Developers often boast about a destructible environment where the game lets you blast holes through walls and bring buildings to the ground. Red Faction: Guerrilla actually follows through with that promise. RF: Guerrilla gives you the freedom of a sand-box world and the ability to bring buildings down to a pile of smoking rubble.

Based 50 years after the first Red Faction, players are introduced to a habitable Mars. The landscape ranges from the red deserts of the south to the metropolises that have risen in the north by the polar caps. Like the first Red Faction, RF: Guerrilla shows a bleak outlook for the Martian colonists: an existence of forced labor and torture at the oppressive hands of the Earth Defense Force.

Players take the control of Martian colonist turned freedom fighter Alec Mason, whose brother was gunned down by the EDF shortly after Alec’s arrival to the red planet. As Alec, you join the Red Faction to take revenge for your brother’s murder and to free the planet from the EDF. But that’s where the story falls apart. Outside the first cut scene RF: Guerrilla has a poor excuse of a story with supporting characters and plot that were grossly under developed and easily forgettable.

Outside the main quest, which drives the story of Martian liberation, Mason is tasked with driving out EDF forces from areas of the map and rallying colonists to the Red Faction cause. Unfortunately, here too is where the game falls flat.

On side quests, enemies and fellow guerrilla fighters are dumber than the DVD they’re printed on. The EDF will throw as many troops at you until you’re overwhelmed and eventually gunned down. While guerrilla fighters follow you around like gun-totting toddlers who only get in the way and eventually get you killed.


yes, they are that dumb.

If you can, stick to the main story objectives. These levels are interesting and offer challenging scenarios, while side quests are terribly repetitive after the second region.

The real gem of RF: Guerrilla is the destruction you unleash upon the buildings of Mars thanks to geo-mod 2.0. The first Red Faction limited players to blasting through walls and blowing up the occasional bridge. RF: Guerrilla on the other hand, let’s you reduce buildings to a pile of rubble. Bringing down a building for the first time is an aw-inspiring moment and can be repeated in different ways using a collection of weapons from your trusty sledgehammer to an array of explosives.




On the multiplayer side, RF: Guerrilla offers the same multiplayer options we’ve come to expect from games carrying the Xbox Live logo. In addition to basic modes like team death match, RF: Guerrilla offers siege mode and wrecking crew.

Siege mode is control-point style match where the offense’s goal is to destroy, not capture, specific enemy structures in a set amount of time.
While wrecking crew is a time trial mode where players take turns unleashing hell upon a set amount of buildings, whoever scores the highest and destroys the most buildings wins. These modes take full advantage of the new geo-mod and are where multiplayer is at its strongest.

Red Faction: Guerrilla, despite its set backs with its story and AI, offers an interesting experience thanks to geo-mod 2.0. It’s too bad other games don’t follow RF: Guerrilla’s lead, because a Grand Theft Auto IV quality of game with geo-mod would be worth its weight in gold.

Score: 3/5

Nintendo needed a “go big or go home” attitude for their press conference at this years E3 and they delivered in some points and flopped on others. The majority of press conference had Nintendo executives talking about units sold of the Wii and DSi with a small handful of triple “A” titles being announced.

It was clear that Nintendo still had a strong plan to cater to casual gamers, clearly stating there was the opportunity to expand the casual gaming market by, up to, 50 percent in the U.S. and European countries. The majority of the press conference reflected this plan by premiering games like “Women’s Murder Club”, a game will take gamers through James Paterson novels in a mini game laden adventure, and more details on “Wii Sports Resort.”

The jewels of the press conference were the announcements of “Super Mario Galaxy 2” and “Metroid: Other M”, which is made in partnership with Team Ninja of “Ninja Gaiden” fame. Both games won’t be around until sometime in 2010.

One of the oddest announcements of Nintendo’s press conference was the premier of the Wii vitality sensor. A device that looks it should be in a hospital instead of your living room. How willl this new accessory play into gaming? More details will need to be revealed before any guesses can be made.

With the majority of the time at the press conference spent talking about how casual gaming is still a growing demographic, can Nintendo bring back their core audience with the announcements of “Super Mario Galaxy 2” and “Metroid: Other M”?

Sony just confirmed that the PSP Go real and will have its coming out party at E3. This announcement comes days ahead of schedule from their scheduled press conference.

The system is blue tooth enabled allowing it to sync headsets to the system. No word on how the handheld would interact with the PS3 was given. The new handheld will no longer use the UMD format opting instead for a digital distribution system. The Go will also part ways with Scan disk memory cards for an internal 16 gig flash memory system.

The SCEA Director John Koller said that the new system isn’t meant to replace the PSP-3000 and both systems are meant to coexist and that both systems would, at the start, share a similar library of games.

The PSP Go is said to be released in the fall of 2009.



http://psp.ign.com/articles/988/988431p1.html

Finally it’s June. The time of the year gamers look forward to with more zealous and anticipation than a crack addict getting their next fix. Every year the big three and the countless developers promise the world, which is sometimes delivered. What will this year have in store for the industry and what will be the life-altering announcements? Here are my pre-E3 predictions.

Nintendo is kicking ass and taking names with the continuing success of the Wii and the DS. There is, however, room for the improvement with their hardcore audience. Nintendo’s game library is being flooded daily by piss-poor excuses for games that cater to their casual gamer market. They need a new triple “A” title that they are known for.

