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I'm a bit of a lurker around these parts, but I felt the need to write down my thoughts on this particular game, and hopefully some of you will find it helpful.
Let me start off by telling you a few things that I didn’t know until after I bought this game. The original Red Faction is an FPS that was originally released on the Playstation 2 eight years ago. Red Faction: Guerilla is the third title in the series, and the first to debut on the current gen systems. However, Guerilla may as well be a standalone title. The game gives you plenty of context to its plot and characters and even almost ignores the fact that there were any games that came before it in the franchise. No previous experience with the franchise is needed to enjoy this game.
The story really isn’t what I was paying attention to the most when I played through Red Faction: Guerilla. The main focus of the game is the physics engine and the destruction that is made possible with it, and game developer Volition does its best to make this fact extremely obvious. The focus on destruction is entirely justified. Blowing things up in this game is satisfying, addictive, and it never gets old. If you’ve ever set off firecrackers inside a plastic bottle to see the damage it would cause, or built a fragile airplane out of legos only to drop it and see the pieces scatter across the floor, this game was made for you.
You play as the game's protagonist, Alex Mason, from a third person view and explore an open world made up of several territories. These six territories are all controlled by the EDF (Earth Defense Force) at the start of the game and your job as part of the rebellious Red Faction group is to destroy every piece of EDF property you can find, causing them to lose their hold on the territory. Each territory has a number that corresponds to how much power the EDF still has in the area. By destroying important structures and completing specific mission objectives, you can reduce this number to zero which, after completing all of the mandatory missions, will result in the liberation of that territory. You do this in almost all of the territories, with the exception of a couple that just serve as locations for story-based missions. EDF structures are marked on your map and you can create GPS paths to any of them, and you’ll end up driving through a lot of terrain to get to the important structures and missions. Mars isn’t heavily populated and doesn’t’ have huge skyscrapers like lots of other open world games. Most of the scenery you’ll be seeing is nothing but desert and rocks, which can get a bit tiring, but doesn’t detract too much from the experience. While the mission structure and environments are somewhat repetitive, the single player still remains fun through its lengthy story.
There are some benefits to completing certain side quests, such as earning salvage, which is the game’s form of currency, in order to get new upgrades for your weapons and equipment. You can also complete missions for the purpose of increasing morale in the territory. Doing this means civilians will automatically become new recruited Guerillas who will show up instantly at any firefight you encounter to give a helping hand. The help comes in handy, as the game can get extremely hard, particularly during the more important missions, even on the easiest difficulty. The game uses infinitely respawning enemies to keep you focused on destruction rather than trying to kill every enemy in sight like you would in most games, which goes a long way to enforcing the main focus of the game being to destroy as much as possible. Most of the missions are centered around destroying buildings rather than killing as many enemies as possible, so when the enemies notice you and start showing up in large numbers to take you down, you have to act quickly in order to stay alive because killing enemies only helps to distract you from your mission. This game throws a lot at you to increase the chaos, such as enemy airships and tanks that are difficult to take down, and rarely will you ever become lucky enough to come across a tank to protect yourself or speed things up. Occasionally the game will provide mecha robots that can take and deal a lot of damage, but these parts of the game are rare and short-lived, despite their ferocious potential for mayhem.
The single player is long and remains entertaining throughout, but the story is a bit of a let-down. The main plot is forgivably standard, but the characters are hard to really care for as their motivations are not thoroughly explained, to where everyone’s goal seems to just be “kill the EDF.” There is a dearth of significant story cut scenes, providing only a loose thread connecting from the beginning to the end. Your goal is made clear from the very beginning, but neither Alex Mason’s motivations nor anyone else’s are ever truly explored. Still, as clichéd as it sounds, you really will be having way too much fun blowing things up to really notice the mediocrity of Red Faction’s story.
To complement the lengthy story mode is the multiplayer complement, which I’m happy to report is remarkably solid. Firing your weapons feels smooth and satisfying, and lag is a rare occurrence. Matchmaking is blatantly influenced by Halo 3, which in my eyes is never a bad thing as the system works extremely well and provides for a lot of interesting variety in game types. The party system works flawlessly and playing with your friends is as easy as it should be in any game. There are several game types, including the standard deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag modes as well as which focus on beating the other team to destroying or rebuilding certain structures. The new game types are a nice way to bring the destructive nature of the game’s single player into the multiplayer. Surprisingly, the physics work every bit as well online as they do in the campaign, and it will inevitably lead to some amusing moments when playing with your friends.
As a complete package, Red Faction: Guerilla is absolutely a great buy. It provides hours of satisfying gameplay and is a very entertaining and engrossing game, especially with friends. This game makes a good case for itself as a unique title among the many shooters out there, putting the focus on the physics aspects of it rather than the shooting aspects. Great multiplayer, great single player, and a great physics engine come together to make this a true standout title, and well worth the money.
