Red Faction: Guerrilla Review
By Gaetano Prestia
Red Faction on the Playstation 2 was one of the first FPS of last generation. While it didn’t break any sales records, it is still regarded today as one of the best in the genre, with is great level design, consistent difficulty and length. Its sequel wasn’t quite as good but still offered an enjoyable FPS experience. After two great titles, it was confirmed that Red Faction was the next true great FPS series and a third entry in the series was highly anticipated. But when it was announced that the third iteration would be a third-person action title, fans of the originals couldn’t help but be a little cautious. Why would the developer fix something that isn’t broken? Perhaps they thought there were just too many good FPS on the market for anyone to care about a new Red Faction. Thankfully, developer Volition has come up with a fantastic entry in the series and one that is definitely worthy of the Red Faction name. Red Faction: Guerrilla isn’t just a third-person action title - it’s an action-packed romp with amazing destructive elements that will keep you playing for a long time.
Guerrilla starts off 50 years after the first Red Faction where the Earth Defense Force (the good guys from the first game) have began abusing their power on Mars, making life very difficult for colonists living on the planet. Alec Mason is our main man, coupled with his trusty steel hammer and powerful swing that most baseball stars would probably envy. While Guerrilla doesn’t have the most memorable of narratives, it’s enough to keep you interested in what’s going on. It’s not what is going to keep you playing though, as that honour goes to the amazing destructive elements in the title. Pretty much any structure is vulnerable to your attacks and destroying things are almost always part of your mission goals throughout the main story.
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The physics are incredibly impressive, allowing you to place explosive charges all over building foundations before setting them off and slowly watching the building crumble and fall down piece by piece. There really hasn’t been a game beforehand that lets you witness and be part of destruction like this and it’s unbelievably enjoyable. Anything that is mad-made in the game - from light towers to water structures to three-story buildings - can be destroyed. Often you’ll find yourself on one side of the building being bombarded by enemy fire. You can literally smash your way through the wall of the building and find your way through to the other side without actually having to find a door. It’s a guilty pleasure. The game also does a really good job of filling you in on your destructive behaviour, with each building having a percentage meter on the HUD map letting you know how strong the foundations are. Once it reaches 0%, the building will crumble to the ground.
What’s most impressive is that a building structure can be taken down with realistic tactics. If you decide to start from the inside-out, the building will remain standing until you knock down most of the outside walls, making your destruction on the inside pointless. If you survey the building and pinpoint the area of the building that needs the most support, you can send the building down quickly by simply knocking down one wall or pillar. There’s nothing more satisfying than barging your way through a wall, only to hear the building creek and crumble before finally collapsing with little effort from you. Using a surveying tactic is also important during some missions that dictate you take out an important enemy building.
While Guerrilla’s claim to fame in the destruction, it’s also a neat little third-person shooter beneath the surface. You’ll find yourself engaging in intense combat with EDF soldiers quite often, and while you can use surrounding buildings to advantage to crush enemies, having a strong firearm and being steady with the aiming system is important in a lot of cases. The aiming and cover systems are impressive and there are plenty of awesome weapons at your disposal. Some weapons are more suited to destruction (such as the explosive charges or rocket launcher) while the machine rifle, pistol and shotgun are all great for gunplay on the red planet. For a third-person shooter the developer has done a great job of implementing an accessible aiming system, making it easy (but not too easy) to take down distant enemies. The covering system is also implemented well, with most objects in the environment available for cover.
Unfortunately, these positives with the gunplay and destructive elements don’t carry over to the car handling. The world in Guerrilla isn’t overly dense, so you have to travel quite a lot from compound to compound. The best way to do this is by vehicle, as often it’s too far to go on foot. The vehicles are inconsistent to say the least, with very few actually driving the way you’d think they would based on their appearance. Some heavy trucks take off like racing cars, while others go at a snail pace and the smaller vehicles are sometimes so hard to control, you’ll often be doing flips in the air as your drive off the smallest bump in the Mars surface. There are a lot of small hills on Mars and you’d think that racing up over a large hill would call from some awesome hang time, but the handling is so inconsistent that it’s hard to know how the vehicle is going to react once it leaves the road. Sometimes they veer off in the air by themselves and sometimes they completely flip over once they hit the ground. This is frustrating when you’re in the middle of nowhere with still a long way to your desired location. There’s no traffic in between compounds, so if you get stuck in a large area of deserted Mars desert, be prepared to be one foot for the next 5 minutes.
The first hour or so of Guerrilla moves incredibly fast as you aim to liberate two areas of the Martian map. The first few missions really feel like tutorials - even though they pack plenty of challenge - and once you get into the fourth or fifth hour you’ll notice more mini-missions and story missions appearing on the map. Most of the missions have you trying to take down EDF buildings and stopping enemies from entering rebel bases, while the side-missions are a mixture of rescue, search, chase and destroy missions. With every action you do in Guerrilla, the moral meter increases or decreases depending on the action. If you take out a rebel friendly, the moral will drop. Let it drop too far and you’ll get little help from your comrades while you’re in the line of duty. The higher it is, the more ammo that is available to you at drop boxes around the world, so you really have to be careful not to run over friendly soldiers or take down rebel bases. There’s also a Control meter, which lets you know how strong the EDF presence is in a particular area. The goal is to get the meter down to zero so that the rebels liberate the area and drive the EDF out. Completing missions and taking down important EDF buildings make the meter drop. Throughout the map you’ll come across EDF buildings that are each ranked based on their importance. If you take down a building with high importance, the drop on the Control meter will be more significant. These buildings are normally heavily guarded though, so be sure to go packing heat whenever you decide to take it on.
Most of the missions will have you blowing up at least one landmark and while the game drags on a bit towards the end, the missions vary enough to keep you playing and entertained. The story evolves at a really slow pace after the first few hours, making it feel as though the characters barely evolve beyond what you initially learn about them, which is disappointing.
Guerrilla has an impressive multiplayer component that is surprisingly deep. You’ll be forgiven if you get more game time out of the multiplayer than you do the main story, as it’s packed with great modes and awesome weapons. You don’t have to have unlocked or found something in the single-player to access it in the multiplayer, as every weapon and feature is available right from the get-go. You can play with up to 16-players in your typical multiplayer modes (with Team Matchmatch easily the most populated), and there’s also a fun offline mode called “Wrecking Crew” that has you trying to outdo your friends’ destruction score as you destroy things in the world.
Graphically, Guerrilla is somewhat of a mixed-bag. Seeing the buildings crumble is amazing and the explosive effects are quite superb, but they’re let down by average character design and animation and some average looking vehicle design. The developer might have been restricted in what they could do with such a barren landscape and so because of that, it’s probably easy to look beyond the environment shortcomings. The compounds don’t standout, nor does the planet itself. Still, the destruction and gunplay are what matter in this title and for the most part, they stand out on the graphic front.
The Final Verdict
Red Faction: Guerrilla is some of the best fun you’re going to have this generation. There’s plenty to get through in the single-player story and a deep multiplayer component to keep you playing it for a while. The destructive elements are the titles call to fame, with everything that is man-made vulnerable to your attacks. The weapons are great and the missions varied enough to make this a really enjoyable ride.
Gameplay
8.8/10
It’s fun, accessible, simple and engaging.
Graphics
6.5/10
The fire/explosion effects are great and it’s quite superb when a building collapses slowly, but the character and vehicle design leave plenty to the imagination and the land might just be a bit too barren.
Sound
6.0/10
A decent orchestra soundtrack with average overall voice-acting.
Value
9.0/10
A long single-player campaign and a deep multiplayer component will give you days of gameplay.
Overall
8.6/10