Red Faction: Guerrilla Review
- Posted June 6th, 2009 at 12:06 EDT by Steven Williamson
- 46 Comments
Review Score
- PSU Review Score
- 9.0
- Avg. user review score:
- 7.2
Summary
Red Faction: Guerrilla sets a new benchmark for destruction-based gameplay. It's an absolute blast!
We like
- The rewarding destruction-based gameplay
- The engaging morale system
- The solid multiplayer component
We dislike
- The lack of a decent story
- The monotonous, long distance journeys
- The inconsistent behavior of the A.I.
See PSU's review on Metacritic & GameRankings
The Red Faction series is all about destruction. When developer Volition created the GeoMod engine back in 2001, it afforded players with the freedom to completely destroy environments with explosive devices and heavy weaponry. Back then, it must have dreamt of the day that it could get its hands on some hardware that would really showcase its technology. Those dreams have now been turned into reality with Red Faction: Guerrilla. Needless to say, the third game in the popular series has evolved dramatically since the last iteration in 2002.
The original Red Faction was a linear, first person shooter. You could punch holes in walls and use powerful weapons to blast through the earth to create caverns. Red Faction: Guerrilla, however, is a third-person, sprawling, open-world action adventure that showcases the powerful GeoMod 2 engine magnificently by delivering destruction on an unprecedented scale. Volition has harnessed the power of the PlayStation 3 to spectacular effect to deliver one of the most impressive games on Sony’s console to date.
In Red Faction: Guerrilla you play as Alec Mason, a mining engineer who joins the Red Faction movement as they battle for freedom against the corrupt Earth Defensive Force (EDF). Ruling the planet by force, the EDF has taken to kidnapping settlers and forcing them into labour camps. With advanced knowledge of explosive devices, it's up to you to boost civilian morale, destroy important EDF buildings, wipe out the oppressing faction and gain territorial control. Typical to many other sandbox games, such as the Grand Theft Auto series, Red Faction: Guerrilla involves completing set missions and objectives across an open world-environment. The difference with this third person shooter is that you have the power to take down huge structures and destroy whole enemy convoys with just one press of your detonator. Kaboom!
Armed with a sledgehammer, Mason begins his journey by learning how to use the tool of his trade, smashing his way through walls, rock and metal in the search for salvage, the game's currency. This is the first indication that Volition weren’t just hyping the game’s destructive values. When it claimed that its Geo Mod engine was “three to five years” more advanced than other industry destruction engines, it wasn’t joking. Walls tumble, wood splinters and glass shatters realistically under the weight of Manson’s hammer -- it’s impressive stuff, and that’s just the first five minutes! It’s not long before you really get to see the power of the GeoMod 2 technology. As you head out across Martian lands armed to the hilt with sticky remote mine charges, machine guns, rocket launchers and proximity mines and you get to blow up your first enemy out-post, it’s a real sight to behold.
Red Faction: Guerrilla gets all of the basics right in terms of creating an enjoyable experience and a smooth control scheme, but it’s the destruction-based gameplay that really takes the genre to the next level. Offering rewards for destroying buildings and structures is a clever feature that encourages you to blow up almost any large object you come across. Each time you bring down an enemy structure you’re awarded with the salvage that it produces, which can then be spent on upgrades. Alternatively, you can head out to designated enemy out-posts and destroy their buildings in return for control points which sway the battle and territorial control in your favor. You can use heavy weaponry to take large chunks out of structures, or use your strategically placed mines to bring them crashing to the ground. Visually, watching a communication tower explode and seeing how it then impacts on the surroundings is nothing short of stunning.
If you place a mine on a specific wall of a building or support girder of a bridge, or toss a sticky mine onto the bonnet of an armored car, it's that exact spot where it landed that will explode. Take out some of the surrounding walls of a building, for example, and the roof will eventually collapse and come crashing down on any enemies caught underneath. Set an explosive up on a particular support column of a tower and you'll be able to send it crashing down at exactly the angle you want it ... (continued on next page)
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Comments
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higgos22
- 7:09am EDT - June 6th, 2009
- 2
i played the demo and i got to say i was impressed at how much u could destroy i would walk into buildings and think yeh but i wont be able to destroy this and guess what... i could tthey are true to their word it has the most destructible environment of any game
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VintageElise
- 7:25am EDT - June 6th, 2009
- 4
Well I wasen't expecting a 9. Was thinking more of an 7-8.
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Kostchtchie
- 9:19am EDT - June 6th, 2009
- 8
The solid multiplayer component ? did they fix the mp because last i heard the ps3 demo version and full game had serious connecting issues with there crappy matchmaking system, other than that the sp and the few mp games i was able to enter were really good, glad to see a game getting 9 with
- The lack of a decent story
- The monotonous, long distance journeys
- The inconsistent behavior of the A.I
but hey everyone has there opinion
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draculaboy
- 9:36am EDT - June 6th, 2009
- 10
good review
bought the game 2 days ago
and it is a good game
but not a 9 game
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akiraburn
- 10:50am EDT - June 6th, 2009
- 11
Hey PSU mods, just real quick I thought I would let you guys know that this game was released 2 days ago in NA, but you have it down for a different date. I think there are a few other games that need their release dates fixed as well.
Besides that, my personal opinion... I have been running through the game and have put in about 6 to 8 hours, and I really don't think it's all that impressive. The destructability in every object is great and can make it very fun to just run around destroying anything. The problems I see, is that this gets boring after a while, and the fact that when you are in a shootout with the (literally) infinite number of enemies that start attacking (which is also another complaint of mine), all the debris tends to really mess you up with moving around. Even just small pieces of junk can impede your movement often, which will result in you dying from every enemy's near-perfect accuracy. To add, the game's basic objectives are all extremely repetitive, and as was mentioned here, the long distance travels make the game even more tedious.
I was really looking forward to this game, and thought it was going to be a ton of fun, but so far it's been nothing short of lacking and disappointing. It's got the material for a good game, but the overall final product missed on a lot of key areas, and was seriously lacking for me. All aspects considered, I would say it's worth a rent, no more than that though.
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Girugamesh
- 12:08pm EDT - June 6th, 2009
- 13
Many here are complaining about PSU's '9' on this title, but they're not the only ones, just check Metacritic FFS.
It appears this title just flew under everyone's radar...or reviewers are being far to lenient. Either way, my friend was asking me if it had already come out yesterday because he was going to go out and buy it, I was berating him because he still hasn't gotten Uncharted or any other high profile games out there.
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Smithy2306
- 4:15pm EDT - June 6th, 2009
- 18
The demo was terrible! Completely put me off getting this.
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radgamer420
- 5:48pm EDT - June 6th, 2009
- 19
A huge diffirence between the PSU score and the user review score. What gives?
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coverlord
- 7:07pm EDT - June 6th, 2009
- 20
I haven't played the full game, only the 2 demo's on PSN. I think the single player could have alot of flaws but the multiplayer was surprisingly alot of fun. I think I would totally love the multiplayer, not concerned with the single player at all. I also think games these days are totally overrated.
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