Okay, Red Faction: Guerrilla isn't that much of a robit game, but it is a bit of a forgotten gem that I want an excuse to talk about. The premise of the game is that you're a rebel trying to take back control from an oppressive force known here as the EDF. I won't get too much into the lore here because it's frankly not that interesting; just know that it's your standard commoner v. tyrannical overlord entity story and you're good there. Each region of Mars has this EDF control meter that you whittle down with most things you do, along with a guerrilla morale meter that you raise virtually anytime you aren't accidentally killing innocents (an inevitability amidst the chaos). It terms civilian casualties as "population demoralized", which I kinda love because it implies that the entire populace of the region is bummed out because some unnamed rando jumped out in front of my future jeeptruck and got pancaked. Mars cares. I also discovered a weird-but-great feature that I didn't expect to be in the game when I happened to Assassin's Creed jump onto a fellow guerrilla from above. The game managed to register it as a kill, accompanied by a fantastic death groan and the base instantly turning on me. A+ work there.
Red Faction: Guerrilla is an open-world game, and you'll discover fortified EDF positions of varying strengths. Some are woven into missions, but you can also just attack these at your own pace. I preferred playing the game that way, as it made things less linear. Also, attacking these EDF strongholds on your own is often fun and rewarding from a tactical standpoint. There's something oddly appealing about attacking some armed checkpoint, EDF facility, et al., and fleeing to safety when it gets too hot. It does make you feel like you're this pesky guerrilla, and I enjoy thinking about an imaginary storyline in this universe where some lowly grunt EDF soldier has to explain to his superiors how he let that building get blown up. "He just fired a bunch of rockets from on top of a hill and then jetpack'd the fuck out; what was I supposed to do?"
Also, there are scattered "guerrilla actions" in each region, which are broken up into a few categories: raids, hostage rescue, transporter, demolition, collateral damage, and heavy metal. These are pretty hit-and-miss. Raids are just "hold this point", which is pretty meh. Hostage rescue missions can actually be pretty fun, unless you run into AI pathing bugs and/or try to use escape vehicles that can't hold enough people. Transporter missions are race/survival, and they aren't great because the randomness of civilian traffic can ruin them quickly, especially because the timing is often tight. Demolition is basically a "destroy this thing using this limited weapon" challenge, and these are usually pretty enjoyable. Collateral Damage is a prolonged turret sequence that entails you destroying everything, and it seems like it should be a lot more fun than it actually is. More on that later.
I have to discuss arguably the most fun part of the game from a gameplay standpoint, which are the "Heavy Metal" guerrilla actions where you basically strap into a mech robit and try to cause a distraction to hold the EDF's attention to allow other unseen guerrillas to accomplish some unspecified mission elsewhere, which translates to you just fucking as much shit up as possible. It becomes a horde mode of sorts where they keep driving these future humvees at you and you can either hulk smash them to bits with your mech or flip them and send them flying. I recommend the latter. You're a near-invincible tank essentially Godzilla-ing everything in sight. It feels fucking awesome and NEVER gets old. Also, if you take a mech onto the streets, the driving AI breaks in some hilarious ways as they frantically drive away in terror. I, admittedly, had way too much fun with this.
The weapons are mostly good. The arc welder is perhaps the most fun and effective on EDF soldiers, as it zaps them Palpatine-style and can target multiple baddies at once when upgraded. (Upgrades, by the way, are purchased through salvage, which you get consistently from destroying shit. You can also mine for it with ore deposits, which is both an appropriately mundane task and a nice nod to the franchise's mining roots.) You'll unlock the ability to purchase new and better weapons as you progress, or you can also just pick them out in the world off dead guys, which I find is a more fun and befitting way to outfit yourself in your ever-strengthening rebellion. Late-game weapons get a little OP, honestly. The nano rifle just evaporates everything, and you get a nuke rocket that levels buildings. The good ol' hammer is a blast. I recommend playing the game on easy to allow for up close and personal hammer time. Bashing enemies baseball-style with the hammer is just plain fun.
Perk-wise, you'll get things like health upgrades, radar, and a jetpack. The jetpack in particular is literally a game-changer, and you get it maybe a bit too late in the game. One of the biggest gameplay shortcomings in RF:G is that you often find yourself trying to Skyrim your way up Martian hills and mostly failing in frustrating fashion. I'd almost want to recommend mainlining the story missions to get there because it enhances the gameplay quite a bit, but that would also result in missing a fair bit of the universe, and maybe the best parts of it. The radar is a quality-of-life improvement that just feels like it was removed to be an unlock, which is pretty lame. There's also an ability upgrade that allows you to scoop up salvage in a vehicle, which, again, should have just probably been in the game. Moving on.
