Red Faction: Guerrilla is a blast (Pun intended)
The game is set on Mars where the protagonist, Mason, is reunited with his brother and is very quickly embroiled in a war between the workers and the EDF a mining company established and running all operations on Mars.
The story is not exactly top of the line it serves the subject matter well but it's always more there rather than anything that comes to the fore, there are motivations on why characters do what it's not fully fleshed out it seems like there is a huge gap between the quality of the story and the quality of the story. I found that I was essentially just drifting from event to event and the story missions were interspersed and were more of a distraction to the fun than anything else. The game is quite lengthy maybe clocking in at around 10-12 hours for the main story although to find all the hidden collectables you could stretch it out to 20 hours or so.
Don't get me wrong the mechanics of this game, read destruction, are superb there are things that just never get old. For example, driving a car through a building, or landing a sledgehammer blow on just the right support to bring a whole building tumbling down. To say I'm a fan of the destruction would be more than an understatement. This is a game where the story can take a back seat, and for the most part does but if the destruction wasn't right it would have been game over before it even began.
The world itself is a slight misstep also. It is all very well and good to have an open world but you need to give us things to do and see. There is this huge space but so little to see side from the disparate outposts and occasional buildings. It is effective at giving you the feeling you really are on a mining outpost in an environment that is not Earth but as an open world game it is not especially interesting.
Also the side missions suffer from a slight repetitiveness, but as many of them revolve around destroying structures in varying ways or causing a certain amount of damage and these sessions are extremely fun and gloss over the repetition. In all reality you more than likely will be bored of the missions well before you have finished the 100 that are on offer.
The driving is an area in which the game is also not as good as it could have been. It feels very floaty although it could be easy to dismiss this as the difference between the gravities of Earth and Mars. It's not really a massive problem it just feels a little loose, and hardly should be a deal breaker. The types of vehicles are a little limited, but they are futuristic and does a good job of making you feel you are taking part in a struggle on an intergalactic mining colony.
The weapons are fantastic all around. It is obvious that they were designed to make destruction more and more fun as the game went on. Even the most basic weapon, the sledgehammer is so fun that, at times you just look for an excuse to use it. The nano gun which eats away at matter is a good way to take snipers out, by removing their platforms, the rocket launchers cause a suitable amount of mayhem and there is nothing better than placing 6 remote charges on the right supports and bringing down a whole building with one fell swoop.
The game is a little on the difficult side, especially to begin with. You have to upgrade health and unlock the better weapons as you progress and upgrade them with salvage you earn for completing missions and destroying things. There is many a time that you can alert the EDF and find yourself very quickly under so much fire that you can't escape and death is inevitable. To make matters worse there is a 20 second load screen every time you die, which is extremely frustrating to have to go through, especially if you are having difficulty on that one part.
Graphically the game is good looking, it is clean and crisp and for an open world game it doesn't get bogged down in muddy textures, it may be less noticeable because it's not a big urban environment and ultimately it works. The art style is good and fits in with a sparse mining colony on a settled planet, none of the buildings are too far out there but they do have a futuristic feel.
The sound is generally good. The music, when there is any fits in with the mood quite well. It can be said that there maybe too many stretches where there is just you, the wind and the hum of your vehicle. The sound effects are good there is a solid sound when your sledgehammer hits anything, a good soft thud when you hit EDF troops. The sound of buildings creaking and collapsing is also a highlight.
Multiplayer is an outstanding addition to the package. The maps are varied and the game can change with one strategically destroyed wall. The backpacks uses to give special abilities are an excellent idea. Essentially there are packs that are scattered around a level and although the Rino pack with the shotgun combination is a little to overpowering, it's hardly an automatic win, but it does make your life easier. So the multiplayer is mostly fantastic, although you'll probably be having so much fun that you won't even realise the minor flaws.
Red Faction: Guerrilla is very much a game that is the sum of it parts and what it does well it does superbly and this more than makes up for the negative points. Sure, you won't get a stimulating story but it does serve to move you from area to area and situation to situation and watching a building crumble is never old. For an open world game that offers something a little bit different, this is the game for you.