Red Faction: Guerrilla Updated Multiplayer Hands-On Impressions

If you were to give a straw poll to a group of gamers on the first thing that comes to mind with the Red Faction franchise, we'd bet you dollars to doughnuts that the majority of those asked would point to the game's geo-modding environmental capabilities. It's a feature much loved by fans, and though the latest game in the series, Red Faction: Guerrilla, may have ditched first-person shooting mechanics in favour of the third-person perspective, building (and by association terrain deformation) remains a core part of the experience.

With the game itching to ostrich-hammer its way onto store shelves in early June this year, we decided to give the multiplayer another spin to check out some of the new destruction-themed modes available. We kicked things off with a little team deathmatch via the Team Anarchy mode, which pits six players per side against the other team. Although it's a reasonably standard-fare killfest, the big surprise element here is the backpacks. Probably best described as a power-up perk system, their variety of abilities helps make them more than just a temporary damage spike or evasion tool; they ultimately change the way that you'll approach killing others.

Activated by hitting the left bumper, the rhino backpack will allow you a short burst run through even the most heavily reinforced building walls. After all, why trample all the way around a structure when you can go straight through it after your prey? Another useful backpack doubles your firepower, which comes in handy when combined with the speed and devastation of tossing out sticky bombs and detonating them en masse. The concussive backpack fires out a ring of energy around your character, knocking over and stunning anyone within striking distance. Couple this with your trusty sledgehammer and put your foes out of their misery quick smart. The jetpack might be one of the less inspired perks, given the creativity of the rhino, but it's still one of the most effective on the multiplayer battlefield. Zipping directly upwards, hovering, steadying, and then letting rip with the thermobaric rocket launcher is a seemingly unstoppable attack and certainly claimed its fair share of kills during our session.

Next up we tried out the Damage Control mode, the objective of which is to capture and then hold the largest number of nodes on the playfield until the round's timer runs out. Nodes take on the form of small, white silo buildings, and once they're controlled by the opposing team, you'll need to destroy and rebuild them using a special tool found on the weapon-select radial menu to make them your own. Having multiple teammates with their "healing guns" trained on the objective speeds up the process, and the most success came from small teams of players working together rather than rogue individuals attempting to claim the objectives solo. Two of the levels on show here were Pinnacle and Sand Pit, both of which gave us a break from the mostly red, sandy environments that we've played in previously.

The third and final mode that we saw was the as-yet-unseen Wrecking Crew mode. This one is designed as an offline, competitive pass-the-controller H.O.R.S.E game, but will also take advantage of Xbox Live and PlayStation Network leaderboards. If your idea of a good time is smashing everything in sight in the shortest period of time possible, then this one will be right up your alley. It's split into four different types of sub-modes, all of which are focused on demolishing structures to push your score as high as possible in the allotted time. Rampage gives you three minutes to wreak havoc, with the interesting twist that each shot of your weapon penalises you 30 seconds. This reduces the spray-and-pray element and forces you to make every single round fired count for maximum damage. Total Chaos is the exact opposite and sets you free to roam and blow things up with one minute and a bottomless sack of ammo. Destroying the foundations of buildings is the key here. Escalation is bit of a halfway point between the two modes and gives you a timer and limited amount of ammunition--in our case, two sticky bombs--to rearrange the place. Each subsequent round played increases your allocation of weapons and amount of time on the destruction clock. Barrel Dash was the fourth and final mode, and it kept the timers and weapon restrictions of the others, but it tasks you with attempting to blow up as many red- and blue-coloured barrels as you can in 60 seconds.

To stop the Score Attack element from getting stale due to players' tendencies to pick the most powerful weapons and stick with them, you can up the ante by either selecting your instruments of devastation in advance, or leaving them and the backpack option alone and have them randomly selected each round. Our hands-on time had us playing on the Vista, Factory, Cascade, Pipeline, Complex, and Watch Tower maps, but THQ reps at the event confirmed that there would also be an additional four maps available as downloadable content in the postlaunch period or potentially as part of a preorder incentive.

Red Faction: Guerrilla will be knocking over buildings in early June when it hits the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.