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
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Nice review. I found this game to be funner than most open world games. Sure it didn't have developed characters so I didn't really care about any of them. But when it comes down to it, I'll take a fun gameplay over a great story. Sure it's nice when you can have both but to me the point of games is the gameplay.
I didn't mind the side missions with the exception of the Transporter missions. There should be a moratorium on these race against the clock missions that seem to be a mandatory side-quest in open world games. At least GTA made it so it was an actual race but even them it was still one of my least favorite side-missions.
While not perfect its probably the most fun I have with a game released this year. I don't understand the walkers and vehicles not being included for online MP (maybe we'll get bigger maps that support them via DLC? Probably not). It also takes longer that I would like to find a match online. Mars seems to be sparse in terms of structures. That coupled with the fact that damage to structures is persistent only exaggerates the sparseness. The AI is dumb but I've been overwhelmed to the seer numbers thrown at you. I can't even imagine what its going to be like when they start throwing several tanks at me on top of everything else.
However, the gun play is solid and the game has the best destruction I've seen in a game. The vehicles and crumbling structures feellike they have weight behind them and cover system is interesting because you have to constantly change positions. Also the nano-rifle is full of win.
3/5 is an insult to this game. The game has been out for like 2 days now, there's absolutely no way you could have fully enjoyed the multiplayer in this short time.
It is an amazing feeling to be having legitimate gun battles inside a building one minute, and then a few players come storming through with Rhino/Thrust packs, drastically changing the entire area in which you were just battling it out.
Or when people are up busy with eachother up high, and other players come by and destroy the bottom out and watch everything crash down. You need to experience these situations, it's the whole point of the game.
The destruction system alone is amazing, tack it on to RF:G's SOLID gunplay and you easily have a better feeling than a simple "3/5"
I suggest you keep playing.