A neat feature of this game that accompanies the general destructability of everything is the permanence of it. For example, if you destroy an EDF-controlled bridge, that shit is gone for the rest of the game. This is actually cool, because it adds a layer of impact to your actions. Well, mostly. In one mission, your guerrilla homies unnecessarily decimate a useful bridge, so the rest of the game you have to Dukes of Hazzard over this gap. And those Collateral Damage turret missions I mentioned earlier? They completely disregard the permanence. Buildings you've already destroyed magically reappear to be destroyed again, and everything you destroy within these turret missions does not stay wrecked. I get why they made those choices, because it would sort of break the game and these missions otherwise, but it makes them feel like this nonsensical, video game-y offshoot. I'd be more forgiving of this if they were fun, but spamming the fire button on an overheat-able, slow-firing cannon that turns even slower simply isn't that entertaining, and it's dumb that the pass/fail on these side missions largely comes down to whether or not you can shoot down Terminator airships when you just leveled an entire fucking town.
The environments are limited in their variance, because it all kind of has to be believable as a Mars landscape. The work they've done to the lighting for the reMarstered edition does pay some dividends here, as improved skyboxes and contrast make things less drab than they were in the original, with some occasionally cool, hellish-looking spots. It's not going to be mistaken for a current-gen title, but it looks mostly okay to good. The game runs servicably on my One X and seems to be passable on my regular Xbox One in limited testing, but reportedly the PS4 versions have some frame issues. I'm also not as hyper-sensitive to that stuff as some, though, and don't generally take notice unless it goes sub-30 or has significant variance. It was largely fine for me in my One X playthrough. Some regions are also visually better than others. I found Dust, Eos, and Oasis to be fairly bland, but most of the rest are either artistically interesting enough or in line with what you're probably picturing a future Mars colony to look like.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention The Badlands, which is one of the best parts of the game. It is Mad Max as all hell, and is therefore awesome. The Marauders, without getting too spoiler-y, just kinda show up and it's cool as shit. Your first encounter with them will likely be had randomly, as they occasionally raid civilization. It's particularly effective because you spend most of the game battling pseudo-Master Chief EDF soldiers armed with future space lasers. Then some primitive dude wearing spikes charges at you and starts swinging a giant spear blade, and his buddies roll up in this rusty POS cobbled together from junkyard parts and hop off it en masse to try and bum rush you. It's rad.
I was excited for the Demons of the Badlands DLC that comes with the reMarster, as I hadn't played it, and doubling down on the part of the game I liked most sounds great on paper. Unfortunately, it feels really half-assed. You're put in the shoes of what is a potentially interesting protagonist in Samanya, but she serves as little more than a foil to her bloodthirsty sister. The DLC actually fills in some lore gaps, but from a gameplay standpoint, it's really lacking. It's structurally identical to the main campaign, and is little more than simply a sixth region. There are only two new Mad Max vehicles, which isn't enough, along with a handful of new weapons. One of them is a sick sword that's probably the best part of the DLC, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed in the DLC overall. It's fine, but it could have been so much better.
As an aside, Samanya was fundamentally a more intriguing character than Alec Mason, who is the most standard-ass forgettable protagonist imaginable. It felt like a disservice that she was relegated to DLC, but that's the 2000s for you. Frankly, her voice work is better as well. That's the story of the Demons of the Badlands DLC, though: lots of unrealized potential. I mean, they actually took the time to build some fairly neat cliffside structures connected by a series of precarious ladders, yet nothing in the DLC requires you to engage with them at all. There could have been a cool mission using the game's destructability where you have to scramble up these structures as they're being attacked/collapsed, but either no one thought of that or was too lazy to actually do it. Sigh.
DLC disappointment aside, I can fully recommend picking this game up. It's a good time on its own merit, but a possible added bonus is that this reMarster may exist to gauge the interest in another game in the series, which absolutely needs to happen. I'd love to see what they could do with Geo-Mod on current hardware. (Microsoft, if you're listening, this could make a perfect Rise of the Tomb Raider situation where you help publish a game that otherwise might not be made for some console exclusivity and to use the horsepower of the One X.) Overall, Red Faction: Guerrilla mostly holds up as one of the better open-world games of last-gen, and I'm glad it got the reMarster. It was still fun to play through again here in 2018, which is impressive for a 2009 game. Give it a romp if you never did, or if you want to wreck some buildings again and toss cars around as I did.
The Verdict:
Get your ass to Mars.
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