Written by: Mark

 

 

 

I will be the first to admit that I had not heard too much about THQ’s latest Xbox 360 release Red Faction Guerrilla until I first played the multiplayer demo on the Xbox marketplace. I have to say I was pretty impressed with what I saw, in particular the interaction with the environment and levels of destruction which could be caused.

 

As we all know demo’s can sometimes not give a true reflection of the quality of the final product so in this review I take a look at the full game and see if it lives up to the early promise of being an action packed, intense and most importantly fun gaming experience.

 

 

The story of Red Faction Guerrilla sees the player taking on the role of "Alec Mason" who is a newcomer to Mars taking on the job of a miner. However it soon becomes clear that all is not going to be straight forward for Mason as the Earth Defence Force have become somewhat of a fascist regime and taken over the planet. Mason has tough decisions to make and joins the underground movement called Red Faction who are a rebel organisation attempting to regain control of the planet.

 

In order to do this Mason has to complete various missions and side quests throughout the game which involves blowing an awful lot of buildings up, becoming involved in shooting enemies and rescuing hostages amongst other things over the six colonised sectors which are spread over the very impressive sizable maps.

 

 

In truth the story starts well and moves along at a steady pace but the game offers such an amount of action that it becomes almost of secondary importance to the enjoyment of blowing stuff up!

 

 

As the game commences you are asked to play a small introductory level which sets the scene for things to come as Mason is asked to destroy a building using the weapons he has at his disposal at the start of the game. These consist of a sledgehammer, assault rifle and a small number of remote charges (all of which can be upgraded as the game progresses).

 

It soon becomes obvious from this early point in the game that there are various ways that the player can approach the game. You can either go in all guns blazing to destroy buildings, which although fun can be a risky strategy or you may take a more tactical approach of carefully placing explosives and battering weak points such as buildings structures. This certainly adds something new to the game and it is fair to say that it works incredibly well and the evidence is clear that the in game physics are pretty much spot on of how structures crumble around the player and this certainly leads to some very enjoyable and satisfying moments.

 

The game however is more about total destruction as the numerous missions have a certain amount of variety to stop the game from being overly repetitive. These are chosen by selecting points on the helpful map and the positive of this is that all missions and side quests are located close together ensuring that the action remains frantic unlike a game such as Far Cry 2 which had too much travelling between missions and soon became tedious.