Playing A Game Red Faction: Guerrilla PC

"GTA4 on Mars" isn't an unfair assessment of Red Faction: Guerrilla. But what RF:G lacks in narrative strength - and it does lack: Alec Mason makes Tommy Vercetti look like Citizen Kane - it makes up for with sheer, destructible bliss. Driving a truck into someone is fun; driving it through a building is awesome.

Almost everything on Mars can be dismantled and blown up, and what's more, Salvage (debris) is a collectible currency! By blowing shit up, and also by completing missions for the Red Faction, you'll be able to buy new weapons, weapon upgrades, and other sundries, in order to blow shit up even better. New areas, in which to blow new shit up, are opened by pushing back the Earth Defense Force (EDF) - which is largely accomplished by blowing their shit up.

The EDF make for more convenient aggressors than GTA's police, because there is no semblance of doubt or hesitation in killing them: the EDF are the Nazis of Mars. Drawing them into a firefight is all too fun. Speaking of which! - as a representative of a grassroots rebellion, Alec is liable to spontaneously attract the help of working class schmucks. So on top of being able to level buildings, there's also the constant possibility to spark (and take part in) a real-time, full-scale conflict between the EDF and the workers. How's that for emergent gameplay?

The biggest failure of Red Faction: Guerrilla is that, since there's not much of a plot to go on, you are really driven only by your own desire for destruction - which is great, until you get bored of driving around looking for things to destroy. While the game doesn't completely overcome this, it does have a brilliant countermeasure, in the form of Guerrilla Missions: in certain general areas, you'll get a radio message indicating that some shit is going down, be it an attack on a Red Faction base, or an EDF convoy, or an EDF courier en route. You'll then have the option to immediately switch to this mission, and go take care of business. No tracking down map icons; no cutscenes or transitions. It's all seamless.

The real-time nature of Guerrilla's world is expertly executed, and the destruction physics are a blast, pun fully intended. Aside from some minor, somewhat expected issues (trouble walking through rubble, friendly AIs being pretty retarded), I'd say the only thing it could do better is having a real story.

Progress: Liberated Parker sector

Rating: Good