Red Faction Guerilla Game Review–The Best Red Faction Game Yet
Recently, a game landed onto the Xbox 360 that left me a little cold. It was called Red Faction; Guerilla, and was yet another sequel to the first person shooter original and first sequel. And when I first laid hands on this one I sighed in the deepest resignation and dragged out my thesaurus hoping I could find a new word for “craptacular”. Seriously, I’m so very tired of first person shooters. There are so few good ones.
But then I got it in, and I’ll tell you, I was pleasantly surprised. Surprised is almost too weak a reaction, but is it really possible to be pleasantly shocked?
Anyway, you play a miner whose focus is in demolitions freshly landed on Mars a while after the earlier events of Red Faction. The Earth Defense Force, which for some reason isn’t even ON Earth any more, is acting as an occupation force on Mars, backing up pretty much ever evil move that the Ultor Corporation (THQ just loves the name Ultor, I guess) makes. This is doubly odd since, originally, the Earth Defense Force was a collection of GOOD guys who assisted Red Faction. So much for that, huh?
So now you’re on planet, and the EDF just wiped out your brother for “crimes”. No one really bothered to tell you what they were before they blasted him with what looked like a vulcan cannon, or before they came after you and discovered that you had explosives in your trailer (you’re a mining engineer with a demolitions specialty, remember?) so you, in response, joined Red Faction out of necessity and the desire to get payback for your dead brother.
The game itself plays a lot like some other titles, especially Saints Row, Grand Theft Auto, Just Cause and Mercenaries, and offers many of the same elements. You can steal cars, which look a lot more like moon rovers and have apparently enhanced suspension to handle the rocky terrain better. You’ll roam around a map with multiple zones, blowing things up, knocking things down, and shooting holy hell out of the EDF in an effort to wrest control of Mars away from them and put it back in the hands of the people.
There is a truly incredible variety of things to do in this game, make no mistake about that. Within my first few minutes I had blown up several abandoned buildings, collected scrap from said buildings to upgrade my weaponry and hardware, and shot about thirty five stormtroopers—err…EDF troops. I do enjoy a game that’s about more than walk from point A to point B and shoot whatever wanders in front of you. As a result, this may actually be my favorite Red Faction game just by the sheer fact that it actually includes something different to do.
Granted, it’s not that much different from a first person shooter—its biggest difference may well be just a matter of perspective (no pun intended), but with the addition of driving and setting explosives and collecting items, it does elevate the game slightly above its predecessors. It’s a good rental, no mistake there, but whether or not it’ll be a good buy depends on just how much you like shooter games with some solid action.