Red Faction: GuerrillaBy Chris Vavra - July 03, 2009 Print  EmailMore than six years after Red Faction II, Volition has finally released the third installment in their franchise, which is quick to take advantage of the more powerful PS3 and Xbox 360. The first two installments, while very good in their own right, seemed somewhat limited in their approach and in their scope. They played out as very straight-forward FPS titles with the occasional venture into a submarine or a walking mech. The geo-mod engine, which was designed to allow the player to blow up just about anything to their heart's content, never got the kind of mileage it does in Guerrilla. The cheerful destructive tone of the game works very well and provides the gamer with the opportunity to smash into buildings with giant Tonka trucks and create all kinds of mayhem against your enemy. If Blast Corps had been made today, the result might not have been too different from what Guerrilla has done here. Keeping in line with the past titles, Guerrilla tells the story of Alec Mason, a young man on his way to Mars to join up with his brother. The evil corporation Ultor (from the first game) has been replaced by the Earth Defense Force, or EDF. Fifty years have elapsed between the first and third titles and it turns out the EDF is just as oppressive as Ultor. Alec witnesses this firsthand when his brother is murdered before his eyes. Armed with a sledgehammer and some demolition knowledge, he goes to work for the new, fledgling Red Faction, liberating sectors under the EDF's control with quick hit-and-fade strikes designed to weaken them and set them up for devastating strikes. One major difference is that Guerrilla has changed the Red Faction norm from first-person shooting to a third-person shooter. The decision to do do this is a a welcome one as it is necessary for a game that is dependent on exploration and a lot of moving in and out of vehicles without too much interruption. The controls are your typical set-up for any shooting game and they work very nicely with the system. Storytelling has never been a strength of the series. Red Faction did an adequate job even if it was done on the fly. Red Faction II had some decent ideas that never reached fruition and ultimately ended up falling short of the mark. The protagonists, to some extent, were part of the problem. Parker and Alias aren't the most interesting people. Alec isn't very interesting, either. We get his motivation for revenge, but a lot of the details about his character are really glossed over and so are the interactions with the people he deals with. The first two Faction games had interesting supporting characters. Guerrilla deals with a bunch of stock characters and one-dimensional caricatures. Eos and Hendrix are badly missed and even people like Tangier and Repta from Red Faction II brought some color to the proceedings; nothing doing here. The story arc also fails to instill any suspense. There are some interesting moments that hearken back to the original (including a cameo by a former protagonist) but on the whole the story pays just enough lip-service to get by and ultimately winds up being the biggest detriment. The single-player is the longest of the RF games to date, clocking in at about eight hours for the average gamer on normal. In addition to the main missions (about three or four per sector) you have a series of guerrilla missions you need to accomplish. You also have the choice of blowing up enemy structures on your own. Your acts will increase morale and provide you with additional support for missions. If you die or kill innocents during your attacks, morale will be lowered. Having high morale is nice and all, but it doesn't really pay off as well as it should. The missions themselves tend to stay into a few categories: Stealing a vehicle and driving it back in a certain amount of time; attacking a compound; rescuing hostages; ambushing approaching EDF soldiers. The mainline missions crucial to the story have a little more variety but not much. The single-player is fun in spite of the problem, but I kept getting the feeling that I was playing Infamous on Mars all the while. No fault of the game, necessarily, but the similarities in the general approach are too obvious to ignore. To the single-player's credit, there is more than one way to go at a mission. You can go in stealth-style (even though it's pretty hard) or you could just smash through the front gate, knock over a couple of guard towers, and go in that way. Smashing through a building and watching everything around you collapse is a very satisfying experience in of itself. Volition deserves credit for getting you about as close as you'll ever get in real life to taking a wrecking ball to a building (unless, of course, you already do that or plan to with the Teamsters). Multiplayer was present in the first two games, but they never really clicked because of bland game design and bland features. This time around, Volition uses the arid landscape and various points throughout the game to make for some tense, brutal close-quarter style gameplay that mixes both indoor and outdoor styles. There are also special backpacks that will give a particular skill whether it be stealth or the Rhino backpack which gives the ability to ram through walls or enemies. The action gets pretty intense with eight people playing and there are enough maps and modes to allow for some genuine depth. The best mode is Siege, which is a team game where you spend half the match destroying installments and then defending the same installations against your opponent. This mode is especially good because it requires and demands a different kind of strategy in order to be successful. A good game is never far off and the interface is very user-friendly, which is refreshing to see. There's nothing particularly unique here, but it's still fun, which is all that matters, especially when weighed against the disappointing multiplayer the first two installments had. Another game mode is Wrecking Crew, which encourages that anarchic spirit to blow up as much as you can within a set amount of time against an opponent. You can do this by yourself and see how much mayhem you can cause or play with three others. There are a handful of maps and a handful of modes that will limit or test your demolition skills on buildings in a particular way. Wrecking Crew isn't terribly deep, but it is a lot of fun watching things go boom and seeing what kind of damage you can inflict with certain weapons. The visuals are very solid with almost no lag or pop-up issues. The geo-mod engine is put to near-perfect use with buildings that blow up in vivid detail. The cinematics are decent, but the characters aren't as detailed, even in HD, as they should be. The environments tend to run together a little, but at least you have the map to guide you if you happen to get lost on the terrain. Voice-over work comes off as very flat and unconvincing, especially in dramatic scenes. There aren't any "names" like there were with RFII, which managed to recruit Lance Henriksen as Molov and Jason Statham as Shrike. Troy Baker leaves a lot to be desired as Alec, as does the rest of the cast. The music recycles some of the classic themes along with a few new themes and the incorporation of both is seamless. The sound effects will also be familiar to fans of the series and they are also very good. While Guerrilla is far from a perfect title and could have used some additional work in the single-player, this feels like the definitive Red Faction game because it takes full advantage of the geo-mod technology that Volition has touted since the start of the decade. The ability to use the landscape and your environment as a potential weapon is an asset that more companies should utilize. There's enough depth and enough vitality in the multiplayer to make Red Faction fans and shooter fans in general very happy. Ratings |
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