Bringing Down The House

By AXIS of Reality

©2009 Alex Baldwin

Well, the first game of the month is here. With so many big name games hitting Aussie shelves in June, after playing it for a week it’s a surprise to learn that the first of them may possibly be the best. I also got the chance to visually compare both 360 and PS3 versions of the game, but more on that later.

Red Faction: Guerrilla is the very loose sequel to the previous-gen Red Faction 1 and Red Faction 2 first-person shooters. The name change should be a clue that this isn’t a direct follow-on or prettied up expansion – Red Faction: Guerrilla is something new for the series, and all the better for it.

For starters, the camera isn’t attached to the protagonist Alec Mason‘s eyeballs and instead uses the close third-person camera popular with Gears of War and Dead Space this generation.

This might not be a major change, but it is infinitely valuable for a wider field of vision in the new open world on Mars. That’s right, Red Faction has joined the freeroaming bandwagon with a surprisingly high level of success.

• Deconstruction the Red Faction way

It’s very understandable considering developer Volition’s previous games of Saint’s Row 1 and Saints Row 2 – they showed their ability to make interesting and most of all entertaining environments which carries over to Guerrilla – maybe not in the satirical sense of Saint’s Row, but definitely in the pure fun factor.

Which brings me nicely to destruction. You would have heard claims of ‘total destruction’ in games before, but always walked away a bit underwhelmed. Well, worry no more because Red Faction: Guerrilla succeeds with flying colours where others such as Battlefield: Bad Company simply skimmed the surface.

Everything breaks on Mars – no matter what you see, it can be brought crashing down with a few well-placed remote mines as long as it’s man-made. The game makes no apologies about it – the absolute first thing you see as you gain control in the story mode is a simply rock wall in front of you, and a sledgehammer in your hand.

Luckily everything crumbles as you’d expect, with most debris staying visible after bringing a structure down until you go a significant distance away. There’s none of the Mercenaries 2 ‘building sliding through the ground in a puff of smoke’ here – it all works as you expect and is a ton of fun.

• To Arm – To Arms Let’s destroy everything

It won’t be long before you’re making your own back door escape routes in 3-story enemy fortresses, pursued by a dozen guards only to detonate the remote mines you had already placed on the major support pillars to bring the place crashing down. It just never gets old.

On the mission side of things, they are all designed to take advantage of the destruction. Using a similar system to Saint’s Row 2, there are different mission types but you can be sure all will involve some sort of property devaluing, whether it’s plowing straight through the supports of a dozen massive windmills in a tank or making your own hasty escape route through an enemy camp.

Soon the breaking physics will be completely natural, and make other games feel static by comparison.

The story isn’t the most memorable, and is simple a vehicle for opening more parts of the world. Of course, being set on Mars you’re not going to get the variety of locations like Oblivion but there are some nice locales all with a different main colour filter and architecture (which you’ll soon be rearranging, or course).

The combat is acceptable, with decent shooting and cover mechanics but even from the weapon upgrade selections you can tell it’s all about using the destruction to your advantage.

Thankfully it’s extremely rare that you’ll die from having a building collapse on you as debris doesn’t take too much off your recharging health meter, but it can feel a tad unfair in vehicles that can quickly be turned to scrap by the numerous enemy tanks that will proceed to bash the shit out of you if you’ve pissed them off. Speaking of which, the vehicles all handle nicely and there’s a nice variety driving around the world to ‘borrow’ from their owners.

On the multiplayer side of things, Red Faction: Guerrilla can be a blast (literally) online as your character goes ragdoll-flying from a bridge exploding under them or a building filled with proximity mines gets thrown into the sky as you step through the doorway.

• Just keep swinging that sledgehammer

Setting more and more inventive traps becomes a sadistic sort of pleasure and can make for some brilliant and memorable matches. It won’t replace Halo 3 or Call of Duty on the Live charts, but it’s well worth having a few rounds on when you feel like something different. Even the Wrecking Crew mode which is playable on a single console is a lot of fun, letting players take turns to test out their destructive skills.

Graphically Red Faction: Guerrilla is very good. There’s some nice lighting and blur effects, but sometimes the screen can appear a bit empty. Usually this is simply a sign that not enough stuff is blowing up, something you’ll be quick to remedy. It’s a good effort and makes for a nice unique open world.

Something unusual is the sound. When starting a new game almost all the sound sliders are at their maximum, with punchy sound effects and decent voice acting. There’s always something slightly there in the background though, and it wasn’t until I lowered all the sliders to about 40% while leaving music at 100% that I realised there’s actually a quite awesome soundtrack to accompany the explosions that is by default abnormally soft.

Keying in at all the right moments and keeping the adrenaline pumping, I seriously recommend immediately turning all the other sliders down but pushing your TV volume higher to give each mission a greater sense of urgency and excitement with the great original soundtrack.

By now you should know I’m very taken by Red Faction: Guerilla. Like Saint’s Row 2, it’s not going to reinvent the open world genre but it does bring its own unique focus and is made for pure entertainment value that never gets old. You may be doing a lot of the same stuff throughout the game, but there’s always a different way to approach it and makes a nice break from city-based freeroaming.

”9.1/10

• 360 vs PS3 Visual Comparison

On a final note, THQ were nice enough to supply me with both the 360 and PS3 versions of the game so I can do quick visual comparison. Of course the content on both discs is the same, but there is a bit of a visual difference between the two. Using the same TV I ran through the first section of both, flicking between the two to see whether one version had the slight upper hand.

In this case it was the 360 version that will be preferable to multi-console owners. Textures were slightly crisper with a more 3D look attributed to the level of bump and normal mapping on Microsoft’s console, while the lighting also appeared to be using a few more advanced effects in comparison to the Sony counterpart. A suggestion to PS3 owners as well – turn the brightness down and contrast up slightly when you start as it appeared a bit overly bright on default but this is quickly fixed in the settings menu.

The most important difference however was the use of anti-aliasing to smooth out all the jaggies. This was completely missing from the PS3 version which is more noticeable with buildings lying in angled pieces while the 360 version appeared almost totally smooth.

However, the PS3 version did appear to have a bit more sand and particle effects in the air. At any one time there can be sand carried on the wind, and it looked significantly thicker as more of a mask over distant objects than the Xbox version.

The framerate on both versions holds nice and fairly steady in all but the biggest destruction, and definitely a lot smoother than many other open world games such as Saint’s Row 2 and GTA IV have had.

Overall, for any people with a choice the 360 version has the edge but both are excellent games and you’re not missing out or getting a shoddy port for either console.

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Red Faction: Guerrilla Price List in Australia (as of writing):

EB Games: $109.95 ($29.95 when you trade 2 eligible games) (will also price-match)

Game: $109.95 ($29.95 when you trade 1 eligible game) (will also price-match with catalogue proof)

GameTraders: $109.95

JB HiFi: $89 (trade 3 x 360 games not on the exclusion list and get it for free)

Big W: $84

Kmart: $94

Harvey Norman: $109.95

Myer: $109.95

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©2009 Alex Baldwin

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