Review: Red Faction Guerrilla

Recently, the good people at THQ were kind enough to supply me with PS3 and 360 copies of Red Faction: Guerrilla. I bet you’re all itching to hear what I thought of the, game right?

In Red Faction: Guerrilla, known from here on out as RFG, you play Alec Mason, a worker who just arrived on Mars to work as a miner with his brother Dan. Shortly after arriving, Dan is killed in a mining accident and Alec ends up on the most wanted list.  Why?  Because, as he finds out, his brother was part of the Red Faction, a rebel organization working to get rid of the Earth Defense Force, whose previously benevolent rule has become a totalitarian empire.

RFG‘s main selling point, without question, is destruction, and to be honest it’s probably the best destruction I’ve ever seen in a game.  Aside from the occasional bug or physics glitch, most buildings collapse very realistically; after a bit of practice you can actually plan which way a building will fall when it collapses. Your tools of destruction vary from your standard sledgehammer to very powerful explosives, all the way to a nano-rifle that dissolves anything you shoot.  Alongside these various destructive devices, you also have a full arsenal of more normal guns, as well as a few odd ones including my personal favorite, the Arc Welder.  This gun fires out electric discharges that can fry enemies even inside of vehicles without actually harming the machine, allowing even easier hijackings.

Story-wise, RFG lacks in depth, giving you only a few missions that really progress the story, and the characters you meet aren’t particularly likable or developed; some hardly have enough screen time to justify their presence.  Mason, on the other hand, is always present, and you might find yourself really empathizing with his quest to get revenge for his brother’s death.

The game really sets down a challenge if you want it to.  RFG features a bog-standard cover system, though you’ll likely use it very sparingly since everything in the game crumbles to dust after 5 seconds of sustained fire. I actually found myself turning the difficulty down when I restarted a mission for the fifth time in a later stage of the game. An almost total lack of mid-mission checkpoints also doesn’t help things. RFG can also be very unforgiving when it comes to ammo consumption. You’ll often find yourself grabbing your hammer as a last choice for defense a lot in the first half of the game, before you have enough salvage to upgrade your weapons’ ammo capacity.

Salvage is the main currency in RFG, and the game is very temperamental when it comes to forking it over.  For example, sometimes you’ll destroy a tiny hut and you’ll get 30 salvage from it; other times you’ll take down a huge building and get nothing.  This becomes a big problem when the game gets to a point where you can’t progress unless you buy a certain weapon.

Apart from the handful of main story missions, there are tons of side missions, ranging from riding shotgun with a lunatic that wants to return Mars to its pre-terraformed state (and destroying anything you see), to more standard missions like destroy building X to defend area Y.  Most of the side missions are considerably freeform, letting you tackle them any way you want; this is actually pretty fun, considering how the destructibility keys into the missions.

Alongside the main and side missions, there’s also special buildings and structures that you can destroy to help the Red Faction assert more power in that sector. Some are simple buildings, but there’s also a few very big buildings, bases, and bridges you have to destroy. I can’t express how much fun it is to see a building or bridge crumble in exactly the way you were hoping it would. The downside to this, though, is that the EDF doesn’t take too kindly to the people that like to destroy their precious buildings, so when you start chopping away the EDF will strike back; let’s just say they’re relentless when it comes to defending their property. You can expect wave after wave of EDF forces to come down upon you until you get to a safe house.

When you’re done with the single player campaign,  you’ll likely tap into the strongest part of RFG; the multiplayer. Not a lot of games come close to the multiplayer fun factor of a game like Halo 3, has but RFG takes that factor and adds hammers, destructible environments and backpacks.  The backpacks are key to the RFG multiplayer; each backpack gives you a different power, and there are a lot of them.  A few examples are the Rhino pack, which lets you run through walls and people like they’re made out of cardboard, or the Jet pack…which is a jetpack.  Another example is a backpack that makes your weapons more lethal.  My personal favorite, though, is the Earthquake backpack.  Basically, it’s a backpack filled with a bunch of subwoofers so powerful that everything around you trembles with such force that buildings will collapse on top of your enemies.

In the multiplayer you have your standard deathmatch, team deathmatch and king of the hill modes. Next to those, you have Demolition, where one player on each side, the Destroyer, has to do as much damage to the environment as possible in a set time limit, and the other players have to kill their opposing team’s Destroyer.  Siege Mode is an asymmetrical mode; the attacking team has to destroy a series of set targets, while the defending team has to protect them.  This is my personal favorite mode in the game.  And last but not least there is also a “hotseat”-type multiplayer mode where players take turns achieving set goals, including destroying a set number of barrels or buildings in a certain time limit, in order to see who’s the most efficient in their destruction.

Interestingly, the fictional Ultor Corporation makes its sixth appearance in RFG.  The Ultor Corporation has played at least a minor part in all three Red Faction games, as well as both Saint’s Row games; it even makes a cameo appearance as a sponsor in THQ’s UFC 2009: Undisputed. I personally love these kinds of little crossovers between games and would really like to see more of them.

Played on: Completed story mode on XBOX 360, experimented with multiplayer and single player on both consoles.  No major differences between the versions aside from minor aliasing issues in the PS3 version, as well as the occasional PSN glitch.
Available: Available now on XBOX 360 and PS3, coming later this year to the PC.
ESRB/PEGI: M/16+
Players: 1-16
Verdict: Overall, I truly enjoyed my time with Red Faction: Guerrilla.  While lacking a detailed, intriguing storyline, the single player mode is fun and there’s never really a dull moment, while the multiplayer extends the gameplay considerably.  If you’re a fan of wanton destruction, Guerrilla is definitely a potential summer must-buy.