Set 50 years after the original Red Faction, Red Faction: Guerilla opens a whole new world on the next-generation platforms. Originally fallen through the cracks, Red Faction has returned with a new physics engine and story to go along with it. Red Faction Guerilla takes the gameplay to an open-world sandbox, leaving Mars to your hearts desire. The game is built on destruction, and with everything in the world blow-upappable, you’ll be tempted in every direction. Red Faction: Guerilla offers a new twist on the story with new characters to follow and a new plot. Does Red Faction manage to capture your mind or does it destroy itself from the inside out?

Gameplay

The game introduces you to Alec Mason, a colonist from Earth looking to start a new life on the planet Mars. After a series of unfortunate events, his brother Dan ends up murdered by the EDF (Earth Defense Force) and you become apart of the Red Faction. You’re thrown in an underground resistance group, structuring their way to bring an uprising against the EDF to throw them out of Mars by any means necessary. You are recruited to take part in the plan and after meeting a couple of characters and getting introduced to the game through a simple bombing mission, you are ready to set on your own. You’ll be taking a sledgehammer to the face of the EDF both literally and figuratively.

Thanks to real world physics and the destructible environments of the GeoMod 2.0, Volition has managed to create a realistic Mars surface. With colonists populating each of the 6 sectors of Mars, you’ll find plenty of things to do and destroy. Rule of thumb when you first start up the game, find the biggest EDF structure you can, load it up with charges and watch the explosions commence like fireworks. Depending on how you damage a structure, you can angle the structure so it either falls on top of another building or luckily on EDF soldiers.  You are severely outnumbered in the game, so make sure you have a good plan for survival before raiding an EDF base. To help you in your quest is a trusty sledgehammer, a perfect first weapon for smashing the EDF.

The sledgehammer ends up being your most faithful weapon. It’s handy, powerful and can bring down an entire building on its own. Beginning the game in the Parker sector and continuing onwards, you are tasked with completing all main objectives with some side missions being optional. By some, I mean ones that have you doing things that don’t really add much to the overall movement of the game. As you continue to take down objectives you’ll build up moral from the colonists and thus have more soldiers for the Red Faction to back you up. You certainly don’t want to ride guns-a-blazing inside an EDF compound, otherwise you will more then likely end up dead.

By having control over the 6 sectors of Mars, the EDF has managed to keep security high and the population under control. As you bring down the control of the EDF, the morale rises for the colonist population, in turn lessening the influence the EDF has. There are 8 different mission types that will have you doing a variety of jobs while sometimes combining them. Some of these missions include joining a colonist group in defending a housing unit or raiding an EDF complex. Odd job missions will have you capturing intelligence or stopping a convoy from reaching your previously won sector. Even if the slightest bullet fire comes in the way of an EDF soldier, you can expect an entire horde momentarily. You will be outnumbered and while the colonists will step in to help out once you gain morale, certain missions will have you completely overwhelmed. I found myself getting lucky on a few missions simply by wasting charges and throwing them on EDF transports and tanks to bide time till I could find more ammo. You have to do all of this while not dying. You character has health regeneration but it almost seems like a moot point when you have 20 enemies firing on you at once. The smart thing to do would be to think before you act and make sure you have the weapons to get the job done.

Moving on, you don’t have to complete every mission in the game to succeed, just as long as the Red Faction missions are completed are you able to move on to the next sector. The destructible environments alone make the game worth replaying after the approximate 15 hour play time. While the game’s overall difficulty is quite challenging, Insane mode becomes available once you conquer the Normal scenario. The game has a cover system, but it’s not utilized enough to where you’ll be using it every chance you get.

Outside of that, the controls are rather simple and easy to use. You can equip up to 4 weapons at a time and by holding down the right bumper (on the 360), and you can easily access your weapons based on which attribute you assigned them. There is everything from machine guns and grenade launchers, to sniper rifles and pistols. There are, of course, a lot of unique weapons as well that you’ll discover as you play through each sector. Driving is pretty solid as well, and the driving specific missions are a welcome addition and give you a chance to show off some speed. To become a truly devastating force while behind the wheel, you must attach turrets. There are a few unique vehicles as well, plus what the game calls Mechs. These are large mining like robots that can cause a lot of damage. There will be a grin on your face as you march around the world in one of these Mechs destroying everything your path. You’ll wish there were more of them in the game.

The game’s multiplayer supports up to 16 players online and offers a variety of different game types in which to take part, the largest being the Wrecking Crew. Here, you’re partnered up with a team of local players and are tasked with destroying anything you can get your hands on. Most of the other multiplayer modes are your standard affairs, with death matches and team based modes, though mixed in with a bit of the Red Faction flair. You won’t be able to do any driving in multiplayer unfortunately, which would’ve been a nice bonus especially because of the turrets. The overall world of Mars is massive and while the only thing you’ll be looking at during the entire game is dirt and mountain ranges, you actually have enough to do that you won’t become bored.

Graphics

Mars is impressively detailed, right down to the mountain textures and lighting effects that make up the surface. I was impressed with the night and day cycle that affects certain areas of the planet. With the GeoMod 2.0 on hand, explosions and building destructions are nicely done, generally without sacrificing the frame rate. Story cinematics transfer nicely into the gameplay and don’t differ as much than what you might notice in other less polished titles. There may be a few texture pop-ins here and there, but it’s so minimal you wouldn’t notice it unless you were looking for it.

Sound

Voice actors do a pretty good job here with their limited roles. Outside of hearing each character through your in-game radio, you don’t get much interaction with them. The colonists all have their various random lines that you’ll hear as you pass by, but that’s about it. Explosions and vehicle sound effects blend nicely with each other as well all the normal effects you expect out of the game. It’s also a bonus considering makes hearing the pound of that sledgehammer on the surface all the better.

Plasma Factor

The one thing that Red Faction: Guerilla unfortunately takes a hit on is it’s story. There aren’t enough fleshed out characters and villains to make you care enough about them. After being introduced to them in the beginning of the game, you don’t get much interaction aside from some of the main Red Faction missions you’ll run into such as infiltrating a pirate base outside of one of the sectors. You’ll meet with Sam every now and then to drop off material you find and what you manage to “collect” from the EDF for her to analyze, but nothing ever goes deeper than that. The cut scenes end up feeling out of place in certain areas as you never fully understand what’s going on.

Conclusion

Red Faction: Guerilla is an excellent open world sandbox game that, while it’s light on being populated, manages to give you a great run with destructible environments. Thanks to the small population of people, the frame rate isn’t sacrificed as much as it would be on other games. It is unfortunate that the story is not fully realized and would have made for a great sci-fi drama story if only you were given more time to interact with the characters. Still, there are many things to do on Mars and you will eventually have your hands full to the point where the story in general won’t even matter anymore. Red Faction Guerilla is fun to play and manages to keep you hooked without you even realizing, that is if you give it a chance.