Without having to ramble on and on, this game's focus is tearing shit down. The focus of the player is to decide how exactly he tears that specific shit down. By car, by sledgehammer or even simply by high-jacking a state-of-the-art tank and roadkill two entire city blocks before you realize there were buildings between you and your destination.

But I guess that's fairly obvious.

Anyhow, I completed the so called "story" of Red Faction a couple o' hours ago and I can't really grasp... the story. Obviously, they hate the EDF because they shoot the workers at random for giggles with weapons twice the size of common soldiers, but what I don't get is - Why scaring off your contractors? Didn't you fools come to Mars to work to begin with, not to counter-pwn your employers? But then again, I don't really mind seeing as the story always involves blowing up half a town of somesort to 'silence' two Ultor execs.

The story contains all the standard elements of a what they call a balanced cast; Rugged stud, blonde babe, old coot/veteran and a evil money-leech that goes into a "Baww baww bawwwwww" mode seven times a day. Luckily enough, cutscenes are rare and you'll only hear from Colonel Sanders and Mrs. Double-D over radio contact. Some extremely predictable plot twists here and there, but in all good respect - Who gives a damn?

The entire story could've been "Sledge + Wall = Victory" tutorials and it still isn't any worse. The game's craving addiction for demolition is enough fuel to ride this game to a decent sales score, whether the story part's given a 1 out 10 by everyone or not.

So, moving on. The destruction/gameplay.

... Hotdamn. That's all. That is all.

The graphics, I don't know. Some people who live with their heads shoved five feet up their own asses claim the game looks like a PS2 game at most. I guess it's somewhere between Saints Row 2 and Mass Effect. Sometimes you think "It's decent, no complaints.", and then sometimes you think "... Now THAT is a view.". Quite frankly, if you claim the game is bad looking - You're... well... extremely thick-headed. I have a feeling they gave up on alot to maintain the very solid frame-rate it has.

Well, unless you yank out a Walker with rocket-pods and start razing entire towns within seconds, then it drops to slide-show mode. But even when there's four buildings falling apart, and roughly 200 EDF soldiers shooting your ass up; The framerate is rock-solid.

Speaking of 200 EDF soldiers shooting your ass up;
This game is hard...

On Normal difficulty, it's hard to raze a single building without endless hordes of EDF vehicles, APCs, tanks and even air-support vehicles to show up and fuck you up, badly. Countless of deaths I've had because the AI simply swarmed me, and due to the mid-game arsenal; No cover is safe... Especially not if they have the X-Ray Rifle... Considering you can snipe someone through the plating of a tank with that thing...

Especially the last two missions, and don't consider this a spoiler considering it's just daily business but on a huge scale - You have to plow through a mile of nothing but hundreds of EDF defenses, which is pretty damn hard to pull off.

But the penalty on dying, aside from having to start the entire mission from the beginning; Ain't heavy, and usually it resets the building damage, which I can totally handle...

... with a few RPG's, and a bit of sledgehammer work. And you can always tone down the difficulty without losing progress, unlockables or achievement-progress.


Yeah, I like the game. Thumbs up to Volition for once more understanding the concept of "fun". Less bullshitting around, more destroying crap.