Red Faction: Guerrilla (Xbox 360)

Get your ass to Mars for some out-of-this-world pyrotechnics, personality and gameplay.
6/4/2009 3:19 PM | 3 Comments | Page 2 of 4

Marscape

Of course, Mars isn't going to give the developers much of an opportunity for interesting locations, right? For the first few hours, you might expect Red Faction will be a long slog through red-hued canyons. I'd just as soon leave you to discover for yourself that you're wrong. After Stillwater, the bland city featured in the Saints Row series, you might not expect Volition could create interesting places with personality. So it's a pleasant surprise to discover on Mars a lively and memorable progression of places, vehicles and especially weapons. The weapons further reinforce the idea of a community of workers under an oppressive military occupation. As a reviewer, here's where I'd normally break it down into specifics. But as a gamer, here's where I'm just going to say I hope you haven't been watching the videos released by THQ, or reading too many previews. There are some delightful surprises in store for you.

Among the surprises is a wide variety of mission types. The inspiration is clearly Saints Row 2. Some missions require surgical precision, some require driving, and some are almost like puzzles. Many are flat-out, balls-to-the-wall, scorched-earth, rubble-grooving explosion parties. There are even dynamically generated missions that give you the opportunity to play with the many different kinds of toys you get. The elaborate destruction required to take out some of the high-value targets is downright operatic. It's completely optional, but you won't want to miss the spectacle of demolishing, say, the EDS Memorial Bridge in Eos or the Ark Reactor in Oasis. In this regard, the presentation is more like that of Far Cry 2 than Saints Row 2. Saints Row 2 was a magnificent cartoon toy box with minimal context. But like Far Cry 2, Red Faction is a unified place as aimless as you want it to be. Explore, hang out, chip away military control, mine ore in the badlands, or follow the story. Like Far Cry 2, it has an role-playing-like system of weapon upgrades, and a couple of its own versions of diamond-hunting.

Then, of course, there are the destructible buildings that come down in their component chunks of concrete and steel girders and shattering window panes. It's as gratifying as Boom Blox, but nowhere near as simple. The physics of destruction are built on the wonderful physics of construction that Volition has carefully built by hand. This is as much architecture as it is level design, with physics perfectly integrated into the world and gameplay. They aren't as gratuitous as you'd expect from such a major bullet point. Once the game is underway, the destruction tricks fade effortlessly into the rest of the game. You just come to expect this is how the world should be. If you fire a rocket launcher into a wall, naturally, the wall is going to get blown open. Naturally, girders, rubble and bodies will litter the vicinity. Naturally, you can shoot through the hole. Naturally, you can walk through the hole. Naturally, if you keep shooting the wall, the hole will widen, the wall will fall, and eventually the entire building will come down. Naturally. It's just the way it's supposed to be. It's what bombs and rocket launchers and singularity devices do when they meet man-made objects. And once you go back to playing other games, the issue isn't that Red Faction has destructible objects. The real issue is that other games don't have destructible objects. Thanks, Red Faction: Guerrilla, for screwing up other games for me. Thanks a lot.