Sleeper Hit of 2009
RF: G is a follow-up to two of my favorite FPS from last generation. The geo-mod gimmick was a decent selling point for the prior titles, but with clear issues (why can I only shoot through certain walls and not through others?), the games never achieved the lofty ambitions the developers had for it.
Guerilla manages to hit their ambitions impressively. It is one of the most technically amazing games you'll ever see and a really enjoyable game to boot.
You play Alex Mercer, who arrives on Mars which has been under the thumb of the EDF. You quickly link up with the Red Faction, who seek to remove the EDF from Mars and to liberate the colonists and workers who are little more than slaves in the EDF'S corporate enterprise. The storyline is the usual "Evil corporation dominating the poor inhabitants of a distant world" thing, but it really isn't executed too poorly.
Your job is, of course, help get the EDF to leave. You can pursue the goal several different ways. You can take over their high value targets. You can also destroy their propaganda. You can do assorted missions for the rebel Red Faction. Or you can simply do the storyline missions which will lead to them leaving as well.
The mission variety is one of the strongest suits of the game. You sometimes have to kill snipers who are targeting the colonists. You can control a satellite launching mortars. You can try and destroy nuclear reactors. You can try and rescue a prominent rebel from a prison. There really is a lot more variety than the average game has.
The aiming mechanism seems a bit wonky. Because of how quickly the AI will move around, lining up a shot is a headache, but many weapons lock on and you can use your grenades for nice area effect damage. Your geo-hammer, however, will end up being your go-to weapon that you will end up killing most of your enemies with. The vehicles all are a bit underwhelming, but the GPS tracking makes getting from point-to-point as easy as possible. Keep in mind, this is, hands down, the hardest open-world game I've played. GTA IV, Saints Row, Just Cause, Hulk, Prototype, Spider-Man, etc --- all of them are rather easy games that just take a lot of time. This game is openly difficult.
The game, though, allows you to destroy pretty much any building. If it stands, you can bust the shit out of it. They even throw in explosive barrels and tanks to use to blow up the buildings more efficiently. It is a stellar stress reliever. And the setting of Mars actually works here: you get a few pockets of civilization in a sea of nothing. Just lots and lots of rocks. It is a bit dull to drive through, but it never takes long to get where you're going and the entire setting is logically set up. It's not like you're in a barren part of NYC --- you're on another planet that humans haven't been on for centuries yet.
On-line is more fun than I expected it to be. It does seem to heavily rely on either the hammer or being an insanely good shot, but it's chaotic fun, though the sessions do tend to run a bit on the long side.
This is up there Mercs 2 and SR2 in my list of fun open world games. It's not the polished experience GTA is, but it has a wealth of fun and the ability for open-ended destruction that most games would kill to have.
