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| Alec Mason joyriding around Mars in a stolen truck. |
Alec Mason has been invited to a terraformed Mars by his brother Dan to begin a new life as a miner. Shortly after Alec’s arrival Dan is gunned by the Earth Defense Force, the military group that runs Mars like a dictatorship, on suspicion of Dan being a member of the resistance group Red Faction. Alec reluctantly joins Red Faction to avenge his brother and bring down the EDF.
The game is divided into five sectors around Mars. Each sector is controlled by the EDF; the level of control is represented by a number. Mason has to bring that number down to zero by completing a few main missions as well as several side missions. Once the EDF’s control is brought down to zero Mason has to complete one final mission before the sector is freed and he can move onto another sector.
Mason starts out with only a sledgehammer, but quickly gains more weapons. Mason can pick up basic weapons from EDF troops, like assault rifles and shotguns, but the really powerful weapons are bought from Red Faction, like a rocket launcher or a gun that shoots electricity. Guns are bought with salvage, a currency of sorts that Mason collects from the ruins of buildings the player destroys, or from completing missions. Red Faction weapons can be upgraded with more salvage, making them more powerful.
The main missions are combinations of driving somewhere, collecting something, killing EDF officers, and demolition. These are always varied and complicated enough to be entertaining. It is a shame that they do not take up most of the game.
Most of the game is spent completing side missions. These missions vary in levels of entertainment, differing mostly in where they take place and how strong the EDF are. It is not necessary to complete every mission, but it does pad out the game, and completing some missions reward the player with salvage. The best ones are raiding a facility and killing all the EDF there with a group of resistance fighters, while the worst ones are blowing up an important building alone while an unlimited number of EDF bare down on Mason.
Fighting the EDF raises the sectors morale, while hurting civilians and their buildings lowers it. Higher morale means that civilians will sometimes help Mason in fights. But the civilians are so weak and ineffective in fights that they become a liability, making the whole morale system nothing more than an annoyance.
The big selling point of Red Faction: Guerilla is the opportunity to blow up lots of buildings. Several missions involve destroying buildings, and Mason has access to explosives right at the beginning. And the buildings are so easy to destroy. Mason’s hammer alone can take out a huge section of a wall with one swing. It is very easy to drive a car through a building without there being any resistance to the car at all, like the building was made of tissue paper.
But what is really impressive is how any part of a building can be destroyed, and not look preprogrammed to be destroyed. For example, the player can drive a car right through a building, and that will leave a very noticeable hole in the building, but the rest of the building will remain standing. And like real buildings, some buildings do have supporting areas that can be destroyed to bring the entire building down, though there are just as many times where the player will slowly have to demolish all the walls to bring the roof down. It comes off as much more realistic how well the buildings stand up.
But while Red Faction: Guerilla does blowing up buildings very well, it falls short in many other areas. Completing main missions is fun and rewarding, but the side missions are only okay, and even worse, sometimes only reward the player with a morale boost and not salvage. The EDF control number is okay, but it is so easy to reduce to zero that it is not a challenge. The world is an open sandbox, but since it is mostly barren Mars with building scattered around, it does not encourage much exploration beyond going from point A to point B.
Even blowing up buildings starts to get weird when it becomes impossible to ignore that the buildings collapse like they were made of cardboard, straws, and cotton balls. And then there are the times when the game gets upset unless the buildings is completely destroyed even though the player has run out of explosives, leaving Mason to slowly smash the walls away.
Red Faction: Guerilla is an okay game for people who really like blowing up stuff and getting into firefights. Everyone else though, might want to spend their money on a better built game.
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