Gamesmanship

THQ’s new release, Red Faction Guerrilla, has hit store shelves and it continues to sell well. In Red Faction, you, Alec Mason, are a miner who has immigrated to Mars from Earth to live an honest life. Things however turn sour fast as Alec’s loving brother is killed in cold blood by the Mars military police force, commonly called the EDF (Earth Defense Force). The EDF pegs you as a terrorist working for a group called Red Faction. Since you have nothing to lose and everything to gain, you join up with Red Faction in order to avenge your brothers death.

Red Faction has you trying to take over individual segments of Mars in an attempt to rid the planet of the EDF forever. Avoiding EDF troops is usually in your best interest because there are quite a lot more of them than there are of you. You will mainly be destroying lots and lots of buildings on your many travels. Red Faction is set up so that you are in a completely destructible environment. If you see anything man made, you have the ability to destroy it.

You have many tool’s at your disposal that you can use to destroy buildings. Your most trusty tool at your disposal is by far, your hammer. You can use your hammer strategically to focus on the support beams of a building and take it down in about a minute. You also have a wide arsenal of explosives at your disposal that can turn a building complex into a pile of rubble in with the press of a button. Red Faction also includes the usual assault rifles that work really well against the EDF shock troops.

Driving in Red Faction Guerrilla is really empowering and is one of my favorite things to do on Mars. There are a wide variety of vehicles to drive, from civilian cars to jeeps and even to big martian semis. The Red Faction and the EDF both have some pretty impressive vehicles that are packing some major firepower including machine guns and gauss cannons. There are also some really huge vehicles like tanks and mechs that make taking down a building extremely easy.

These vehicles can be used in various ways. There is always the standard way of just driving around. Even this mundane driving seems fun because Mars has a very rugged landscape that gives your vehicle plenty of jumps to go off of on your travels. Vehicles can also be used to take down buildings. Drive a semi through a EDF bunker at high speeds and it’s sure to cause a massive amount of destruction.

There are also a variety of missions for Alec Mason to complete. Some missions have Alec saving civilians from the EDF where as others have Alec trying to destroy a building in a set amount of time with only a certain amount of supplies. Even others have Alec teaming up with several of his Red Faction buddies to attack a EDF controlled stronghold. Missions give the game variety and give you an interesting way to play the game.

I thought this game had very wonderful cinematics that looked simply amazing. I was very disappointed that the game did not have more of them so that you got to know the main characters a little better. The only character from the game that I really got to know was this fat guy named Jenkins that you ride around on a bike with blowing stuff up with an amazingly powerful cannon. Just have to stop here and say that the explosions look amazing. As you ride around with Jenkins you learn about how he feels about the EDF and life in general.

All and all, Red Faction Guerrilla is an amazing and unique open sandbox game that looks and plays amazingly. Red faction is the best game I have played so far in 2009 and I look forward to future titles from our friends at THQ.

Keep in mind that following these tips will not completely ensure your survival to a high level of Nazi Zombies. The main purpose is to give you, the player, inspiration to come up with great ways to survive against the zombie hoard and to give you a little push in the right direction.

1. Try to knife enemies and use your pistol at the beguinning as much as possible.

Using your knife and pistol gives you more points than a bolt action rifle that you will want to use early to reach better places to hold off against the waves of zombies. For the first level you should be able to knife through most of the level and most of the second as well.

2. Keep letting windows get destroyed so that you can repair them (only as long as you get points!!)

Repairing windows gives you lots of points that can be used to buy good weapons and get access to more places.

3. Remember that you can move and shoot while repairing windows!

This is vital to any game! You need to repair windows but that does not mean that you are helpless. Sure your friends should be covering you but that doesn’t mean that you can’t help out too!

4. Remember where valuable assets are!

It is important that you memorize where the mystery box is and how to find it, where perk machines are, where the various traps are located, and where various guns can be bought all over the level. This will help you when you need to reload because you will not need to buy a whole new gun, just the ammo.

5. Learn the zombie animations

Once you learn how the different zombies move it will be easier to line up a headshot.

6. Keep the bombs around for when you need them the most.

There is no sence killing lots of zombies and not getting any points for it unless it keeps you or a teammate from dying.

7. Reload your guns before picking up a max ammo pack.

Think about it!

8. Avoid using fire unless you have a full party or your glitching.

Fire only slightly hurts zombies and will not help if you are only playing with a few people. Sure it might save your friend a bullet or two but then again so will just shooting at the zombies. One upside to the flamethrower is that it doesn’t run out of ammo. So for those of you that glitch fire might be a good weapon for you.