Do you like to blow things up? Do you like to watch buildings come down? Then you probably bought into the hype of Red Faction 1 and 2, both of which promised a lot of that, and delivered, well, not as much as we’d have liked. Fortunately, Volition has been spending the last four years making the game that should have been made back in 2001. More screens and impressions inside.
I was one of the fans of RF 1 and 2, which surprised the developers (mainly the part about 2 — I told them it was fun but “comprimised”). So when I saw the Red Faction Guerrilla logo on the wall I went nuts; after all, a modern development environment allows for so much more in the form of realistic destruction. And that’s exactly what was demoed to us.
Almost everything is destructible, except ironically the landscape, which makes sense gameplay-wise since you’re no longer in a mine. Every building is made of cement, steel, and mortar, and can be taken down with a few well-placed charges, a rocket to the lobby, or even your trusty (and ridiculously powerful) sledgehammer. The building deformation looks great; this is truly a revolutionary step in destructible environments. I just finished Crysis and while that had some good blowin’ up, this is far beyond it.
The game has an open world, full of little missions, activities, and stumble-upon events. Or you can grab a vehicle and cruise around looking for new buildings to smash. If it sounds a little 2-dimensional, it’s — well, it’s not really, but seriously blowing stuff up in this game is just so damn fun that you can easily forget about the other things you can do. Of course, since they built the whole game around destruction, it’s also integrated with the missions and gameplay itself; it’s not just window dressing. But believe me, once you get your hands on a demo or something, you’ll be sitting there laughing like an idiot as you make some random structure come crashing down around you.