Red Faction: Guerrilla (PS3)

[aruljothi]

Release Date: June 2009
ESRB Rating: Rating Pending
Genre: Shooter
Publisher: THQ
Developer: Volition

Red Faction: Guerrilla's story probably won't win any awards for science fiction writing, and the logic behind the game's setting makes Star Trek look realistic. But the narrative provides just enough impetus to pull you along this tale of freedom and oppression, to a new world filled with piles of smoldering wreckage. Set 50 years after the first Red Faction, Guerilla finds the Earth Defense Force, the "good guys" from the first game, abusing their power and generally making life bad for the Martian colonists. You take the role of Alec Mason, an everyday miner who just happens to have an arm like Babe Ruth, and works on making Mars a safer place.

The degree to which you can destroy the environment is Guerrilla's most prominent feature. Unlike the previous games, you don't spend any time digging into the ground, but you can dismantle pretty much anything man-made, piece by piece. Your prowess with hammers and explosive charges lets you make your own doorways through buildings, and, if a structure takes enough damage, send it toppling over. The wanton explosions you create channel other mayhem-friendly games like Mercenaries 2, but here, you get to see the effects of those explosions. Sure, you won't take down any skyscrapers, but it's more fun to take down a three-story building piece by piece than it is to just watch a larger monument disappear in a puff of smoke. That's what Guerrilla does best: It convinces you that its physics are real. If you take a wall out in just the right place, it can cause the entire structure above to slowly teeter before it eventually crumbles.

But Guerrilla is just as much a third-person shooter as it is a tech demo for Jenga-like feats of destruction. The solid shooting and cover mechanics make picking off enemies from a distance as satisfying as blowing away approaching vehicles with a rocket launcher. At times, though, the game's physics feel a little too floaty, especially in the vehicles. Whether you're driving a big truck or a light jeep, you don't carry much weight; you go careening off ramps and into the air far too easily. But it makes taking shortcuts off cliffs -- where you're able to spin mid-air and firmly land on all four wheels -- pretty exciting. Maybe the Martian gravity just affects things differently.

The game starts off with a breakneck pace, as you can liberate the first two towns very quickly. But after that, the game starts to slow down, and the final area can drag on a bit. You can track your progress through two onscreen meters: Morale and Control. Helping out the rebels raises the Morale meter, and increases the amount of ammo found in resupply boxes hidden throughout the world, as well as giving you allies to fight alongside you whenever you take up arms against the EDF. The Control meter gauges EDF activity in a given area, and recedes as you help out the rebels and destroy EDF property. In each new section, you have to bring EDF control to zero before moving on to the next. But the missions where you must lower EDF control are varied enough to overcome the grind-like qualities.