Red Faction Guerrilla Review - Xbox Gaming in South Africa

A couple of years back Red Faction burst onto the PC scene. It was your run of the mill FPS game with not much to recommend it above the hundreds of other Doom clones of its time other than one feature; fully destructible environments. It didn't make much of a splash after the initial excitement had worn off and was slowly forgotten by most gamers. Then out of the blue THQ went and dropped Red Faction Guerrilla into our laps and with it they gave us one of the most enjoyable games of the year so far.

Someone at Volition must have taken a look at Red Faction and thought to themselves, "Hold on a moment, what would happen if we made it a third person perspective open world game? There's not many of those about!", only for them to get some strange looks from the rest of the staff. Console gamers are swimming in a sea of GTA clones, so for another one to try and grab our attention it would take something really special. The strange thing is that Volition has done it. They have made a game that is fun to play with a physics engine to rival anything else out there.

Loading up a new game in RFG you find your character Alec Mason as a newly arrived colonist on Mars trying to make a better life for himself as a miner in one of the Martian Colonies. Driving with your brother you soon start to learn that Mars is little more than a slave camp overseen by the despotic Earth Defence Force (EDF). After a brief introduction, your brother is gunned down by the EDF and you find yourself drafted into the Red faction - a group of guerrillas whose aim is to overthrow the EDF and liberate Mars. From here on out the plot follows you as you take on missions to take down key EDF installations and get the colonists' support in each of the game's 6 sectors.

The basic gameplay is very similar to that of most sandbox games out there. You have the freedom to wander around any of the sectors and take on missions at your leisure, along with the usual hidden collectibles scattered throughout the world (in this case radio tags). Nothing exceptionally new there. At least, not until we take a closer look. Thanks to the fully destructible environment, a wide variety of options become available, leading to endless hours experimenting with different approaches to completing your objectives. One standout mission for me was early on in the game where I had to liberate a Walker (mining or combat robots) from an EDF base. There was, however, the minor problem of a hundred or so EDF soldiers between me and the Walker, making a frontal assault pretty challenging indeed. So rather than rushing head on, I picked up my trusty mining hammer and headed to the rear of the base. I then proceeded to smash a hole in the wall of the garage holding the Walker. Then it was just the small matter of getting the Walker out of the base, and finally manning the turret on the getaway truck as my comrades and I sped off with our prize. Now if you don't find something like that exciting than maybe gaming just isn't the right hobby for you.

It's not only the wide variety of approaches available to you that make RFG so enjoyable, but also the number of different mission types on offer. Other than the main missions, you can also find yourself assaulting EDF strongholds, defending pockets of resistance, driving vehicles to safehouses against a time limit, manning a turret on the back of a vehicle to destroy a set amount of EDF property, rescuing captured Red Faction members or taking on demolition challenges, and that's only the mission types. There's still the host of collectibles to be found throughout the Martian landscapes with the previously mentioned radio tags, instances of propaganda you need to destroy or the hundreds of EDF buildings that are dotted around each of the sectors all being part of the fun.

The Geomod 2.0 physics system really does need to be seen to be believed and is probably Red faction Guerrilla's greatest selling point. Every building and structure in the game has a complex system of mathematics underlying how it's built so that if you place explosive charges at certain key points in the building's structure you can bring it crashing to the ground. There's also your hammer that can smash its way through almost anything, including EDF soldiers (with a very satisfying meaty thud), and buildings. So if you spot a few snipers standing in a tower you can just take the tower out and kill them that way rather than having to try and soak up their bullets in an assault.

Even though your trusty mining hammer will be put to good use, the guns and weaponry still play the biggest role, and RFG doesn't disappoint with a wide variety of death dealing objects being available to you. You get a standard set of weapons including an assault rifle, pistol and explosive charges. From here you can buy new weapons or upgrade your existing weaponry by purchasing them at safehouses with salvage. You can easily acquire salvage by destroying buildings or completing demolition challenges.

Graphically Red Faction is a mix of the good, the bad and the ugly. The Martian landscape is right up there with Far Cry 2's African plains as some of the most beautiful I've seen on a current gen system. The polar opposite of that though are the terrible character models. Everyone but Alec Mason looks like a clone of the same person, and when partnered with average character animation it makes the large scale battles that take place at some points in the story look a bit laughable at times. It probably says a lot when the destructible buildings are better animated than the characters. It's not a deal breaker at all, but it can be distracting at times. The voice work in Red Faction is passable with Alec and the various other members of the resistance having capable voice actors behind them. Unfortunately the EDF have come off second best with what sounds like the same two lines of dialogue being spewed out every time you fight them. On the other hand, the music presents a great mix of sci-fi and Total Recall style tracks that sit quietly in the background adding to the atmosphere prevalent throughout Red Faction Guerrilla.

Along with the single player campaign is an offline multiplayer mode called Wrecking Crew, which, similar to the S.K.A.T.E. mode from Skate, tasks players with causing more damage than their opponents. You can of course take the action online, with competitive multiplayer through six game types such as Deathmatch and Capture the Flag modes, as well as several modes based on destroying or protecting bases or buildings.

Red Faction Guerrilla ticks all the right boxes when it comes to making an enjoyable sandbox game: fun, varied mission types, and a great combat system. Add in the excellent Geomod 2.0 physics system enabling you to approach missions any way you want and Red Faction Guerrilla is a must buy game.

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