I hope this review will help some of you who are undecided on whether to buy this game or not.
Let me start off by telling you a few things that I didn’t know until after I bought this game. The original Red Faction is an FPS that was originally released on the Playstation 2 eight years ago. Red Faction: Guerilla is the third title in the series, and the first to debut on the current gen systems. However, Guerilla may as well be a standalone title. The game gives you plenty of context to its plot and characters and even almost ignores the fact that there were any games that came before it in the franchise. No previous experience with the franchise is needed to enjoy this game.
The story really isn’t what I was paying attention to the most when I played through Red Faction: Guerilla. The main focus of the game is the physics engine and the destruction that is made possible with it, and game developer Volition does its best to make this fact extremely obvious. The focus on destruction is entirely justified. Blowing things up in this game is satisfying, addictive, and it never gets old. If you’ve ever set off firecrackers inside a plastic bottle to see the damage it would cause, or built a fragile airplane out of legos only to drop it and see the pieces scatter across the floor, this game was made for you.
You play as the game's protagonist, Alex Mason, from a third person view and explore an open world made up of several territories. These six territories are all controlled by the EDF (Earth Defense Force) at the start of the game and your job as part of the rebellious Red Faction group is to destroy every piece of EDF property you can find, causing them to lose their hold on the territory. Each territory has a number that corresponds to how much power the EDF still has in the area. By destroying important structures and completing specific mission objectives, you can reduce this number to zero which, after completing all of the mandatory missions, will result in the liberation of that territory. You do this in almost all of the territories, with the exception of a couple that just serve as locations for story-based missions. EDF structures are marked on your map and you can create GPS paths to any of them, and you’ll end up driving through a lot of terrain to get to the important structures and missions. Mars isn’t heavily populated and doesn’t’ have huge skyscrapers like lots of other open world games. Most of the scenery you’ll be seeing is nothing but desert and rocks, which can get a bit tiring, but doesn’t detract too much from the experience. While the mission structure and environments are somewhat repetitive, the single player still remains fun through its lengthy story.
There are some benefits to completing certain side quests, such as earning salvage, which is the game’s form of currency, in order to get new upgrades for your weapons and equipment. You can also complete missions for the purpose of increasing morale in the territory. Doing this means civilians will automatically become new recruited Guerillas who will show up instantly at any firefight you encounter to give a helping hand. The help comes in handy, as the game can get extremely hard, particularly during the more important missions, even on the easiest difficulty. The game uses infinitely respawning enemies to keep you focused on destruction rather than trying to kill every enemy in sight like you would in most games, which goes a long way to enforcing the main focus of the game being to destroy as much as possible. Most of the missions are centered around destroying buildings rather than killing as many enemies as possible, so when the enemies notice you and start showing up in large numbers to take you down, you have to act quickly in order to stay alive because killing enemies only helps to distract you from your mission. This game throws a lot at you to increase the chaos, such as enemy airships and tanks that are difficult to take down, and rarely will you ever become lucky enough to come across a tank to protect yourself or speed things up. Occasionally the game will provide mecha robots that can take and deal a lot of damage, but these parts of the game are rare and short-lived, despite their ferocious potential for mayhem.
The single player is long and remains entertaining throughout, but the story is a bit of a let-down. The main plot is forgivably standard, but the characters are hard to really care for as their motivations are not thoroughly explained, to where everyone’s goal seems to just be “kill the EDF.” There is a dearth of significant story cut scenes, providing only a loose thread connecting from the beginning to the end. Your goal is made clear from the very beginning, but neither Alex Mason’s motivations nor anyone else’s are ever truly explored. Still, as clichéd as it sounds, you really will be having way too much fun blowing things up to really notice the mediocrity of Red Faction’s story.
To complement the lengthy story mode is the multiplayer complement, which I’m happy to report is remarkably solid. Firing your weapons feels smooth and satisfying, and lag is a rare occurrence. Matchmaking is blatantly influenced by Halo 3, which in my eyes is never a bad thing as the system works extremely well and provides for a lot of interesting variety in game types. The party system works flawlessly and playing with your friends is as easy as it should be in any game. There are several game types, including the standard deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag modes as well as which focus on beating the other team to destroying or rebuilding certain structures. The new game types are a nice way to bring the destructive nature of the game’s single player into the multiplayer. Surprisingly, the physics work every bit as well online as they do in the campaign, and it will inevitably lead to some amusing moments when playing with your friends.
As a complete package, Red Faction: Guerilla is absolutely a great buy. It provides hours of satisfying gameplay and is a very entertaining and engrossing game, especially with friends. This game makes a good case for itself as a unique title among the many shooters out there, putting the focus on the physics aspects of it rather than the shooting aspects. Great multiplayer, great single player, and a great physics engine come together to make this a true standout title, and well worth the money.
I hope this review will help some of you who are undecided on whether to buy this game or not.
