It’s Hammer Time – Red Faction: Guerrilla

Released by Volition Inc., Red Faction: Guerrilla takes the franchise in a different, yet welcome, direction.  RFG ditches the first-person perspective of the first two titles for a more contemporary third-person view.  This lends itself well to the new sandbox mechanics of the title, giving you a broader view of the surroundings. As far as sandbox titles go, this one definitely has some tricks up its sleeve.

Set on the surface of Mars, RFG finds Alec Mason as a fresh from Earth demolitions expert seeking a new life on the red planet as a miner.  As he arrives, Alec finds that the Earth Defense Force has much of the planet and its inhabitants under strict lock and key. As it turns out, Alec’s brother Dan just so happens to be part of the Red Faction insurgency which would oppose the EDF’s iron rule. After much reluctance, Alec finds himself joining the Red Faction after the EDF ruthlessly gun down his only blood tie on Mars.

Right from the start you can tell why the game’s subtitle is “Guerrilla”.  This is a game about fighting an overwhelming force using hit and run guerrilla tactics.  While most games usually throw you into the fray as an army of one, Guerrilla requires some planning and tactical destruction, or else you will quickly find yourself surrounded and respawning at the nearest safe house. However, the game gives you plenty of tools with which to get in quick, take down targets, and make a hasty getaway.

One of my favorite features is the ability to do anything you wish and have it positively effect the progress of the game. While Niko Bellic may be free to go on all manners of elaborate crime sprees and car chases, these seldom offer actual advancement of the game aside from the ocassional monetary gain from the corpse of a hapless pedestrian. In Guerrilla, everything that you destroy or do will either give you salvage to upgrade weapons, raise the morale of the mining populace, or weaken the grip that the EDF holds on that particular sector.  The actions you do will often effect all three of these things.

The game offers up a slew of possibilities for completing the 100+ guerrilla missions and 20 campaign missions.  For example, the Red Faction may contact you to inform you of an EDF convoy making its way through the territory. The projected route of the convoy will be laid out on your mini-map. You could confront the convoy head on, set up a roadblock and remote charges to catch them off gaurd, or wait for them to cross a bridge and detonate it, sending the vehicles crashing into a ravine to be finished off. All of these are viable options and completely up to the player to pick and choose which tools and tactics to employ to accomplish objectives.

At times the destruction can be a bit unrealistic. A building, after having three whole walls and corners removed via sledgehammer, may still stand in defiance of all conventional laws of physics. These instances are not often enough to be much of a nuisance, and the Geo-mod 2.0 system is a vast improvement over the destruction in the first two titles. It’s the little things that set the engine apart from other gaming engines. While toting one of your guerrilla buddies in the bed of a truck across the martian dunes, slamming over a large enough bump may send your companion bouncing into the air like an NBA star with arms flailing, shouting obscenities as his trajectory finds him coming down just short of the bed of your truck.

While the single-player campaign is certianly an entertaining time sink, the multiplayer is where the true heft of the game lies. Lag, connection issues, and many of the other problems that plague most games shortly after launch are rarely present here. Of the many games that I have played, I’ve only been dropped from about as many as I can count on one hand.

The game types are familiar, nothing too out of the ordinary here.  There are of course deathmatch, capture the flag, and capture point gametypes, as well as Demolition and Siege, which are more in tune with the destructive nature of the title. Demolition pits two teams against eachother in an attempt to destroy the most structures. Each team has a player designated as Destroyer whose goal is to travel the map destroying as many buildings as possible, while the rest of the teammates work to defend their team’s Destroyer and kill the opponent’s. During Siege, each team takes turns defending and assaulting key buildings in a base. All in all, the variety in maps and gametypes allow for enough variation in gameplay to keep things fresh and entertaining for a very long time.

In the ever-growing desert of sandbox games, it is becoming harder and harder for developers to distinguish their title from giants like Grand Theft Auto and Fallout 3.  However, with its compelling and mechanically unique single-player campaign and the fast paced smash-em-up action of the online multiplayer, I feel that Red Faction: Guerrilla is easily one of the major stand-out sandbox titles that we’ve seen in a long time. I would definitely recommend this title for purchase. Even if you are not into multiplayer, there is enough to see and explore on the red planet to keep things interesting for a while. Plus, there’s just something therapeutic about smashing things in with a sledgehammer.

Tags: Campaign, EDF, miners, PC, PS3, red faction, Sandbox, single player, volition, Xbox 360