Red Faction Guerilla — Demo Hands On
A few days ago I got my hands on the long awaited Red Faction Guerilla game. I have to tell you that from the beginning, I loved Red Faction. I had the game on the PS2 and it was about all I played for a long time until things like GTA3 starting appearing on the console.
For me it was about the destruction, always has and always will be. The greatest addition in single-player was that you could drive vehicles every now and again. Guerilla takes the idea of destructable environments and applies it to buildings — I never knew demolition was so fun. That’s not all — it’s open world on Mars and you’ve got some really inspired vehicles driving around that you can just yank the driver from and take control of yourself including some awesome “mech” vehicles that you can walk straight through buildings with.
Reversing a garbage truck into a block of apartments, I had to keep doing it over and over until the landscape around me was completely flattened. It was a jaw-dropping experience.
So you get it, the game has lots of cool new features. Despite that, it’s really always about gameplay — Red Faction Guerilla does not fail here. The controls take a little getting used to, simply because the buttons are shifted slightly from other popular games but the reality is, that’s the only hurdle. Once you understand that you don’t have to run around a building to get that sneaky guard, you can just club right through with your hammer, the game gets so much more that just a FPS. It becomes a whole new genre to itself.
You can play tricks on the AI, run around a corner with AI in hot pursuit then smash your way into and out of a building to come out behind them and SMACK, you’ve just ploughed them into a mobile toilet and their head is resting neatly on a piece of wall they just tore down.
It’s a multi-faceted game where you’re rewarding by damaging the environment, every building you smash you collect salvage which in turn, you can sell to buy better guns and equipment. It’s a system that’s only partially available in the demo, but I can see the potential since I had fun collecting salvage on my own accord.
The single-player missions played similar to other games, go to this location, pick this up, meet back at this point. Except, it’s not like that at all. Because the open-world environment has a series of hills, back roads and interesting routes that mean A > B > C missions become very different. Do you want to go stealth right until the last minute? Guns blazing? Bust out your hammer for some smashing? Or a mixture of all three? Experimentation is encouraged, there is no “GPS” system to guide you on an exact path but there are vehicles you can jump in to stick to the roads if you want. It’s completely your choice.
Volition have obviously learnt a lot from Saints Row, Red Faction is jam packed with subtle humour and player dialogue is actually interesting to listen to. My advice is, when it shelves, go and grab a copy — this game is going to be a big hit!
