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REVIEW: RED FACTION GUERILLA
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PS3 and PC. Developed by Volition. Published by THQ
Red Faction is the third in the Red Faction series since 2001′s original PS2 and PC title. The first game was a fairly linear First Person Shooter in the vein of the original Half Life with much vaunted Geo-Mod technology allowing you to make holes in the terrain. A great idea in theory but in reality it merely enabled you to widen doors by an inch. Red Faction II followed a few years later but wasn’t as well received as the original. It wasn’t as good. It was shit.
Fast-forward four or five years, and after years of inactivity in a series forgotten about by most, Volition released Red Faction Guerrilla for PS3, 360 and soon enough, PC. Rather than allowing you to carve your name in large letters in stone, RF:G lets you destroy almost structure, building, device, vehicle on the surface of Mars. Not quite everything but enough to make it interesting. Its like a poker game with the Grim Reaper (when you run out of money you’re betting the only thing he’s interested in).
So you start off as Alec Mason, a miner fresh to Mars. Within about 10 minutes, your brother is killed and you decide “what the hell, let’s overthrow the government!” Of you go with your trusty hammer and a pistol making mayhem wherever you go. The missions structure is interesting because there are various ways to progress. The Martian Landscape is divided up into six sectors, which, at the start of the game, are all controlled by the baddies, the EDF (Earth Defence Force). Each area starts with a number of control points, which you must get to zero in order to unlock a story mission in order to move on to the next section. There are only a few actual story missions in each area but dozens of side missions such as rescuing Red Faction members under house arrest, stopping a traitor from delivering info to the EDF, cause a diversion by causing mischief with a mech suit and so on. There are also a number of RF establishments throughout each worlds, such as a garage, admin building, barracks, etc, which you can destroy in order to reduce the EDF’s control over an area. You also need to collect shrapnel from any EDF property you destroy in order to pay for weapon upgrades and destroying EDF property is the best way to make a mountain of coin.
The Ghost of Crackdown lurks in this game in the amount of freedom you have to complete most of the destroy EDF property missions, though this isn’t a game that prides itself in getting you to inaccessible places like Infamous. Also- The Crackdown Voice Guy’s the leader of the Red Faction, though you never see him.
So how does it play? It is the more fun than a visit to Mardi Gras after you’ve just inherited a bead factory. Even though the game starts off as a third person shooter with a hammer as a melee weapon, the hammer turns out to be your secret weapon. You soon ditch the rifles and concentrate on explosive devices to get you through a mission. These upgrade rather nicely and each weapon has a tutorial of sorts in the form of optional side demolition challenges. These basically give you a limited supply of a particular weapon and a building you need to destroy within the time limit. These are great for practice and also yield a lot of shrapnel for upgrades to your arsenal. You can help the EDF in missions or you can blow up buildings in order to unlock those story missions.
There is a downside on that the game’s balancing needs work as normal mode is not particularly easy and I found myself dialling the difficulty down to medium for the last 5-10% of the game. Its mostly good but the aggressive AI of the EDF drones gets a bit wearing on missions like “Dogs of War.” There’s also a story in the game but it’s so slight that skipping the FMV scenes won’t crimp your enjoyment of the game.
Graphics are, to my eye, fairly pretty and the framerate (on 360) is pretty solid, but then it has some screen tearing (which can affect some people quite alarmingly). Sound is also quite good apart from the glitch I encountered when I first loaded up the game. The sound was actually disabled and all of the sound faders in the sound option where set to zero.
So, do you like to tool around blow shit up? Then this game is for you. The game makes you play story missions to progress but these are usually quite decent and fun to play. Depends on whether you ever get past the first island in a GTA game or not. Of the six areas, not all of them are as populated with missions as others but expect to play this game for between 12-17 hours. There is so much to do that there is little scope for not having fun. If you can’t have fun playing Red Faction Guerrilla, maybe you should reconsider gaming as a hobby and go and play WoW instead. Be aware, this game gets insaaaaanely difficult towards the end. So much so that with six missions to go I felt I had to dial the difficulty from normal down to casual. Even then I struggled with the final epic mission so much that I’ve done something I’ve not done in years (apart from GTAIV)- I turned on all of the cheats, otherwise I’d be dumbing the score down to a 2/3. I think the game is great apart from that insane spike at the end. Either that or put some more checkpoints in these epic missions Volition.
