Review | Red Faction: Guerrilla

Format: Xbox360 / PS3 | Genre: Action | Publisher: THQ | Developer: Volition | Out now: £49.99

By Lewis Denby

Red Faction: Guerrilla requires an investment. There’s nothing particularly interesting about its opening hours, save for the dynamic scenery. The Martian landscape is tired and uninspiring, and there’s no pretence of a real culture or political struggle on the planet’s surface. Initial reports suggest there is no life on Mars.

Stick with it. The opening mission, and the first area of Parker, serve as an extended introduction to the ways of the game. Once it’s all over, in an admittedly impressive bulldozing session, something quite special begins to emerge. If you’re after a deep or engaging story, rounded characters or any semblance of emotional depth, you won’t find what you’re looking for here. But if you’re after reams of rubble, brutal gunplay and almost limitless opportunity for wild explosions… well, then you’re in for a bit of a treat.

//Bring your A-Z
A lot has changed since the start of the Red Faction saga. The Earth Defence Force, once the saviours of the mining populace of Mars, are now vicious oppressors: a cold and ruthless dictatorial regime, mad with power and well-equipped with heavy machinegunnery. Parker, protagonist of the original, is long gone. But he’s not forgotten: an entire region of the planet now bears his name. More importantly, the unimpressively linear mine shafts and office complexes of the earlier iterations have been replaced by an enormous freeform world.

Split into six huge sections, it’s a daunting prospect to navigate. Drives from one side of a region to the other regularly take upwards of five minutes, and that’s with your foot pressed firmly to the floor. Alien rock stretches over the horizon in every direction. Make no mistake: Red Faction: Guerrilla is huge.

And as you delve deeper into the world, you begin to understand it more. There’s a reason why it lacks abundant life, or the thriving communities of similar open-world titles. Sure, it’s a little characterless, and it would have been nice to catch a glimpse of what life on this planet is like away from the tyranny of the EDF. But filling it would have been a mammoth undertaking, one that would almost certainly have led to a more artificial feel than what’s on offer. Instead, it’s filled with the possibilities of ferocious action at every turn.

To progress through Guerrilla and unlock missions in new areas, you’ll need to liberate your current region from the EDF. This is achieved through the completion of mandatory missions, as well as a vast array of optional tasks, that gradually lower enemy control until they’re weak enough to be fought head-on. These range from intercepting vehicles and stealing important data, to all-out assaults on opposition outposts, to action-packed hostage rescues. You’ll also increase your chances by taking out key buildings, with whatever explosive devices you can get your hands on.

//Structurally unsound
It’s taken a while, but Volition have finally established how to successfully utilise their own technology. Red Faction is no longer a game in which you can blow stuff up. It’s a game about blowing stuff up.

The difference is enormous. To start with, it’s distracting that the planet’s surface is completely immune to your firepower, particularly since your character is a miner. But you quickly forget. It’s not important, as there’s never any need to hack away at the rock. And you’re so absorbed in the destructive possibilities elsewhere that it leaves your mind in an instant. Blasting through rock isn’t relevant. Blasting through buildings is what’s at the heart of this game.

Every man-made structure in Red Faction: Guerrilla is realistically weighted, balanced and constructed. Take out the supports on the inside of a hut and the roof will come crashing down. Rig mines to one end of a building, detonate them, and it’ll collapse sideways. It’s genuinely impressive, and puts most titles’ “real-world physics” systems to shame. And there’s a real, cathartic satisfaction in seeing that huge tower topple piece-by-piece to the ground, crushing the enemy troops below it.

One time, having had a few unsuccessful attempts at destroying an EDF camp, I tried out a new tactic. I headed in with my gun held high, attempting to clear out the guards one-by-one before bringing down the buildings. It went chaotically wrong. The EDF called for reinforcements, and I was totally surrounded, with little hope of survival.

I decided to be adventurous. Switching to my remote charges, I began to lob them every which way into the crowd of troops, then pressed the detonation button. Most failed to make an impact, but one lucky throw had stuck a mine to the side of a gargantuan cooling tower behind the camp. It exploded, and the tower fell forwards, crushing each and every building on my hit list and creating a barrier between me and my endless foes. I hopped in a truck and drove off. Mission complete.

//Explosive opportunity
It’s this sort of unstaged mayhem that makes Guerrilla such a riot. No amount of scripted sequences could replicate the sheer joy of this messy madness. It’s dynamic, thrilling and consistently wonderful. Few games offer anything in the same league.

It wasn’t a perfect scenario, mind. Having to make such a hasty getaway meant there was no time to collect salvage. This is Guerrilla’s currency, collectable from the wreckage of opposition buildings and spendable on new weapons, armour and upgrades. To begin with, there’s little variety in your approach, as you’ve only a handful of tools at your disposal. But as you collect more salvage and buy more firepower, each task opens up. Do you clear out an area then hack away at the structures with a hammer? Do you rig explosive charges to the walls? Do you line up hydrogen canisters and hit them with a long-range rifle? Do you find a distant hiding spot, shoulder your rocket launcher, and get the job done from afar? Do you charge in atop a big, stomping mech and plough through everything in your wake? They’re all perfectly viable options, all equally satisfying, and few tasks pan out the same as a result.

The variety isn’t in the missions themselves. It’s in your choices. You shape the destruction to your own desires, and the game responds wonderfully. It’s a truly masterful work of player-centric design, and once you’re wrapped up in it, you’ll want to stay there for a very long time indeed.

//Reconstructed
I have some reservations. The story, what little there is of it, is clichéd nonsense. Gun-based action is satisfying, but occasionally awkward: there’s rarely the opportunity to progress carefully, given the barely existent cover system. Vehicle handling flits between adequate and erratic, and driving quickly over bumps often inexplicably causes tonnes of damage. Animations are stiff and clumsy. The destruction is impressive, but occasionally means getting stuck on scenery or getting crushed below collapsing buildings. It takes too long for the game to really get exciting. And the visual design is inconsistent: there’s been little effort to fuse the contemporary and futuristic technology in any cohesive way.

All this stuff bothered me to begin with. After a while, I couldn’t care less. It’s a small price to pay for something this physical, this dynamic, this invigorating.

Even more impressively, it’s all complemented by a fantastic, diverse multiplayer component, one that relies as much on unwanton destruction as the main game. The largely team-based modes revolve entirely around structural damage and reconstruction, and it’s often agreeably tactical, with players fulfilling different roles to get the job done. If there’s any justice at all, Guerrilla will prove very popular indeed with the online communities.

It’s just so good, and there’s just so much of it. A week on, and I’m still nowhere near exploring everything Red Faction: Guerrilla has to show. It’s a vast, brutal playground; a true next-generation sandbox. It’s one of the most stunningly enjoyable games I’ve played in months.

It’s eight years since the original game, and it’s taken a long time to perfect the formula. But the dedication shows. This is the definitive Red Faction experience.

9/10

What does this score mean?