Red Faction is EXPLOSIONS!
And real-time destruction, often combined with EXPLOSIONS!
That's right.
Real-time destruction!
Still seems futuristic, doesn't it?
Incredible to think that this was done on the Xbox360 generation of consoles.
At first it doesn't seem too promising.
The low quality audio clips.
The bland world design.
The lazy copy-paste feel of the missions.
But all that stuff doesn't matter, since it's all about the destruction!
And the developers know this.
WITH EXPLOSIONS!
Your path of destruction is driven by generic missions which really are simply excuses to
blow stuff up.
They're often situated in some kind of enemy outpost amidst the large open world.
You can get around more quickly by hijacking passing vehicles.
In most games I go for the smallest, fastest vehicles but this title flips it on its head.
Bigger trucks means bigger damage.
You can plough the largest of machines through entire buildings and can withstand the wrath
of a small army firing on your position.
This game isn't afraid to ramp up the action by giving you robots and tanks to command
in later missions which can cut through structures like a knife through explodey butter.
The sheer amount of Michael Bay on-screen at once can be overwhelming.
When blinded by explosions, there's a bizarre appeal to pushing onwards any way as though
you know what the hell is going on.
And the music's nice as well.
But back to the explosions.
YES.
There are a lot of them.
And they're very pretty.
There are even blue ones!
Being the techy sort of person I am I have to point out and really appreciate the destruction.
Almost any kind of structure will collapse convincingly if dealt enough damage, often
in the form of EXPLOSIONS.
I've played through the game a number of times but still can't help but look back at COOL
LOOKING EXPLOSIONS that messily and imperfectly level the towers and factories of this Martian
world.
More games need to adopt this technology.
The developers have made a near-flawless physics system that few have come close to replicating!
It would be unfair to call this game a glorified tech demo, but that's practically what it
is.
You can tell that they made the destruction system then were like... why make anything
else?
Well done to them for going with it and for combining it with weapons, vehicles and EXPLOSIONS
that do it justice.
The highlights are where you have to attack an enemy strong-hold.
Your aim isn't to kill everyone, since guards will endlessly respawn until either you're
dead, or the base is levelled.
Instead, you have to run about decorating the structures with explosives as if they're
very deadly Christmas trees.
If you stop to fight the enemies off, your ammo quickly depletes and you're overwhelmed
by the endless waves of enemies assaulting your position.
Luckily, you're not alone.
There's some kind of story but I skipped all of it because I don't care but I think that
you're this guy who's starting an up-rising on Mars.
As you BLOW UP the world one sector at a time you gain help from the miners around you.
EXPLODE enough things and they'll even aid you in battles, leading to some impressively
large conflicts later on in the game.
They don't exactly do much to help but they serve as handy meatshields to distract the
enemies' attention from you as you're busy analysing the structural workings of their
head office.
Plus if you ever get bored then you can BLOW YOUR TEAMMATES UP as well with little consequence.
This game is a refreshing change.
You can go where you want and DESTROY BUILDINGS however you please and the game's happy to
sit back and let you do it, scattering the world with everything you need to KILL THE
PLANET.
You don't gain more EXP for sneaking around or from sparing lives.
This game is EXPLOSION and EXPLOSION is what it does best.
You unlock a number of seriously OP weapons, including a material DISSOLVER and some kind
of little-boy launcher, which really come in handy as you're attacked from all directions
at once later on in the game.
It's not perfect.
There's a lot of boring driving about.
The vehicle salvage side-missions are particularly weak and needless.
They could at least have given you fun prototype vehicles to drive.
Why is a time limit even needed?
Don't worry, I won't be waiting around on these boring missions!
Also, don't play this game if you have OCD about completing stuff.
Scattered about the world are crystals and - I kid you not - CRATES that need destroying.
At first it's a novelty but quickly makes you feel inadequate when you realise that
you'll never catch them all and would probably rather DIE by explod than do it.
Think pigeons or jumps in GTA 4 and you're about there.
The in-game currency is 'scrap' and the rate at which you collect it is far too slow.
At some points I spent all of them on upgrades only to then have to grind for ages to afford
something that I needed to progress with the plot.
Fortunately you don't have to buy ammo.
You restock at friendly bases and at storage containers, but these only partially replenish
your supplies and I found I had to resort to my hammer to finish off some of the larger
structures.
It's just as well it's one of the most effective melee weapons ever created.
That being said, there were some positive surprises.
The ragdolls are hilariously over the top, somersaulting corpses away from an explosions
or bouncing them off of car bonnets.
I swear the robots have moves designed to toss bodies as far as robotically possible.
I never found myself searching for side-missions for amusement but some are fun to play, like
entertaining flash games that are worth 5 minutes of your time.
You have to destroy buildings with limited equipment, or cause as much destruction as
you can within a set amount of time.
The drone air-strike missions were a welcome surprise as well.
Normally they kit you out with bigger equipment and then beef the enemies up to compensate-
but not here.
I felt like a GOD, raining death down from above.
I would have liked to have seen more built-up areas.
There are hints to this in the form of walk-ways and tower blocks but more could have been
done with these places.
This game is very much an outdoor experience with buildings added in.
But maybe that's for the best, since the fights that are indoors feel strangely claustrophobic.
I'd love to see what this engine could handle now that we have more powerful hardware.
I'd have liked more explosions as well, since this game clearly doesn't have enough already.
I don't know what it is about third person shooters.
I'd call myself a first-person kind of guy and yet third person games always come as
pleasant surprises, with Red Faction being no exception.
It's, cruel Martian atmosphere is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale genre.
At first, I was disappointed to hear that you couldn't blow holes through the world
like you could in the first two games, but now I'm pleased that they've taken the direction
they have with the series.
I haven't played Armageddon but probably should.
But until then, Guerrilla is the game that I recommend.
Don't play it expecting a deep plot or next-gen graphics.
It's mindless destruction a world apart from all those serious, intelligent Earth shooters
and I'm thankful for it.
10 out of 10 would bang.