Red Faction: Guerilla is the third installment in the Red Faction series. The game was released on June 2nd, 2009 in North America, and June 5th in Europe for the Xbox360 and Playstation 3, and it later went to the PC platform in mid-september. It utilizes the third-person action system, with the camera situated behind the game's protagonist. The game was published by THQ, and developed by Volition, Inc. Volition is known for released such titles as Summoner, Saints Row, FreeSpace 2, Descent, and the Red Faction Series. Red Faction Guerilla is their latest release, but they have two new titles lined up for 2011, both are further installments in the previous serial titles of Saints Row and Red Faction respectively. The game has sold over a million copies, and has received largely positive reviews from various game critics and game magazines.
--Story--
RF:G follows the story of Alec Mason, a mining engineer who has come to the Tharsis region of Mars to reunite with his brother Dan and begin a new life in a new world. The two get to work immediately by salvaging spare parts from abandoned complexes, which confused Alec at first. Dan then reveals that he's been working with a group called Red Faction to fight against the omnipresent Earth Defense Force (EDF), who have been keeping the denizens of Mars underfoot. Alec refuses his brother's request to fight with him, and states his wish to live a simple life. It's then that they are set upon by an EDF air team, and Dan is gunned down. Alec is taken by the EDF, but not seen as being worth the trouble. As he is about to be shot down himself, Red Faction operatives run in and save the day, and his life. From then on, Alec works with Red Faction to drive the EDF off of Mars, and restore liberty to its people.
The object of the game is to more or less, "stick it to the man." As Alec Mason, you sabotage the EDF's agendas, destroy their buildings, collapse their bridges, and basically ensure that they fail at every given opportunity. By doing this, you raise the morale of the people and wrest control from the evil EDF. Sadly, the storyline of the game is exactly that. It never evolves, there's no real plot twists, and nothing ever comes as a surprise. Even the moments that the game WANTS to be surprising fall flat, due to the lack of interest in your own characters that comes with a game that doesn't focus too much on its narrative.
"What do you mean, 'no one cares?'"
The game is relatively short if you ignore a lot of the side missions but even if you complete all of them, it doesn't add a whole lot to the plot. The narrative gets really akward about halfway through when an item called the Nanoforge is introduced. It's some manner of martian technology that utilizes nanomachines in a weaponized manner. There's a bit of mysticism involved in the retrieval of the item that is never revisited, however. The narrative, as a result, is stuck in a sort of limbo. It feels as if the game needed to be longer to cover everything, but there just wasn't enough content to fill the void. On a basic level the idea of the game is nice, but it desperately needed some expansion which it unfortunately did not receive.
6/10
--Gameplay--
One of the biggest draws and selling points of the game is how the world itself was programmed. Unlike previous Red Faction games, the terrain is not destructable. However, buildings, bridges, vehicles, and just about everything else is almost fully destructable. More than just being a feature, this becomes the main focus of the game. As Alec Mason, you target specific structures and outposts and proceed to damage them beyond repair, weakening the foothold of the EDF in a particular area, and raising the morale of the subjugated citizens of Mars. By using remote charges, projectile sawblades, rocket launchers, and nanomachine rifles, you take down structures the size of the golden gate bridge, the halls of congress, and any office building you could imagine. The end result? Satisfaction.
Cool Guys don't look at explosions. Or implosions.
Now it's not all willy-nilly destruction and happiness. You're being hounded on your every step by EDF squadrons who are tired of Alec Mason being in their bases, killing their doods. One of my favorite aspects of the EDF in this manner are how they absolutely swarm you at any given opportunity, and there's no sarcasm there at all. It makes you adopt guerilla tactics to some degree, to where you almost revere the ol' "hit and run." Going toe-to-toe with an entire squadron of EDF is surefire way to get yourself gibbed, even on the game's casual difficulty.
If there's one thing that prevents this section from getting a perfect score, it's the fact that Volition kinda put all of their eggs in one basket. The game focuses so heavily in the destruction of all things material, that it somehow manages to get slightly dull after a while. The game gets repetetive slightly early, and only once in a while do you get something new to toy around with, but even then the objective is the same. As well as being repetetive, there are also occasional dynamic events where your base will spot an enemy convoy, or they gather intelligence that someone is transporting important documents. While I enjoy dynamic events like this, they have a tendency of dumping them on you all at once, so you don't have time to accomplish any other goal in the game, should you choose to accept these dynamic missions.
9/10
--Audio--
Unfortunately, there's not an awful lot to say here. The upside to this game's audio development is that the sound effects are more than wonderful. Listening to a building crumble, fall, and splinter after you take a sledgehammer to its foundations is an extremely gratifying experience. The different weapons and automobiles and explosives all have unique effects, and all are both appropriate and pleasant.
There IS a soundtrack to the game, but you never really hear it. This is one of those rare games where music just doesn't matter in the least. The mood of the game is set by the narrative and the surroundings, leaving what little musical composition there is completely behind. The voice acting got some negative criticism as well, but I'm not entirely certain why. These guys aren't going to be getting awards any time soon, but I don't think the quality of it entered the realm of "bad."
Without more, it's pretty hard to fill out the section.
8/10
--Visuals--
The visuals are a real double-edged sword with Red Faction: Guerilla. On the one hand, you've got your explosion effects, the buildings crumbling, vehicles flying off of a cliff and bursting into flame in the chasm below, hell you've even got a bomb that is literally a localized singularity that picks apart structures from the inside, and subsequently blasts everything it was drawing in outwards in a great and powerful explosion. One of the neatest things to do in the game is plant your singularity, run like hell, turn around, and watch the magic happen.
Then on the other hand, you've got the terrain and the atmosphere. First the short, five word explanation: "Sure Is Orange In Here." I understand that the game takes place on Mars, and that even if it's terraformed, it's not going to be the green and blue that I'm used to back here on earth, but you can at least color your buildings to be something other than a shoddy rust color. The entire game is beset in tones of rust, orange, and gray. It makes for a pretty dull environment to look at. I mean, it's no wonder everything is getting blown up, people just want to see something different. As an unfortunate result, everything sort of melds into everything else and if it weren't for the mini-map feature, you'd never be able to find your way around Tharsis.
Spike-ball mech arms or spike-ball towers? You be the judge.
7/10
--Overall--
Red Faction: Guerilla proves to be a fun, destructively satisfying, and entertaining game to fill up your weekend, or to play throughout the week when the hustle and bustle of life subsides for a few hours. It resides somewhere on the positive side of average, but several key factors prevent it from being a truly great game. Still, I would certainly recommend it to anyone looking for something that's not too immersive, but can be run through in a week or so, and remains entertaining beyond the story mode because let me tell you: the Wrecking Crew multiplayer mode is an absolute blast. My favorite combination is the Rhino Pack and the Sledge Hammer. Give it a shot, and find the combination that works for you, and have fun with this one.
30/40 = C
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