Red Faction: Guerrilla Console Review

Red Faction: Guerrilla, Volition's newest title has been out for some time already on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. It's been a while, but it's finally arrived on the PC, complete with Games for Windows Live support, including achievements.  But the question is, has it been worth the wait, or is it the exact same as its console counterparts?
Way back in 2001, the original Red Faction was released on the Playstation 2 – and later, PC – and was a breath of fresh air in the shooter market. The aim was the same as any other FPS, but the rules were different. Couldn't get through a locked door? Forget the key, just blast a hole in the wall and walk right in. The game was critically well received and the GeoMod engine they used was a great deal of fun to play with.  The sequel – Red Faction II, was less acclaimed, but stood by the same rules – destroy the environment around you.

Red Faction: Guerrilla uses a newer version of this engine – the GeoMod 2.0 engine. From what I see, the differences are huge. Before we were able to tunnel through rock walls and create caves for ourselves, but the destruction, brilliant as it may have been, always looked predetermined. If you shot a rocket at a wall, a hole the same size would always appear, just in different positions. With GeoMod 2.0, it's an entirely different beast. If you shoot a rocket at a wall, there's every chance you could hit a critical strut and the entire building will collapse in front of you, which yields unparalleled satisfaction if it's a particularly large structure.
The console versions of the game were given DLC in the shape of Demons Of The Badlands; this expanded the story of one of the games characters – Sam, and her story before the original game takes place. This expansion is short, but a nice little distraction from the main game, lasting around 3 or 4 hours sticking directly to the story.  The DOTB DLC is included straight away in the PC version, and other extra content includes two new multiplayer modes – Bagman and Team Bagman, as well as new maps for these modes.  The objective here is that players try and recover a bag (obviously), and once in possession of said bag, kills become worth more points – the downside to which is that you are left glowing so everyone can clearly see you. They will then be gunning for you to get the bag for themselves. I believe there was a similar mode in Red Faction II, and it's a fun enough mode to be included here too.
Getting to the main game itself, you are in control of Alex Mason, a man who has recently arrived on Mars to make a living mining.  However, events unfold and this sees Alex joining the Red Faction – a group of rebels looking to drive away the tyrannical EDF (Earth Defence Force).  To do this, you need to clear out several different sections of Mars by performing story missions, taking out EDF structures and other smaller side-quests (rescuing hostages, stealing vehicles etc...).

Once you have reduced the EDF's influence in an area, they will ship out, leaving you free to move onto the next area and proceed to unleash all sorts of Hell on the EDF all over Mars. It's repetitive by nature, but it never gets old thanks to the multitude of ways you have of lowering EDF influence.  You can stick simply to story missions and knock down a couple of important EDF structures then advance, but by doing this you'll be missing a lot of the games side-quests. Simple things like smashing Ore and destroying propaganda are a good way to kill some time and lower influence at the same time and you'll also get salvage for doing these missions.

Salvage is used in the game as currency. You'll use it to get new weapons and upgrades to existing ones.  You get the salvage by performing side-quests, main missions and destroying structures.  Using it to upgrade your weapons will be essential on harder difficulties – where the AI is still stupid, but does a massive amount of damage to you.
Taking the game online, aside from the new game modes, you get the usual suspects, including deathmatch and team deathmatch, capture the flag, domination and a destruction mode – where one person is the teams 'destroyer' and everything that player destroys goes to the teams points count, so you'll want to protect this person as long as you can.  I experienced a few problems trying to find a game to begin with, but after an hour or so of play, I found myself having no troubles at all. It's a good fun online game, and the addition of the sledgehammer makes it all the more interesting, meaning it's damn good fun taking a sledgehammer to a building, bringing it down and realising you've just crushed an enemy in the rubble.

The game also supports the use of a gamepad – I used the Xbox 360 controller for Windows and it works perfectly as you'd expect. You get better precision from using the mouse and keyboard, but this game most definitely isn't about the accuracy so you won't be getting much superiority from using the mouse and keyboard. As long as you have a target in mind, your sledgehammer or rocket launcher, or whatever your weapon of choice is, perfect aiming or not, you're going to destroy something, and that's what this game is all about.

Good simple fun and over the top destruction.  Available through retail and via Steam – and if you're in the mood for breaking stuff, it's definitely advised you give it a go.