Top websites are predicting it’s going to be a new “Legend of Zelda” or “Super Mario” with a few side notes about a true “Pikmin” for the Wii. If they’re smart, Nintendo would announce multiple titles. They need to bring back their core audience because who knows how long the soccer-mom-casual-gaming bubble is going to last.

Microsoft is in an interesting situation because they haven’t struggled with selling consoles or consumer confidence. There is the red ring problem but it seems to have died off and Microsoft handled it with some poise and grace. If Microsoft presents a strong release calendar, which they already have with “Halo:ODST” and “Mass Effect 2,” they have 2009-2010 in the bag.

The big hardware update, outside a less-than-probable 360 price drop, will be about the Zune HD. On May 26, Microsoft announced that the updated Zune will be able to connect to your Xbox Live account. In a press release Microsoft stated that the Zune will act as a remote for your account. What else it’ll do hasn’t been said but Microsoft stated that “attendees will see firsthand how Zune integrates into Xbox LIVE to create a game-changing entertainment experience.”

Sony, on the other hand, has the most to gain. Most of which is on the business end of the show. The most anticipated announcement is the long-rumored price drop. If Sony doesn’t announce this price drop, they are going seal the tomb of the PS3 so tight Kratos won’t be able to pry it open when “God of War III” is released.

There have also been rumors about a slim-line PS3 with a matte finish. Would this redesign accompany a PS3 price drop? Time will tell.

Unfortunately, the same goes for the PSP. It’s been on the market since 2005 and is in desperate need of a redesign from the ground up. The DSi already has a camera and a clean-cut online service. Both of which were concepts “in development” for the PSP. Sony needs to keep pace with Nintendo if not take the lead with a new handheld.

Besides the big three, there are a huge amount of games people are waiting to hear about. Will we hear about “Final Fantasy XIII’s” release date? What exactly did Infinity Ward change with “Modern Warfare 2”? What’s the release date for “Star Wars: the old Republic”? How much will OnLive cost?

Despite the announcements from console companies and developers being made it’s good to see E3 return to its former glory: A party for the video game industry with booth babes.

If you weren't using the Internet during the the 2009 Game Developer's Conference then you missed the video-game-industry explosion that was OnLive.

For those who still don't know, OnLive is potentially the fifth to the big three--Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft--and the PC market. Offering full budget titles that will be processed and streamed straight to your onLive system. Meaning you no longer have to have a NASA super computer to run Crysis at full steam.

This all seems awfully familiar and too good to be true. A service that streams games with little or no down time straight to your system. Sounds like the 21 century's Sega Channel.

Sega Chanel in its heyday streamed games to your Sega Genesis allowing you to play full titles without buying the game. You simply paid for the service. The service worked well and lasted longer than some systems after the Genesis.

Will OnLive bring subscirption based libraries back from video games' past and become top contender of the industry? Maybe. GameSpot's feature about onLive points to a lot of heavy-hitting publishers lining up behind OnLive.

In the April 19 issue of the San Jose Mercury News, Steve Perlman, onLive's CEO, said that someone will sign up for the service and out of a $50 billion market those someones will be their market.

Will it put the final nail in the coffin of PC gaming since it takes the guess work out of building a specialty PC? No way, building your own towering monster is part of the draw of PC gaming and taking the opportunity to tinker away from a nerd isn't going to happen.

OnLive is an interesting concept and it will change the way indusrty will look at publishing but it it wont change the indusrty overnight. What Onlive will do is cater to casual gamers who don't know the difference between Xbox Live and their Nintendo channels.

To this point, mixed martial arts games have been rare at best. The sport has had a handful of games released on the PlayStation 2 and we have yet to see and a title on the new generation of systems. UFC 2009 Undisputed aims to change that in mid May.

The demo only features Chuck Lidell and Shogun Rua but promises 80 more with the addition a fighter builder, so you can live out your fantasy of sitting on top of sweaty guys and beating them senseless without the eminent psychical danger.

Compared to EA's Fight Night Round 3, which debuted in 2006, UFC 2009 stands in the shadows.

Graphically, the game is average. If you keep your focus in the octagon it's clear the majority of the work was spent on the fighter models, as it should for a UFC game. The referee and the teams for the fighters look terrible. The ref especially looks dated complete with choppy animations. Outside the octagon UFC 2009 doesn't fair any better. The crowd suffers from cardboarditis, a terrible disease that causes all onlookers to look like cardboard stand ins moving in a staggered wave.

The controls seem sloppy and unrefined. Unlike Fight Night Round 3's polish and balance you get unresponsive button mashing. Blocks are sluggish to come up while punches and kicks are landed with ease and a lack of thought for timing.

Ground fighting is where the demo falls apart completely. The right stick handles all grapple moves and take downs. Once you're on the ground the game falls farther into the hole of button-mashing hell, which I didn't think was possible. You are reduced to punches to the face and torso with no sense that you are winning or losing. Once on the ground it's almost impossible to return to the standing position where the game is more exciting.

The mechanics are interesting, but I'm not sure they're balanced. Lidell is known for his strong hits to the face, but should these devastating hits allow him to knock another professional fighter out on the first blow? They can and will. If this is balanced then that's my tip for all players who'll be flooding ranked matches in May. Pick Lidell and aim for the head, problem solved.

Impression: Wait and See. Balance issues are big for a fighting game. Since the market already has polished keepers like Street Fighter IV and, the more appropriate comparison, Fight Night Round 3, the lack of balance is too worrisome to overlook