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After countless games set on Mars, one would think that the idea would have run out of steam? Red Faction: Guerrilla, the latest in the highly-successful Red Faction series, has proven that if a concept is solid, it never gets old. Red Faction: Guerrilla tells the story of miner Alec Mason who comes to Mars to start a new life alongside his brother Daniel. Unbeknownst to Alec, Daniel is part of the Red Faction, an underground militia leading the resistance against the evil corporate interests (the EDF) enthralling the planet. In spite of himself, Alec is sucked into the conflict and soon becomes a key member of his brother's organization.
The minute the intro cut scene started rolling, it was clear that this game was going to be good. The intro is well thought out, well written, and has the best transition to gameplay since Bioshock. The next, most obviously well-done element is the user interface. It's cool, custom, and is written expertly into the fiction as the Guerrilla Handbook, something you get when you start training with the Red Faction. The handbook contains text information about the planet's history and sectors, weapon types, a map, and even video tutorials to help you get started.
The point of the gameplay is twofold: to lower the EDF's control over each sector of the planet and to raise the morale of the people. You do both of these by running Red Faction missions and destroying EDF property, monitoring your progress with a control meter and a morale meter. As the morale meter rises, the populace start to fight alongside you and once EDF control gets to zero, a final Red Faction mission unlocks that when completed, frees the sector. There's a wide range of mission types and you can take them in any order you choose, GTA-style. Scattered all over the open-world environment are demolition missions where you have to get creative in order to destroy various structures, hostage-rescue missions, and missions where you steal EDF vehicles and return them to Red Faction safe houses. Most of these are optional and some can be repeated, like my favorite one called "Collateral Damage." In it, you act as gunner for a nutball named Jenkins who loves nothing more than blowing up EDF property. His voice lines are hilarious—"Terraform this, you bastards!"
In addition to lowering EDF control and upping morale, some missions also reward you with salvage, metal scraps you turn in at Red Faction safe houses in exchange for upgrades. You can also get salvage by destroying buildings and vehicles (although the game is somewhat inconsistent in regard to which objects generate salvage) or by mining the ore deposits found throughout the planet. However you get it, you'll need a lot of it if you want to buy weapons like the Grinder which fires serrated blades, or the Arc Welder which electrocutes your targets. You can also buy armor upgrades, ammo upgrades, and even a better sledgehammer. My favorite upgrade of all of them was "warp to any safehouse" because it saved me a boatload of driving.
Speaking of driving, I really enjoyed the driving in this game. Unlike GTA, there's a lot less to crash into so you can really go full throttle. Vehicle designs are so varied and cool in this game, you can't help but notice them. Some of the coolest were the ones belonging to those badboys of the Badlands, a group of bizarre goth/biker/Tusken Raiders called the Marauders. Their vehicles are some of the strangest looking and most fun I've ever driven. Vehicles aren't the only art stand-outs in the game. All the graphics are amazing, from the terrain to the lighting to the characters. (The only thing art-related that needed improvement was the hair on Samanya, the main female character. It looked like a helmet with a broom sticking out the back of it. What happened there?) The sound is on par with the graphics, characterized by strong, understated voice acting. Even on the radio chatter while driving that the voice over sounds very real, not at all "stagey."
Overall, Red Faction: Guerrilla is the best open world action game I've played in a while, even better than GTA IV. It offers a really interesting range of missions and allows players to get more emotionally involved than games like GTA because even when causing mayhem, the player is still the hero. I felt real elation when joining my Red Faction brothers to watch an EDF stronghold explode. Of course, joy wasn't the only emotion I experienced when playing the game. Often I wanted to do a Rumplestiltskin-like angry dance because folks, this game is hard. Red Faction: Guerrilla offers four difficulty modes: Casual, (that's the first time I've heard "Easy" made into "Casual" and I like it because it doesn't carry the implied put-down that "Easy" does) Normal, Hard, and Insane (unlockable).
I made it through maybe half the game on Normal but the latter half became just too frustrating on the difficulty so I had to switch to Casual. Part of the problem is the AI, which is extremely aggressive. They hardly ever take cover and instead come charging at you, no matter how pinned down you think they are. And no matter where you are on the map, they'll make a beeline for you from all sides even when, presumably, they'd have no way to locate you. Their superhuman abilities don't stop there; they have insane reflexes when driving vehicles and can crash into or block you, anticipating your every move. They also have an uncanny ability to leap out of the way of fast-moving trucks no matter how fast you come squealing into their camps. On top of that, the thing that wins for "biggest peeve of the game" is the way enemies blind you with their automatic weapons. There are instances where they'll swarm you and the nonstop flashing from their weapons utterly blinds you, making it impossible to fire back at them or even see where you're running. The only plus (if there is one) to these AI absurdities is their emotional impact. By game's end I truly hated the EDF and it felt so great to run up to their soldiers with my sledgehammer and bash them to a pulp.
In spite of some minor AI and balancing issues, Red Faction: Guerrilla is one of the best action/adventure games out right now. In addition to great performance, amazing stability (not a single crash!) and a very polished single-player campaign, Red Faction: Guerrilla also has an absurdly fun destruction-only mode called "Wrecking Crew" where you and your friends take turns making as big a mess as you can within a set time period. If you'd prefer destroying your friends to destroying inert structures, you can jump into one of the many multiplayer Versus modes. All modes grant achievements and a slew of fun unlockables including cheats and must-haves like the Ostrich Hammer. Fans of action games, fans of shooters—heck, fans of good games in general—don't miss Red Faction: Guerrilla.
Fun Factor: Aside from a higher than normal difficulty curve, Red Faction: Guerrilla is one of the best open world action games out there today.
Game Length: Depending on difficulty (Casual, Normal, Hard, Insane), 16-infinite hours.
Difficulty: Probably a bit too difficult, even on Normal.
On the Negative Side: Very little negative to say here. Except for some balancing issues, the game looks great, sounds great, plays great.
Bang for Your Buck: Tons of replayability in the four different single player campaign difficulty modes, multiple multi-player options and tons of unlockables. Skip two or three summer blockbuster movies and buy this instead.
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