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.