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Radioactive IT Red Faction: Guerrilla Review – Life on Mars
Radioactive IT Red Faction: Guerrilla Review – Life on Mars | Red Faction: Guerrilla Review – Life on Mars |
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| by Mike Bantick | |
| Tuesday, 09 June 2009 | |
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Vehicles are equally important in RF: G, and also add to the immersion and character in the game. The transportation (and you will spend a great deal of time with a set of wheels) ranges from futuristic space age cars, through to wide wheeled buggies and trucks, APC’s, tanks, walkers (both light, heavy and military) right up to huge Tonka style earth moving equipment. Whilst the physics of all these vehicles is in no way perfect, each is a lot of fun to play with. Everything from racing across the countryside to deliver a special vehicle or using a truck as a battering ram to take out an important building in quick time is catered for. And it is obvious that much time has been lavished on producing each mode of transport, Marauder vehicles in particular are intriguing in design. Even passing working vehicles on the many roads adds atmosphere to the game, as it feels like Mason is working in a functioning mining operation. The landscape looks pretty good, with good draw distances, a gritty dust ridden haze as an effect and only the transition between zones a little jarring, the red dust of the Badlands moving into the actual green lusciousness of Oasis being a particular case in point. The destructive buildings however are a little plain and obviously not built for function, instead they are more like a child’s building block house, built simply to be destroyed. There is some clunkiness to all this goodness however, selecting weapons requires a press of the bumper button and a switch with the D-Pad, which is just too slow in combat. Combat veterans will soon realise that they need to select their two weapons of choice prior to jumping in the car to the raid point. Battling with the Walker vehicles, whist powerful is also clunky. It is a lot of fun as EDF come barrelling into a fray, Blues Brothers style, with staff- car piled on top of APC, only to be swatted away by Mason in a heavy walker. But control of the walker is a little haphazard and hard to direct in the heat of combat, luckily they can take a lot of damage before the fatal explosion. Enemy AI is also rudimentary at best, with occasional EDF soldier simply waiting in a room for death in the form of Mason to arrive. That said that there is enough opposition to hide poor skill with overwhelming numbers. Weapons are unlocked, and then built at a Red Faction safe house in each region. Luckily, no matter which safe house you head to, Sam the engineer is on hand to build either a nano rifle, or a proximity mine for Mason. Sam (a female engineer) also provides a focal point for the rare cut-scene moments in the game. On the multiplayer front, RF: G provides four hot-seat local games called Wrecking Crew, these are all about causing as much damage as possible given parameters such as limited ammo or time. Online players can launch into six different modes, as well as a special spectator only mode so you can simply watch the carnage and strategic damage taking place. Special mention must be made for the superb score and sound within the game. The soundtrack is laden with rich, layered, orchestral mixes that move with the tension of the game and never need to be lowered in volume. The crunch of tire on gravel, crump of explosion, satisfying thump of sledgehammer on wall and zap of arch-welder on human flesh round out the impressive audio within the game. So Red Faction: Guerrilla is an addictive chaos ridden game that has some rough edges that don’t mar the final product. It would have been nice for a future off-world colony to just get along together, but in the end it is nicely paced experience, with only a few ‘oh-no not again’ moments.  7.5 Thermobaric Rocket Launchers out of 10 |
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