If you like Open world games, freedom to complete missions anyway you like, blowing shit up, get this.
Controller1.com Rating 3/3 It is easily the most fun 2009 release we’ve seen so far (it gets really hard though)
REBOOT
My friends, I’d like to talk to you about the wonders of series reboots. They’re all the rage and very popular with the kids, though reboots have been part of videogames since the very beginning. I will say it started with Donkey Kong being constantly alternating between protagonist and antagonist in his early incarnations.
I mean, is each new console Legend of Zelda game a remake or a reboot. They are essentially telling the same story each time a different way with mostly the same characters. A few variations here and there but essentially the same. Perhaps its more of a remake.
Tomb Raider has been rebooted a few times but each time, its more of a technical and design reboot rather that reinventing Lara herself. The latest leaked shots of a new Tomb Raider, with a smaller bosomed Lara have hit the net. In reality it’s likely to be more of the same but it counts as a reboot. Even if it is the same, calling it a reboot with words like survival horror and open world bandied about like common gutter trash, gets those who claim to be jaded by the series more interested in the new game. By “jaded” I mean “run out of tissues.”
People cite Resident Evil 4 as a reboot even though it’s the same storyline. It just has a more modernised control system than the original’s tank controls. Resident Evil is less about survival horror and more about horror at how many buttons you have to press to change ammo.
Prince of Persia is one of the most recent Reboots of a franchise that has already been rebooted several times. The most recent Prince of Persia from 2008, itself a reboot of the series from 2003 which was a reboot of the 2001 Prince of Persia 3D which was a reboot of, well, you get the point. To be fair the 2008 prince is Persia is more reborn. And then when you play it you realise it is actually an abortion of a game.
Is Call of Duty 4 a reboot? The gameplay is very little changed from the original Call of Duty but the change of setting was enough for people to think of it as new. A lot of people who would describe themselves as hardcore shied away form the early CoD games. They were popular with the casual gamers but the edgier setting of Modern Warfare has attracted guys who live for the bleeding edge. “I cut myself on the CoD!” The fact that World at War, a return to WWII, has sold very well in its own right shows that a well made game is a well made game, regardless of when it is set. But the guys who love their CoD4 won’t even consider World at War. So CoD4 is not a reboot, just more of the same. They’re in the same universe (or at least, no reason to assume they’re not in the same continuum)
But maybe the gaming reboot is a myth. All it is is a retooling of the games, keeping what works whilst jettisoning the material that doesn’t. Perhaps adding a few new gameplay elements but compared to a Batman Begins or JJ Abrams Star Trek, Games just play with superfluous things. Occasionally, such as a certain kids game that was a cheesy platformer being rebooted into a serious LOTR style epic would count as a reboot, since it changes the origins and the style of characters and gets rid of platforming in place of combat. But nothing on the level of Casino Royale, which took Bond from bloated over-indulgence of Die Another Day and brought the series down to earth, but conversely took it to greater highs.
I don’t see Fallout 4 being a prequel. You want a Fallout game in a post-apocalyptic world. Mirror’s Edge with no Parkour or Medal of Honor set in WWI.
Red Faction: Guerilla, my current gaming fancy, is half and half. It completely changes the gamplay from the first two Red Factions, going from a first person shooter to a third person blow the crap out of everything. Linear maps to open world. Its still set in the same universe by having this be a later Red Faction uprising. So is it a reboot or does beating the game mean you’re going to fail anyway since the next game is going to be another uprising? Like the feeling of elation at the end of Terminator 2 only to have Terminator 3 come and undo the good work.
Controller1.com Focus Test: Red Faction and more
A Doritos tie-in, Samurai Showdown and the Red Faction Guerrilla Demo.
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