Superior technology, flawed fundamentals, but always fun.
Everyone knows how awesome the dynamic destruction is in Red Faction: Guerilla. If you don't know, believe it - this is a technical and design achievement that should be recognized. Making buildings crumble into hundreds of individual pieces never gets old. It's a combination of visuals with believable enough physics, lighting, and modeling, mixed with equally excellent sound design that makes the illusion of destruction work. Structures that are standing but weakened will creak, start breaking on their own, and crash to the ground. Buildings that fall on other buildings accuarately affect each other as well - creating an even more impressive spectacle. It's reason enough to buy the game. Go, play it, love it, and you'll thank me for it.
Now, let's get realistic. Is it fair to get negative on a game that consistently delivers some of the most fun and satisfying gameplay design in years because the missions are repetitive, the setting is dull, and the enemies belong in some forgotten action game from 1996? Maybe not, but by the time you get to the end of RFG you'll be feeling a bit unfair to it as well.
When you're not trying to blow up buildings your goal in RFG is usually just to kill swarms of EDF forces that show few signs of life or intellect. This is not especially fun. The shooting controls work well enough, with standard 3rd person view with a gears style zoom in, and a below average cover system. The battles you fight at the beginning of the game are only distinguishable from the ones at the end by the number of mindless EDF drones thrown at you.
There are a few standout missions that actually work with the game's "guerrilla" theme. Especially memorable was a mission where you're tasked with interrupting a meetup of potential investors in mars development. It just so happens this meeting takes place in an uncompleted high rise. After going with the typical (and usually successful) Rambo approach several times and failing, I decided to instead strategically remove supports from the building's upper levels. The thrill and surprise as the entire building fell onto itself from the top down, taking the targeted foes with it is unlike anything I've experienced before in a game. Volition shows that they can be smart just long enough, then throws you back into another mission where you're killing 50 faceless soldiers.
As the number of foes increase, so does the frustration, which is made worse by the painfully dull travel between the Red Faction bases you re-spawn at and most missions. Mercifully, you're allowed to change the difficulty at any time and without any impact on your achievements/trophies received. If you're not interested in repeating firefights numerous times and taking it slow in a game which is focused squarely on explosions, action, and destruction, I recommend the "casual" difficulty. Trust me, you'll just have more fun.
There's also typical side missions. Blow up some more stuff, drive this vehicle here under a time limit, etc. The high point of the game is the puzzle-like "destruction master" missions which task you with a limited amount of ammo or tools at hand to destroy targeted buildings. Some of these are really creative, requiring you to strap remote explosives to barrels, roll them down a hill towards a group of buildings below, and another that has you playing golf with explosive barrels towards a 2 story building in the distance. It's a shame these are a distraction rather than a bigger part of the game, because you can really see Volition showcasing some creativity that's missing within the main game. I also enjoyed the hostage missions - the bad-ass feeling of busting through a wall (or roof, after you get the jetpack)terminator style and grabbing hostages then running from EDF forces was always a welcome diversion.
Red Faction:Guerrilla also has two other modes, a surprisingly full featured multiplayer mode with a Halo/CoD style and quality matchmaking system. It's mostly typical team and individual modes, but the siege mode feels genuinely different and uses the game's strengths in a multiplayer setting. Attackers and defenders enter the map looking to destroy or defend key buildings on the map. This makes for a really tense multiplayer game with defenders able to reconstruct buildings and attackers coming up with strategies to bring the buildings down. I especially enjoyed the map that features a long bridge as the final objective for the attackers. A makeshift class system also exists in the multplayer, with competitors equipping backpacks that give them abilities like extra speed, a boost to run through buildings, and regenerative health.
Finally there's a local mulitplayer score-based mode that tasks you with causing as much destruction as possible in the time limit. It's decent fun but nothing you'll be playing for long.
Where Red Faction Guerrilla succeeds, it does so without comparison. Where it fails, it's average at best. This kind of uneven experience should somewhat be expected when looking at a game with such an impressive technology gimmick, but the good absolutely outshines the bad. Add to that a full featured multiplayer mode and you have one of the best choices in gaming this year. Just don't expect them to get away with it next time- RFG's repetition and simplicity really starts to wear on the player by the time the credits roll. Future Red Faction Guerrilla DLC or sequels will need some better fundamentals to go along with the technology, because without the destruction, RFG would be a pretty boring game.
