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KrossMojination writes "Red
Faction: Guerrilla is an open-world (sandbox) third-person shooter.
Wow, even the genre is a mouthful. Think of Crackdown, GTA4, and
fittingly, Saints Row since RF:G is created by the same developer as
Saints Row (Volition). So similar to those titles, the gameplay is
divided into larger story missions, side missions, and other random
errands/events that you can do to pass the time outside of any
organized mission.
• Overview The story is set on Mars, where you play a
protagonist who single-handedly seeks to destroy the evil corporate
government by destroying buildings, defending friendly holdings,
re-capturing hostages, etc. The heart of this game is its destructible
environments. Just about everything is destructible. Massive
buildings, people, cars can all be smashed with your sledgehammer,
stuck with remote grenades, or evaporated with a nano-gun.
• Cover your Eyes, Timmy! (Game Rating) The
game is rated M. Personally, I find that to be a touch excessive when
compared to an R-rated movie; I think a T-for-Teen rating would
probably have sufficed. But who am I. The multiplayer is even safer,
lacking any gore, splatter, or voice-acted outbursts (live-acted human
outbursts notwithstanding).
• Bifocal View (Graphics) Graphically, well, let's just say I hope you like the color red. But it's a very well done red. 8 out of 10 Louies
• Hearing-Aid Turned To 11 (Audio) Audio-wise, nothing stands out as either
largely positive or negative, so I consider that a good thing. The
soundtrack is very fitting to the environment, just very subtle and not
at all annoying or repetitive to the point where you go out to the
dashboard and stream music from your computer. The sounds effects are
all fairly standard, in fact I swear I can recognize some of the gun
and car effects from other games. I think after years of playing video
games, it takes the eerily-echoing boom of a Barrett sniper rifle from
across the map to make you appreciate a sound effect in a game (that's
a Call of Duty 4 reference by the way, for the 5 people on Xbox Live who haven't played that game). 7 out of 10 Louies
• Arthritis Flaring Up... (Gameplay) The
gameplay itself is phenomenal, it's all about destruction, except for a
few mission types such as the Transporter missions where your objective
is to drive a vehicle back to the camp (a la the Chop Shop missions in
Saints Row games). A map is pulled up to show all side missions and
destruction targets, but you have to drive to get your orders for the
main story missions. This is probably my first complaint about the game,
in that it offers no means of teleporting straight to the location,
though you can teleport to the various guerrilla camps throughout the
landscape, and drive from there. Plus, since it's an open world game,
I tend to get distracted on the way to the story mission location. But
I can't exactly hold that against the game for being fun to play.
But
the gameplay itself is great. The third-person shooting mechanics are
pretty straight-forward and intuitive. There is a lot of weapon
variety and unlocks that you can purchase with salvage that you collect
on the ground as you destroy property and vehicles. The only shooting
mechanic I don't like is the barely-existent cover system; I realize
cover is meaningless in a game where everything but the landscape is
destructible, but as your alert level escalates from green to yellow to red,
the enemy becomes very thick and persistent. The game is quite
challenging at the red alert level, even on the Easy difficulty. (Yes,
I dropped it down to Easy and I die quite often. I did this because
open world games, IMHO, should be enjoyable, not frustrating and I was
dying way too often on the Normal difficulty to enjoy it. Sorry but nobody wants to play a realistic sandbox game, amiright?)
The driving
mechanic is decent and is similar to other open world games. In fact
it's also similar to driving the Mako vehicle from Mass Effect only
without the hydraulic pimp-mobile bunny-hop feature; of course, the
comparison to Mass Effect is not a far reach considering RF:G is set on
a very rocky/hilly Mars, similar to every planet in ME. The driving
routes are rather frustrating because no destinations are ever in a
straight line, and that adds a ton of driving time to each location.
Boo.
But overall, this game is a ton of fun. Whether you just
want to pull out your sledgehammer, or obliterate buildings with a
nano-gun, or drive to a destination and switch to control the turret on
top of the car as you mow down oppressors, this game is just plain
fun. Pro-tip: don't rely on the auto-gamesaves - save frequently. I
lost over 2 hours of gameplay when I hit the guide button during a
loading screen and the box locked up, and the fact that I'm still
giving this game good marks after borking 2 hours of gameplay should
say a lot. 9 out of 10 Louies.
• One Foot In The Grave (Longevity) Well,
you definitely get your money's worth with this game. The single
player is deep enough to justify the purchase price by itself, not
including the multiplayer. Obviously similar to any sandbox game, once
you've beaten it you're probably not going to go back and replay,
unless for a few missed cheevos or if you are a 100% completionist.
But this game lives on in the form of multiplayer. 8 out of 10 Louies
• Get Off My Lawn (Multiplayer) There
is quite a variety of maps and
gametypes ranging from deathmatch, team deathmatch, and various
objective games. One thing I like about the multiplayer is the
somewhat-random loadouts, so every time a new game loads you could get
a
different set of weapons and jetpacks. (Yeah that's right...I said
JETPACKS.) This adds a good deal of
variety before you even leave the lobby. And speaking of the lobby,
the game has a pretty standard party/lobby system; I have hardly
noticed any lag and not a single connection issue while playing. The
only problem is trying to bring in friends into a custom game, that can
be a little wonky. I also appreciate the XP and character
customization options that offer incentive to playing multiplayer.
I could easily see the small but loyal geezer community playing this
through the summer, probably until ODST and Modern Warfare 2 and the
other big seasonal titles come out. And there is a geezer silver account for a friend-of-friend network: RFG Geezers. 8 out of 10 Louies
• Back In My Day, We Used To... (Overall Impressions) Overall,
this game is all about fun. Fun fun fun fun fun. If you like
open-world sandbox games, action games, shooters, and a multiplayer
that offers a lot of variety and incentive, then this game is
definitely worth the purchase price, which you can surely find for less
than the $60 original retail price since a few weeks after it was
released, it went on sale at Amazon for $40. This game is a no-brainer
at $40 if you're a fan of having fun. 8 out of 10 Louies
• Survey Sez? (Final Scoring and Rating) This
game has been a surprise hit and for me personally, is probably my
favorite game of 2009 so far. I could easily give this game a 10 and
justify it, but it isn't perfect. And seeing as though now I'm not the only geezer to have a corrupt gamesave, I have to deduct a point or two on principle. 8 out of 10 Louies "
Posted on Friday, July 24 @ 01:23:35 EDT by firemedic41
