Red Faction: Guerilla

Oh geez, I’m super biased towards Red Faction: Guerilla! It’s one of my favourite games and I think you should check it out toooooo!

So, the main appeal of Red Faction: Guerilla is the Geomod engine. Buildings and other structures are assigned actual weight in the game so if you knock out just the right portion of a building, the whole thing will collapse in on itself. It can lead to some “big destruction” such as bringing down an entire bridge,ranging down to being able to just drive through enemy buildings or even just sign posts and have them come crumbling down.

The story focuses on Alex Mason, a member of the Red Faction, a guerilla group that fights for the rights of those who live in the various martian colonies and are treated poorly by the corrupt Earth Defense Force. The story is nothing to really write home about but honestly, this isn’t the sort of game where the focus is on being a serious game. It’s really all about the gameplay and having fun!

The single player is an open world game of sorts where you unlock zones, starting from a pretty remote town with minor EDF interference to a large pristine city housing the EDF’s headquarters and various office buildings. The task of unlocking these zones is accomplished by eradicating all EDF presence in a zone through whatever means you see fit.

So, do you want to get rid of that giant 5 story office building over there?

Let’s see, you could run in guns blazing, blasting away any enemy in sight then cover the key structural points of the bottom floor in remote charges to level that thing to the ground. Too obvious? Perhaps instead you could pick up your nano rifle, a weapon that disintegrates matter, to eradicate any enemies as well as the cover they’re hiding behind.

Maybe you want to be more up close and personal? You can easily sprint to the front lines with your sledgehammer out to break some skulls! Enemies hiding behind a wall? Just smash straight through it and take out the other walls while you’re at it to bring down any enemies hiding above you as well along with the entire building they’re hiding in.

Or my personal favourite, there’s nothing stopping you from getting creative by covering the closest truck in mines, driving it off a cliff straight into the fourth floor of that office only for the entire building to be torn apart as you detonate the attached explosives. Aaah, I mean, wow, I’ve logged 30 hours in Red Faction just from one and a half playthroughs because the gameplay just never gets old. I really can’t recommend the game enough!

Developer: Volition, Inc. / Reactor Zero (PC)
Publisher: THQ
Released in 2009
Platforms: PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360