Red Faction: Guerrilla - An overglorified media darling, or innovative and revolutionary third person shooter?
http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/blog.php?b=10024
Pros: Best destructible buildings to date, compotent online multiplayer, arcade-style driving mechanics
Cons: Lackluster storyline, degradation of quality at end-game, odd building physics, a lot of open barren space, abysmal AI, arguably high difficulty curve, bland building layout, above-average weapon design that is drowned out by an overpowered sledgehammer, distracting and uninspired side missions
Over the last month, Volition Inc's new installment into their Red Faction series has gotten much hype through various podcasts and other media outlets. It has been proclaimed one of the funnest games of the year, and the only game that truly merits the sixty dollar price tag. With all the positive feedback from the likes of CheapyD, Jeff Gerstmann, and the whole crew over at Gamespot, I found myself forced to get a copy and try the game myself.
In Red Faction: Guerrilla, you play as Alex Mason -- a man basically forced into joining the Red Faction after the opening sequence. Anyway, anything beyond this premise of story is basically lackluster and you can basically ignore the story for the most part of the game. The only part of the storyline you can keep in mind is that you are part of the Red Faction -- a rebel group who wants to liberate Mars from the control of the Earth Defense Force (EDF). While there may be more plot points throughout the story, they are very poor attempts making a gripping futuristic tale.
Anyway. the storyline quickly takes a back seat in the midst of the amazing Geo-Mod 2.0 Engine. The revamped engine definitely gives the game the potential of being unique and stand out from the crowd with the ability to have completely destructible structures. At first glance, the engine is beautiful and makes your wildest next generation dreams come true with the amazing destructible environments -- it makes all other games that boast destructible environments look shameful. However, you quickly realize that the physics of the structures is often very unrealistic, and in most cases, the buildings can stand on a simple corner pillar with stories and stories of weight piled on top of them. While many reviewers say that the physics are great, this only holds true as the buildings collapse and the pieces of rubble fall off of them. The physics of the structural integrity of the buildings looks very surreal as when the player tries to take advantage of the physics, he quickly realizes that the building supports are made of a seemingly non-malleable alloy that can support the weight of an entire building.
Secondly, it seems as if the developers did not bother to give the player enough of the things that make the game stand out -- structures. While there are several destructible buildings that are scattered throughout the map, the game still faces the flaw that most open world games have -- the barren wasteland syndrome. The game often only has interesting and high density structure placement around what are called "high-priority structures" (essentially, these are the buildings that you must blow up to make the game progress moderately fast), and when you take into consideration there are only around three of these structures per area on mars, you realize that the rest of the world is empty. Furthermore, you would think that the robust destructible environments would allow for a great tactical advantage -- unfortunately this is not the case. Asides from a few select structures, most of the buildings are either instantly destructible, or are simply a single floor building. Essentially, this leaves the player either able to enter the front door or from behind. Fortunately for the developers, they do draw the users attention away from the design faults.
Unfortunately, they drown out the bland world by the ridiculous difficulty curve. The game has a ridiculously high difficulty for most average gamers, so they are often forced to play on the casual difficulty (however, these gamers are generally the ones who do not play the game tactically and refuse to use your overpowered hammer). The main reason the game is difficult is not because of a strong AI because in fact the AI is absolutely abysmal and has absolutely no reaction to your movements; they simply run at you with their bullets flying. The game is difficult because the entire world is a monster closet similarly to that of Grand Theft Auto when you are being chased by police. While this may sound fine in practice, you realize that the "world monster closet" is not fleshed out nearly as well as Grand Theft Auto. The main reason for this flaw is because the second you run into a high-priority structures vicinity, you are almost immediately alerted to a "dark red" status which spawns an infinite number of enemies around you until it is reset back to green. Also, while you may think that you could get it reset simply by hiding (à la Metal Gear Solid-style), I found that you can only reset it by running a far distance away from the vicinity while not attacking anything. The nice thing about this design element in the game, though, is that you can exploit this design choice by attacking the areas Guerrilla-style. Sadly, with the limited amount of ammo you can carry, this often leads to a very boring "hammer-and-vehichle" attack and run. Although these tactics waterdown the would-be solid gameplay, the world monster closets force you to play in this style.
As eluded to earlier, the developers choices also force you to make the sledgehammer your best friend. Since the hammer essentially is an instant-kill to anything but a vehicle, you find yourself quickly warming up to it's boring design. Also, since it grants you the ability to infinitely dash when equipped, it is heavily overpowered. When you couple the hammer with the Gauss Rifle, you can easily destroy any enemy the game throws at you with ease.
However, despite being able to abuse the overpowered weapons, the last level has a brutally difficult mission design which basically forces you to take out an absurd number of blockades with a single vehicle that only barely make it to close to the end if you follow a specific line. As a matter of fact, the majority of the end-game mission design is either brutally difficult or specifically made to artificially lengthen the game's lifespan. For instance, one of the last missions in the game makes you drive across the entire map twice for absolutely no good reason. You have to do this to pick up infantry, and to save other infantry, but there is no reason they had to make you drive the entire distance when they could have simply made all the objectives closer together.
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The flying vehicles are some of the most annoying enemies to fight if you don't rely on the Gauss Rifle
Thankfully, despite all the single player flaws, the game has a truly endearing and robust online multiplayer component. Since the multiplayer leaves you with competent opponents, you are able to fully utilize the destructible environments to properly bait, hide, and surprise opponents. Also, to further the interesting multiplayer, you spawn with one of several unique backpacks. These backpacks give the user a unique abilities and some examples are as follows: to be able to run through and destroy anything or anyone, y to regenerate almost instantly, and the ability to fly to advantageous spots. Because the multiplayer is so different and varied from other online experiences, it is able to hold its own ground against the ocean of online games.
In the end, Red Faction: Guerrilla is a over hyped media darling. The game has many design problems and instances of questionable physics. The game has no right to be given a high score for simply the arguably high fun factor. The game's storyline is lackluster, the engine needs a little more work, the world needs to have more excitement, and the later half of the game needs better level design. For the simple reason that the game has big explosions and an innovative design choice, this merits no reason to be given such a high score and does not deserve the glorified praise it receives especially considering it used many techniques to artificially lengthen the game.
Graphics: 7.5 - While the game looks good in screenshots and the explosions are great, the world is bland and the character design is uninspired
Gameplay: 8.0 - Simple design leave enjoyable gameplay despite some flaws
Sound: 6.5 - Unemotional voice acting with a satisfactory musical score
Presentation: 7.0 - Forgettable characters, bland world, competent HUD
Longevity: 8.5 - Unique gameplay experience and online multiplayer provide a special gameplay experience that can bring you back for months
Final Score: 8
The game has been played for a total of 14 hours and 2 of those hours were online play. The single player was completely finished.