Do you like to blow stuff up? Do you not care about characters, a plot, or dying? Well good, because Red Faction: Guerilla contains all of these. You are Alec Mason, and your goal is to help the Red Faction liberate Mars from the evil Earth Defense Force. Don’t worry about following the plot, the missions just have objectives and don’t tie into the story. Mason is rather generic, but his miner outfit is pretty rad. The game also sports the worst British accent I’ve ever heard.
Guerilla moves the series to third person, but destruction still reigns supreme. Every structure that you see can be destroyed. Containing a mission acquisition style similar to GTA mixed with side missions similar to Assassin’s Creed, the game is easy to figure out. Yellow markers on your radar show primary missions, green markers are Guerilla Actions, and blue markers identify EDF buildings to destroy.
I don’t have time for doors.
Touting an impressive 104 missions, Guerilla fails to mention that only a fraction of those are missions for the main storyline. Each zone has a morale bar for the opposing forces, and you must liberate each zone in order to progress. Completing Guerilla Actions will lower the EDF’s bar, and after specific amounts will unlock primary missions to complete. You may travel to other zones early, but no missions or side missions will be available. Raising the Red Faction’s morale bar will net you more salvage from missions, more colonist support, and increased ammo from weapon crates.
In Guerilla, you must also accrue salvage from missions and by destroying buildings. Salvage is currency used to unlock new weapons, and upgrades. There is plenty to unlock, and after unlocking a new weapon there is a plethora of unlocks to increase the weapons potential. Keep in mind that the weapons you will be unlocking here aren’t generic guns, they are special miner-esque weaponry, such as an arc welder, rocket launcher, various assortments of mines, a jetpack and cosmetic effects for your hammer. The only bad thing is that many of these weapons aren’t terribly useful. Once you get into the game, your four available slots will mostly use remote mines, the sledgehammer, a gun, and the rocket launcher. Proximity mines aren’t all that useful in the single player either.
There are numerous cars available in Guerilla, but most of them handle poorly. From clunky miner trucks, buggies with loose controls to awkward looking transportation vehicles, they are not very useful. The truck and Humvee that you have at the start of the game are the best you will get. Remember the mech you got to use in the demo? Too bad it’s only available there. There are smaller mechs used in the “Heavy Metal” side missions where you must destroy a number of EDF vehicles, but other than that they are sparsely located around the map and difficult to find. It’s very frustrating for a game intent on letting you destroy everything in your path.
Be prepared to die a lot, even on normal difficulty. During missions, the enemy will swarm you relentlessly until you die. On one mission I was asked to kill a number of snipers in various buildings, and they were surrounded by many EDF. There was no stealthy way to get to them besides charging in, and it was impossible to find cover. Being shot at every angle is not a lot of fun, but neither is running away all the time to recover your health. Team AI is frankly quite useless, as they do more harm than good. They stand in front of you, get in the way of your sledgehammer, and lower your morale when killed. They will also randomly come and support you when you are under attack by the EDF. It’s not very fair to be punished by losing morale when teammates you never even requested die next to you.
The missions aren’t terribly impressive, either. The mission that’s included in the single player demo is the most fun you’ll have, as it’s the one where you get to use a mech. After completing the game, the side missions along with collectibles (mining, destroying propaganda, and EDF crates) left become repetitive fast. It doesn’t help as well that most of the side missions available to me are rescuing hostages, and doing transporter missions.
Ostrich Hammers
Red Faction: Guerilla also contains a decent multiplayer. Typical modes such as, “Anarchy” and “Team Anarchy” are your basic death match, but I’d steer clear of that and go with the objective based modes. Death Match in Guerilla just devolves into primarily using guns, which is not the game’s strength; turning it into your generic everyday shooter. CTF is everything you’d expect it to be, and Siege was the highlight of the multiplayer; a mode where the teams take turns on offense and defense destroying highlighted buildings in a certain amount of time.
The multiplayer also contains a slew of backpacks, while fun, some are overpowered. The concussion backpack knocks enemies around you down, rendering them helpless for a short period of time. This turns into players simply running around and killing you easily with their sledgehammer; not a whole lot of fun.
Another interesting mode is “Wrecking Crew”. It is solely an offline, “pass the controller” mode where each person takes their turn trying to cause as much destruction and damage as possible. While fun, I don’t see why they could not have included online multiplayer for this as well.
A few more things
- The storyline is barely there.
- Most of the left over side missions are rescue and car missions.
- Stick to the objective multiplayer. Death match and Team death match just devolve into a typical shooter, rather than using fun weapons like explosives or the hammer.
- Get your ass to Mars. (Sorry I couldn’t resist)
Red Faction: Guerilla won’t be the best game you play this year. Repetitive missions and a sub par story bog the title down. What it does well is the destruction. However, it’s a shame that the missions didn’t incorporate more of it. Instead, I’m completing transport missions and driving a clunky car across numerous zones.
Despite the game’s flaws, the sledgehammer is satisfying. I don’t care about any of the flashy explosives or other destructive weaponry. Just give me a hammer and let me demolish every single thing I see. I think I need help.
You should buy this game if…
…you like blowing shit up.
Final Score
A satisfying destructive environment mixed with repetitive missions, a sub par story, and frustrating teammate AI.
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