the sequel Red Faction Armageddon, which ultimately killed the series for most. Still, a generation later and we get a remake with the typical pun of “Re-Mars-tered”, something THQ Nordic have been pulling with their remakes including the Darksiders games “Warmastered Edition” and “Deathinitive Edition” respectively. But how does the remake hold up?
It’s amazing to think that the original game is 9 years old at this point, so the team obviously had their work cut out for them with this remake. The original game’s open world was a bit bland, but what stood out was the level of destruction you could cause and that’s true of the remake. The updated visuals are welcome, but the performance still struggles a bit.
You can choose between performance over visual performance, but ultimately it feels like it’s a patch or two away from running as good it probably should. Sadly, there’s no new content either. However, the game does still include the original multiplayer…something that was also a hit with gamers back in the day. I didn’t experience many issues online but finding matches did take a little longer than I would have expected.
Visually, the game looks a lot better than the original. Having said that, the original was quite basic as it was and the thing that really stood out was how much damage you could cause. It’s a good improvement however, I just wish the performance was as solid. The sound effects, voice-acting and soundtrack are unchanged from the original, which were decent anyway.
The Verdict
Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered gives a nice visual polish to the original game, but sadly little else. It struggles at times and you can’t help thinking they’d get a remake of a 9 year old game to run a lot better on much stronger hardware like the Xbox One X. It’s still a great game and one I recommend, especially to those who missed out on the original…but overall I think this one deserved more.