September 27, 2009

The only way to liberate Mars is to destroy every inch of it with explosives.

So, Red Faction: Guerrilla may be one of the best games of the year, hands down.

I mention often that, when I play open world games, Crackdown has spoiled me. It’s “missions seamlessly in the world” without having to pull up an instance and the intense, enjoyable level of power you have as you play make it a joy to play, and I just hadn’t seen another game that gave me that sense.
Until now, of course.

There are instanced “major” missions in Red Faction. There are two reasons why this doesn’t bother me. One is that the majority of the missions, called “Guerrilla Actions,” are seamless, just like in Crackdown. You walk up to a building, and you hear over your headset “Oh shit, the EDF are coming, you have to defend this point!” and then you defend it. Or you jump in a car, and Mason goes “Oh, this has one of those special transponders Sam was wanting” and then you instantly are in a race mission to get the vehicle back to base. You also have compounds of enemy forces that need destroying that are just out in the overworld that you can tackle any way you want.
Even when you get into the instanced missions, they do them right. They are significantly varied from what you’re doing in the normal missions. They follow a stronger narrative than the rest of the game, and while you could really care less about the narrative, it at least gives a purpose to them being instanced. And they’re fun. A lot of the instanced missions in games like say, Bully, just weren’t fun to me at all. So that certainly helps.

Red Faction really nails the power thing, too. I can only speak to the game on Casual, but on Casual, you are a walking badass. A one-man wrecking crew. Every time you slam your sledgehammer into a building and whole walls fall down, it feels CRAZY good. You have a playground of different weapons at your disposal, just like in Crackdown, and you can do a lot of different things with them. The Nanorifle is an obvious favorite, able to eat through walls and melt people, but just about all the weapons are fun as hell in their own way. You can blow up buildings any way you want! And the game is all the better for it.

On top of the fun single player, the game has plenty of value. The online multiplayer is extremely solid. Damage Control, the mode that was in the demo, is an awesome variation of the “control point” mechanic that plays into the game’s strengths of destroying shit very well. Siege and Destruction play up these strengths similarly. Siege is a mission-objective based mode where you take turns attacking and defending, trying to protect or destroy a base and turn it to rubble. In Destruction, there is one “VIP” on the team, the Destructor. He gets points for his team by destroying buildings. The rest of the team tries to kill the other team’s Destructor, or protect theirs, or rebuild buildings so that your Destructor has more to demolish. They’re both completely awesome, playing into the game’s destructive strengths to feel very fresh and new. The game also has a level up reward system stolen from CoD4, and is all the better for it.

The real multiplayer highlight, and the reason that I bought this game from Gamefly instead of just renting it, is Wrecking Crew, a hotseat offline multiplayer. You’re given a playground, and weapons, and have to destroy everything. Then you pass the controller to the next player, and they try to beat your score. It is so much fun, especially since you can see what strategies the people who went before you used, and try to improve on them, or just throw them out if they don’t work. So much trash talk has occurred around this mode, and my friends, or at least Essner, were getting so into it, I couldn’t help but keep the game to keep access to it.

So yeah, everyone should play Red Faction: Guerrilla. It just came out on PC, if you’re that kind of person. There are so few flaws in the game, it’s hard not to recommend it. It is an open world game done right, and I loved every minute of it.

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