I have always been a huge red faction fan & can remember playing them all the way back to the first one when it was released on the play station 2 in 2001..8 years ago wow. At the time it was a first person shooter that too was set on mars but what it did that other similar games didn’t do was the revolutionary geo-mod technology.. Put simply with the help of explosives or a rocket launcher you could change the landscape by blowing holes right through it, in fact it was so well done that you could literally tunnel your way across the map with ease. The sequel was released a year later but I personally didn’t like it as much & I don’t even remembering finishing the campaign. So many years on & the red faction team have put together their 3rd outing on the red planet.
Its been out now since the beginning of June but even though I had it I couldn’t find the time to actually play it! But I have now & I’m really loving it! So set on mars again the player takes the role of alec mason a miner who has a bone to pick with the power hungry earth defense force (edf) soon after he arrives on mars his brother daniel is murdered in cold blood by the edf ..mason would have been killed too if the red faction (a guerilla group fighting to liberate mars of the edf) didn’t come to his aid. Alec quickly gets recruited into the faction & begins the mammoth task of driving the edf off of mars for good..but its no easy task.
The game itself is huge & the world is completely open for all the free roaming fans out there. There are in total 6 massive districts to be explored with each of them offering unique landscape populated with edf forces for you to take out. When a guerrilla action is successfully undertook the morale of that district goes up & as it climbs higher more of the districts inhabitants join in with your struggle & attack the edf forces. The rewards for completing a mission come in the form of morale boosts & a unique pickup known as salvage. When a building or vehicle is destroyed there will often be pieces of metal scattered around the rubble this is known as salvage & they can be exchanged with the guerrilla to buy weapon upgrades such as the ability to carry more explosives & wield more powerful guns. Because this game concentrates on shooting you do of course get a wide variety of firearms & explosives like pistols/rifles/rocket launchers but what really comes in handy more times than often is the simple sledge hammer. But how is a hammer useful? Well using the new updated version of geo-mod technology you can completely level a building to nothing but a pile of rubble & this is where red faction guerrilla really shines, its so much fun smashing through walls into highly protected compounds then using that same hammer to strike a devastating blow to a group of enemies indeed the first time I turned the game on I was tasked with doing a certain amount of damage.. Even after I had the level of damage done I found myself destroying the whole area just for the hell of it. 
The enemies come at you with everything from basic pistols & rifles to armoured personal carriers & tanks. Their A.I seems pretty good & they will work together when fighting against you, but they are basically cannon fodder & its so much fun dispatching a team of them with a carefully placed.. or thrown explosive device. They have established a ruthless grip on the districts of mars & in many areas have constructed huge security compounds that are just begging to be turned to rubble. There is even the option of a killing spree that pops up once you take out a certain amount of enimies, this climbs as you keep taking them out but its tricky enough to get a high score here.
The main campaign can be completed in about 15 to 20 hours but that’s not counting the various mini games & side missions scattered all over the map, these can be simple like having to help a team of guerrillas secure an enemy outpost or guard tower, or they can be hard like trying to sabotage a heavily armoured enemy convoy. All of these mini games are fun & offer a lot of play time, its good to do them because you get morale boosts & salvage for your trouble. There is of course an online multiplayer that offers hours of fun in the various modes such as capture the flag & siege but rarely enough it comes with a pretty decent offline multiplayer known as wrecking crew & it allows up to 4 players to compete against each other in a race to cause as much destruction as possible. Red faction guerrilla is quite simply a tremendously fun game! Sure some of the missions may get a little repetitive but it’s a long time since a game has impressed me so much with its ease of play, the moment I started playing I was hooked & I’m probably only 30% through the main game. Normally I would wait until I have completed a game to review it but I’m really impressed with the latest offering of a romp on the red planet. The visuals/physics engine/graphics/music & of course the game play are all stunning & I’d highly recommend it.. I’m giving it a much deserved 9 out of 10.
Systems: Playstation 3/Xbox360 - PC/Windows date August 25th
