Tuesday June 30, 2009
Destroy everything
By CHONG JINN XIUNG
It’s difficult not to like Red Faction: Guerrilla, which allows you to go wild and destroy almost anything in the game.
SURREAL: Mars makes for a great sci-fi setting that takes literally you out of this world. TIME and time again Mars has been used as a setting for sci-fi novels, films and games.
Red Faction: Guerilla takes players to a terraformed Mars which now has breathable air on the surface.
As Mars is hospitable, the humans have set up colonies and mining operations on the red planet.
However, Earth is running dangerously low on resources and the population of Mars have unwillingly been forced to mine valuable minerals for their home world.
You play as a miner called Alec Mason, a new arrival on Mars who is hoping to make a living on the red planet.
As things would have it, things go horribly wrong when he is immediately labelled a traitor by the Earth Defence Force (EDF).
He gets caught up with the Red Faction resistance, and before long Mason is on a mission to set things right by taking down the EDF one brick at a time.
Everything explodes
Unlike its predecessors, Guerrilla is a third-person game set in vast open world for you to explore and you will have to progress through story missions to move things along.
DETAILED: The game features some truly spectacular explosions and the buildings crumble realistically thanks to the Geo Mod 2.0 engine. Like so many other open world games, you are given free reign of what you wish to do.
However, Guerrilla goes a step further by allowing you to destroy almost anything and everything around you.
So, much of Guerrilla’s gameplay boils down to wanton destruction.
See a building? You can either whip out your trusty sledgehammer to knock out the support beams, use explosives to blow out the walls or simply drive a truck through it. It’s all fair game here.
But it’s not all about brute force as buildings and structures are affected by the game’s physics engine so a few well placed charges on key support beams should do the job just as well.
It’s quite startling how the game’s engine realistically handles destruction.
Buildings crumble and collapse realistically as you destroy their support beams. In fact, the first time I tried bringing down a tall structure, I had to run for my life as the debris started falling where I stood.
BLOW IT UP: There’s nothing more fun than running away from an exploding building. Interestingly, the game centres entirely around the act of destroying things as you can even use scrap metal from buildings as currency to upgrade weapons and purchase new tools of destruction.
The amount of scrap provided after destroying a building is often little so you will have to destroy lots of properties to accumulate enough for the next upgrade.
Tools of the trade
Since you are engaging in a guerrilla war, expect some of your weapons to be of the makeshift variety.
For taking down buildings you have your trusty sledgehammer and remote explosives. These can also be used creatively as road side bombs or by planting on vehicles to create car bombs.
TAKE THAT: The hammer isn’t only useful for taking down buildings, it’s also great for smacking enemies hard. There are also more specialised weapons such as electric arc welders for dispatching troops, and home made rocket launchers for taking out vehicles.
You can only carry up to four weapons at any given time, so you will have to carefully plan your attack and get the right tools for the task at hand.
Later on in the game you will even be able to purchase a jetpack, allowing you to scale the side of cliffs and gain a better vantage point over your enemies.
The jetpack is especially useful if you want to take a more sneaky approach in sabotaging a base.
A big world
Guerrilla gives you a large open world to run around and cause havoc in.
The scale of the game world is rather impressive — the first area where you start serves as an introduction but quickly opens up the a much bigger world.
DRIVE THROUGH: When all else fails, you can always run a vehicle through a building to get the job done. Given that this is Mars, it’s not surprising that the landscape looks rather bland and barren at times. However, you will encounter small settlements from time to time and they look pretty realistic.
The draw distance is decent and there are no loading screens when transitioning between sectors.
However, I noticed objects and the landscape popping in when I traversed wide open plains.
This is rather disappointing given that this is a current generation game but, thankfully, this doesn’t get in the way of gameplay.
The driving parts isn’t too bad as most vehicles (even trucks, surprisingly) are nimble and swift so journeys to the closest resistance hideout is no longer than a minute or two.
To traverse the game world, you can take control of various vehicles in the game that range from conventional trucks, cars and tanks to heavy construction vehicles.
COOL: Apart from regular vehicles, you also use construction mechs to demolish buildings. As expected small dune buggies are zippy though more fragile than a SUV vehicle or a truck.
The controls are extremely tight and uncannily perfect when taking corners regardless of how fast you are speeding.
It’s almost as if the cars aren’t affected by real-world physics at all. Still, that just makes it all the more easier to get away from the EDF.
Liberty or death
The planet surface is divided into six sectors that you must liberate. When you start out in an area, the population will be under heavy EDF control.
Your mission in most cases involve destroying EDF facilities and starting a propaganda to incite an uprising.
You can also perform side quests which not only help bring the overall level of EDF control down but also adds variety to the somewhat repetitious nature of the game.
Also, every so often the game will throw you a new type of side mission that may involve ambushing a convoy, intercept a courier or rescue captured guerrillas to spice things up.
Even when you are not pursuing a mission, you can stir up trouble in a town but be prepared to deal with the EDF as they’re going to come down on you hard.
There is an alert level system similar to that of Grand Theft Auto (GTA) though unlike its cops, the EDF will immediately attack you on sight.
The alert system is a point of contention for me as there are only three levels — green, yellow and red, at which point the EDF throws everything they’ve got at you.
It is here that I found the game’s difficulty could ramp up rather considerably as it is very easy to bump up the threat level from yellow to red.
FUN: Robots, guns and explosions — the perfect combination for a great action game. The red threat level is almost equivalent to getting a six star rating in GTA IV, although it is a little easier to get away if you have a set of wheels.
Once you begin attacking the EDF it won’t be long before they call in reinforcements and they will relentlessly try to swarm you.
In the later stages of the game, enemies get so tough that it is almost impossible to conduct an attack without dying in the process at least once.
Conclusion
Red Faction: Guerrilla proved to be a surprisingly fun game that allows players to just go wild in a world where nearly everything is destructible.
And it’s undoubtedly fun to level an entire building be it with explosives or with a mechs.
The game can be repetitive at times as you get the same type of missions in almost every new area you go to, but the difficulty and challenge ramps up accordingly so things never feel too easy.
The combat in Guerrilla is tense as it is hectic and although there is a working cover system, it doesn’t really come in handy when nearly everything can be destroyed.
The main drawback is the game’s generic and uninteresting story. Most of the characters aren’t fleshed out (that includes Mason too) and you won’t be even curious what happens next.
You should be able to finish Guerrilla in under seven to eight hours if you rush through the story missions.
It may be a little on the short side for an open world game but you’ll definitely enjoy the time spent blowing stuff up.
Pros: Big open world; realistic destruction engine; big explosions; tons of weapons.
Cons: Repetitive missions; generic story; enemies get very tough late in the game.
Red Faction: Guerrilla
(THQ)
Action game for the PlayStation3 and Xbox 360
Price: RM199 (PS3), RM179 (Xbox 360)
Review unit courtesy of Gamer’s Hideout Sdn Bhd and Replay Interactive Sdn Bhd. For more information, call (03) 7806-2770 or visit
www.replayinteractive.com.
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