Red Faction: Guerrilla is a pretty good game. If you can get over its bland and unimpressive graphics, of course.
Loved :
-Mad-Max feeling of the junk-made vehicles and weapons. It really helps to give the game a certain ammount of beauty, since it lacks any in every other department.
-Most vehicles are fun to use and very well designed.
-Destroying people's face with a hammer. Outstanding music design.
- While it lasts, upgrades that you acquire.
Hated :
- 11 hours long of content with the campaign AND side-missions, wich is, unlike most reviewers said, pretty short for an open-world sandbox. But I can see why they made it that short, they put their effort in the MP.
- After a certain point in the game, the missions stops giving you upgrades all of the sudden. Wich means that after half of the missions, you won't get any other gear, wich is a bummer because the upgrades drove me to actually play side-missions.
- Heavy blur effect when you aim.
- Flying vehicles arent useable.
When I first played the demo of this game, I will admit, I laughed out loud at it. I felt like i've played this game for years. Wich is kind of true, since it's a pretty generic sandbox game overall. But a pretty well done one.
The graphics of Guerrilla are quite unimpressive. Everything reeks blandness, from weapon design ( except a few ) to your own character's fireman suit. Why a fireman trenchcoat, and why the most generic face ever, Volition? Why? That said, there's not much to see on Mars. A few zones are quite cool, like the Badlands and Parker, wich offers sandstorms and deserted areas filled with marauders driving Mad-Max-ish vehicles. The latter offers red-dust covered areas with a blooming, and dazing sky.
The other zones are far from being memorable, and tend to fall in the '' just plain ugly '' level. Of course, while I do agree that it is hard to create a good looking Mars, since its not very beautiful in real life, I can't help but wish the game stayed in its roots of Parker and Badlands.
There's some nice graphical touches ; such as cool mounting animations for every vehicles, and actually see your character interact with other people by giving them items, or opening crates and such. Most vehicles are covered in dirt and dust, giving them the proper feel of wear and tear.
An odd design choice was to completely blur Mason's model with you aim down the sights of your weapon, wich is something that I hate dearly. Same feature was in Bionic Commando, and it killed the shooting for me. I hate to see a big mass of blur covering the 1/3rd of my screen when I shoot.
The gameplay is quite simple, yet solid. Most weapons definitly feel lackluster, because of the game's nature as a sandbox. Wich means you'll be pea-shooting grunts that will fall dropdead once their life is depleted. No bullet impact or anything like that. And then of course, there's the boom level of destruction.
Unlike Mercenaries, wich focused on explosions, Guerrilla focuses on destroying things. It can be fun sometimes, but it also comes with a cost : Every buildings are lifeless, bland looking and texture-less. They really look like lego buildings, with the '' destroy us!! '' sticker on em. Due to the building physics, you'll aslo encounter some annoyances, like building refusing to collapse because of a single joint that you didnt destroy. Naturally, the building should have shattered due to its weight, yet it'll stand. This will happen to you often, and takes away the credibility of destruction a bit.
As for the Multiplayer, I'm not a fan of it, yet I can see that it has a certain level of flair to it. The devs clearly dug up some good ideas with the different backpacks you can use, giving you different superpowers during the matches. Of course I got bored with it after two rounds, but I can see lots of people enjoying it.
VERDICT : Try it.