Video Game Review: Incredibly Deep ‘Red Faction Guerilla’ Makes Explosive Good Time

CHICAGO – It turns out the revolution will be televised and you’ll be able to blow a lot of stuff up during it. THQ’s clever and incredibly deep “Red Faction Guerilla” is one of the most intense and exhaustive experiences of the season. It’s a fun ride through a revolution that requires strategy, shooter skills and a desire for destruction.

Video Game Rating: 4.0/5.0

I’ll never forget the first time I swung a sledgehammer in “Red Faction Guerilla”. There’s a pre-teen trouble maker in all of us that wakes up and pays attention to moments of gleeful destruction and that’s the basic foundation of this very good game, one that will take not just hours but days of many player’s lives this summer.

Red Faction Guerilla
Photo credit: THQ

In “Red Faction Guerilla,” you play a member of the resistance, a group of miners on Mars who are trying to take down the evil Earth Defense Force. Of course, the revolution will not come easily. Through a series of major and side missions, you will have to weaken the control of the EDF, raise Guerilla morale (even recruiting a few if you can), save hostages, practice your skills of destruction, and try and retake major portions of the planet Mars.

Red Faction Guerilla Photo credit: THQ

And I mean MAJOR. “Red Faction Guerilla” is an ENORMOUS game with several large sections of the planet to explore, dozens of EDF properties to destroy, and dozens of missions (over a hundred if you include side ones). There is way too much driving across the surface of Mars from mission to mission (or back to a mission after you die) for my taste, but it does add to the believability of the game structure. This is no small revolution.

There’s a very clever design to the mission structure in that completing side missions will make the main story missions easier. As you weaken the EDF control on your guerilla force, there are fewer troops to deal with in general. Meaning that even if you just blow up an EDF gas station that you happen to pass on the road, it will help your gameplay in the long run. It makes for an incredibly deep game, one that requires overall strategy in deciding when EDF control is weak enough to take out a high profile target and when you might want to shoot smaller fish in the Martian barrel.

No matter the choice, “Red Faction Guerilla” is a tough, tough game. On normal difficulty, I died an embarrassing number of times. Be prepared to try one mission and realize that EDF control is way too strong to pull it off that early in the game. And be prepared to have to approach different missions with different tactics. Sometimes “guns blazing” is not going to work in an area with heavy EDF control.

What’s most remarkable about “RFG” is the complexity of the destruction. This is not a “plant bomb, watch explosion” dynamic. Every player experience will be a bit different with no scripted way for a building to fall. Take out your sledgehammer and work on the support beams or simply throw a few bombs on the building and see if they do the damage needed. Each blast feels different not just from the time before but from the myriad of ways you could have tried to take the building down yourself.

Red Faction Guerilla Photo credit: THQ

And perhaps more than any other game, the buildings that you’re blowing up feel three-dimensional. The sound design is brilliant. The beams creak and moan as you chip away at a skyscraper. You haven’t really played “RFG” until you realize you’re IN a building that’s going to come down around you. The screen shakes, debris flies, and glass shatters. It’s brilliantly designed.

In “Red Faction Guerilla,” blowing things up not only progresses you in the game but earns you salvage, which can be traded in for upgrades and new weapons.

Of course, destruction is one thing. Storytelling is another. The incredible design of the chaos in “RFG” makes it one of the better games of the season, but the missions don’t build like I wish they would and, as much as this may be heresy to some, there are too many side missions. Rescuing hostages and blowing up EDF housing gets repetitive much more quickly than you might think.

There’s also an interesting element to “RFG” that could be called a gameplay flaw. Destruction of EDF property works even if you die. You’ll respawn at your base and the property will still be destroyed. Yes, morale will be down a bit, but if you’re trying to take down a major target, a suicide mission is not the worst strategy to employ.

Developer Volition does an admirable job of raising the stakes through the main mission structure of the game, regularly giving the player new tools with which to unleash chaos including a rocket launcher, arc welder, singularity bombs, and much more.

“Red Faction Guerilla” would be worth a look for the massive single-player campaign on its own but it’s only one part of the title. There is a multiplayer element of the game that is insanely deep with 125 ranks in its competitive multiplayer. And “RFG” returns something that has too often left modern gaming - local multiplayer. “Wrecking Crew” is a controller-passing game where each person in the room simply tries to tally as much destruction as their twisted little minds can conceive.

We don’t often complain about games being TOO long but “Red Faction Guerilla” is damn near overwhelming. With hours of single player and local and online multiplayer games that gamers will adore, no one can complain about not getting their money’s worth with this incredible title.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com