Mars, a miner revolt and destructible environments were the three defining characteristics of 2001’s Red Faction and enough to make the game one of the first breakout titles on the PlayStation 2. Time hasn’t been kind to Red Faction – a forgettable sequel struck the series from the public conscious, forcing THQ to keep it dormant for more than five years. Now they are bringing back with Red Faction: Guerrilla, which offers a change in gameplay style, a new cast of characters and a new version of the fabled GeoMod system. Red Faction: Guerrilla makes some mistakes, but more than makes up for them with pure, unbridled destructive fun.

Red Faction: Guerrilla takes place about 50 years after Parker, the Red Faction and the Earth Defence Force defeated the Ultor Corporation for control of Mars. In the years since, the Earth Defence Force has become more authoritarian, taking on many of the fascist ways of the group they helped overthrow. Groups of miners become tired of the EDF’s discrimination and mistreatment and reform the Red Faction. Players take control of Alec Mason, a new arrival from Earth who joins up with the Red Faction guerrillas after the EDF brutally kills his brother. Overthrow Mars, avenge your brother’s death, and smash everything you see with a big hammer.


Let’s forget all of that story and main game focus stuff for a minute, because Red Faction: Guerrilla is really just about blowing stuff up. Who wants to debate the hidden metaphors behind the Red Faction’s insurgency when they could be out on the Mars surface levelling gigantic EDF structures with a bunch of explosives and a sledgehammer. Red Faction: Guerrilla is effectively the video game equivalent of a popcorn flick – it is mindless, consisting mainly of big explosions, crashing buildings and people being riddled with bullets.

Driving this unequalled level of destruction is Volition’s new version of its fabled GeoMod technology, dubbed GeoMod 2.0. One of the big criticisms of the original game was that GeoMod was too limited; no matter how much stuff you destroyed, you would always run into some form of unbreakable rock or steel structure. GeoMod 2.0 changes this by allowing you to destroy any standing structure. The game lets you be pretty creative with it too. Is a locked door keeping you out of a bunker? Make a new door with your sledgehammer. Are EDF raids getting you down? Set up some remote explosives on the bridge above to cut off their advance. The way you destroy structures is completely up to you. It’s not totally problem-free, however – terrain no longer shows signs of damage, many of the buildings look too similar, and they never seem to collapse in the manner expected. The sledgehammer almost seems too powerful, cutting through rock and steel like butter.


The Red Faction’s goal is to liberate six sectors of Mars from EDF control. Overthrowing the EDF involves fulfilling three criteria; reducing EDF control in the sector, completing guerrilla actions (effectively side missions) and taking story-aligned missions for the Red Faction. After fulfilling these requirements, players will go on a liberation mission to finish the process, before repeating it again. That sounds like it is pretty dull, but Volition has paced the game well, introducing major new elements just as the game starts to show signs of becoming stale. Completing missions and destroying buildings earns players salvage, the game’s currency, which can be exchanged at bases for new weapons upgrades, more of which become unlocked after completing portions of the story and set numbers of guerrilla actions.

Story missions are few in number (just 20 of them) and cut-and-dry with strict objectives such as protecting targets, capturing bases and securing key components for the Red Faction’s ultimate objective. Players have a bit more freedom with the rest of the objectives – you can go the entire game without having to do a guerrilla action if you don’t want to, but the salvage rewards, increased morale (which helps get nearby Martians to pick up arms and fight alongside you), and control reductions help. Guerrilla actions would have benefitted from more variety, given that they consist of the usual variety of races, prisoner breakouts, base attacks, base defence and the odd mayhem style mission, but the sheer destructive action of the core gameplay helps alleviate that issue. The game’s vehicles seem pretty unimportant and somewhat lacking, other than the mech-like construction vehicles, which appear to be few and far between.


The single player side of Red Faction: Guerrilla can be wrapped up pretty quickly, though the promise of better weapons and accessories through completion of side missions will lengthen the experience if you so desire. Single player only half of the story though, as there is a fairly robust multiplayer side to the game, both online and off. Wrecking Crew is your token offline multiplayer mode, which has players taking turns in causing as much damage to various structures as they can within predetermined criteria (e.g. specific types of weapons, time limit, etc.). It’s reminiscent of the Burnout series’ Crash modes, and a heck of a lot of fun.

Online multiplayer deviates from the open world formula of the single player game, offering smaller, tightly focused maps across the usual selection of game types (Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and objective-based matches). Volition took notes from Bungie’s Halo 3 matchmaking system, so it’s fairly competent as far as console-based online play goes. One of the cool parts of the multiplayer side of the game is that Volition has further expanded upon the weaponry and accessories that were available in the single player side of the game. Some of the backpacks are really cool; in addition to the standard issue jetpack, players can get packs that let them see through walls, run around at lightning fast speeds, plough through walls or trigger mini-earthquakes.

Compromises have had to be made to make Red Faction: Guerrilla’s level of destructive potential come to life, so the game’s not exactly a visual powerhouse. It has improved a lot since the game was first shown, however. For an open world game, the world is quite empty and devoid of life, but that works in the developer’s favour given the Martian setting, however the level of detail and the quality of texture work and geometry is not convincing. What is impressive is the level of destruction, as we’ve previously mentioned, however it seems like many structures in the game have been copied and pasted. The frame rate also has a tendency to dip quite significantly when the action heats up, particularly in the game’s latter stages.

Red Faction: Guerrilla is an explosive, addictive action game that’s more than the sum of its parts. You’ve got this fairly typical open world game with a decent, albeit limited selection of missions, which doesn’t seem particularly impressive from a visual standpoint, but when you pair it with Volition’s latest iteration of the GeoMod technology and a nice set of weapons, it really comes together. Volition have also packed in a multiplayer mode which greatly outperforms expectations thanks largely to a good selection of tightly designed maps with clever objectives and some new goodies exclusive to the mode. Red Faction: Guerrilla may not be perfect, but it is surprisingly good fun.