One of the biggest disappointments of the game however, is its lackluster shooting mechanics, something the earlier games in the series got spot on. The controls just don’t seem tight enough and the useless enemy AI doesn’t do the gun combat segments any favours either. To compensate for this, the game just throws more and more enemies at you.
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So up until the last 10 percent of the campaign, you’re just doing what you did in the first 10 percent over and over again – destroying EDF buildings, completing the same guerrilla missions, and lots and lots of driving in between. The understandably barren environments of Mars only serve to increase the boredom. If you’ve played the single-player demo and enjoyed the Walker retrieval bit and the shooting gallery segment that follows, the bad news is that there are few missions in the game as much fun as that, so the demo is pretty much the best the game has to offer.
The game does pick up considerably in the latter stages though and it ends on a high, with some much needed story-telling in there as well. But it isn’t enough to make up for the monotonous nature of much of the game before it, and only gives you a glimpse of how this game might have turned out if Volition had paid the same attention to the rest of the game. As it stands, the single-player campaign just seems like a showcase of the Geo Mod 2 engine, because there really isn’t much note-worthy besides the destructible environments. If you do decide to go after all the guerrilla missions once you’re done with the story, the single-player campaign will last you roughly 20 hours on normal difficulty.
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You also have a pass-the-controller mode called Wrecking Crew. As the name suggests, it’s all about mindless destruction – one map, one man, one minute, and unlimited ammo. Your job is to wreak as much havoc as possible, and once you’re done, pass the controller to the left and let Player 2 have a go. You can have up to 4 people in Wrecking Crew and if you ever felt that the campaign didn’t provide you with enough ammo to carry out your devilish dance of destruction, this is where you can get your thrills.
Having skipped the multi-player demo, the game’s online competitive multi-player component came as a pleasant surprise to me. For online, the game ditches the open-world setting for more focused maps, and while you have many of the weapons from the single-player campaign, you also get various backpacks as perks. The jetpack is there from the single-player campaign, and in addition you have backpacks that let you see through walls, make you temporarily invisible, give you short speed bursts, and my personal favourite – the rhino pack, which makes you indestructible and allows you to run through walls.
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Game types are your standard multi-player fare – deathmatch, capture the flag, king of the hill; they’re all there. But the destructibility adds a new dimension to these games. Not only can you break through walls to create new paths, but you can also bring down entire buildings, killing its occupants. There’s also a weapon exclusive to the multi-player that let’s you rebuild an under-attack structure that you’re designated to protect. It’s a comprehensive online mode complete with stat-tracking, leaderboards, etc, and in many ways, it overshadows the disappointing single-player campaign.
I imagine it would be pretty hard to make a game world set in Mars look anything but bland. It’s mostly just shades of yellow and brown, so visually the game isn’t all that outstanding. While in-game character models are serviceable, the cut-scenes, the few that are there, are quite impressive, even if they are pre-rendered. In some missions, particularly towards the end, there’s a lot of destruction and chaos happening on screen and the framerates really start to crawl at these times, almost ruining the experience. It’s not going to win any awards for graphical excellence, but it certainly holds it’s own against other sandbox titles. There isn’t much to speak of in the sound department either. Voice acting is pretty decent, whatever little there is of it. And I can’t really recall hearing much of a score either, so if there was any, it certainly didn’t stand out.
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Conclusion
You know it’s not a very good game when halfway through it you find yourself thinking, “When is this gonna end?” Red Faction Guerrilla promises much, but by the time it picks up, you’ve been bored out of your mind after having to play through the same missions over and over for close to 10 hours. But while the campaign is less than impressive, online multi-player is quite the opposite. So if you see yourself spending hours online with Red Faction Guerrilla, I suggest you pick it up. If not, save your money.
(+) Destruction like you’ve never seen before in a game
(+) Some nice weapons, particularly the remote charges
(+) Fun online multi-player
(-) Repetitive single-player campaign
(-) Loose gun combat; poor AI
(-) Annoyingly floaty vehicle handling
Title: Red Faction Guerrilla
Developer/Publisher: Volition Inc/THQ
Genre: Third-person shooter
Rating: 16+
Platforms: Xbox 360 (Rs 2,199), PlayStation 3 (Rs 2,499)
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