Red Faction: Guerrilla

There are some features of Red Faction: Guerrilla that make for easy comparison with other recent games. Guerrilla missions, for instance, are functionally similar to recon missions in Assassin's Creed - the difference being that Red Faction has a lot of mission types, almost all of which are fun. And the free-roaming nature of collecting salvage to upgrade is not unlike Crackdown's power-up orbs, although Alec Mason is upgraded more through his weapons than through his personal attributes. (Also, Michael McConnohie is the voice of your commander in both Crackdown and RF:G. Interesting!)

Red Faction may share ideas with some other sandbox titles, but the amount of fun I'm having is difficult to compare to. It's rare to find a game where failure is enjoyable, but when I fail a mission in Red Faction, I am almost invariably looking forward to trying it again. It really nails the simple pleasures of destroying things.

Back when RF:G was new, there was a popular critical opinion that the default game difficulty was too high, and that optimal fun could be found in Easy. Not to toot my own horn, but I'm having no qualms about Normal. Recently I had been feeling pretty fragile in the game's tougher firefights; and then, a new armor upgrade opened up. Of course, death is expected, and in certain missions, frequent - but like I said, I still have fun doing these missions the umpteenth time. I'm not opposed to the idea of switching to Easy to find fun in a difficult game. I'm just saying, for Red Faction, I don't see this as significant.

As for the narrative, it's showing some signs of, uh, trying to do something; I'm still not impressed. There are these Marauders, basically Mad Max rejects wandering out in the Martian desert, who appear to just be hyperviolent savages but may hint at a deeper secret. All I know is, beating them to death with my sledgehammer is great fun.

Progress: Liberated Badlands sector