Full Review for Red Faction: Guerrilla by imaloony8.0

Introduction

Well, it's easy to say that this and Prototype were my most anticipated games of 2009 at the beginning of the year. Now, time is up, and I got to sit down with the game and play. At the beginning, the nostalgia kept me going and loving the game. As time went on, however, my love of the game was watered down, but I still enjoyed this game quite a bit. That was the review in a nutshell, I suppose, but to get everything, you'll have to read the whole review. Enjoy!

Graphics

I must say, that this game is simply one of the most beautiful games I've seen on the 360 since Fable II and Fallout 3. Everything seemed to be painted well, and the graphics during gameplay were nearly as good as during cutscenes, which was great, considering that those graphics were pretty awesome. Everything was built well. I felt a little cut short, as there was plenty of open space left in the game that could have been filled up with more interesting buildings, but I guess we just have to count our losses and gains and see that this game is simply beautiful in every aspect of the word.

Sound

This section was also great. While blowing a building to itty bitty pieces, it's often great to have some satisfying smashes, explosions, and slow crumples, and that's exactly what Red Faction: Guerrilla gives you. Smashes actually sound like they would if you picked up a sledgehammer and smashed it through the wall in your living room with the biblical picture on it. Not that I actually tried that... Anyways, the game sounds really cool, and all the explosions and smashing will only want to make you do it more, which brings back the problem of there not being nearly enough to smash. But the symphony of great sounds is really nice and apparent when you take a large town and smash out it's supports, leaving to to topple to the ground in a way that is both satisfying to the eyes AND ears. Music is limited, which is a shame, since after playing Fallout 3, I want a radio on my character so I can listen to some awesome tunes while blowing the crap out of enemies and buildings.

Gameplay

Now, the eight here might confuse you, but I have my reasons. First, the plot. At first, it starts off a bit slow, with it being pretty generic hero motivation, and nothing too special. This all changes with the action packed, pulse pounding battle the leaves the Red Faction in, to make as little spoilers as possible, in a big pickle. After that and one or two plot twists, and the okay-good ending, the plot was fairly decent. I think some more characterization of Alec would have been nice, as we hardly got to know the guy in this game. Also, while the Cutscenes were really cool and fun, I felt cut short on them. Now, moving on to the actual content. The gameplay. The gameplay is quite fun, allowing you to destroy anything except for the dirt and most of the rocks. In addition to this being quite fun and exciting, it can also be used for a strategic advantage. For example, when I was fighting a group of snipers after dying once already, I get up to the second floor of a walkway area. I remembered, however, that last time I got surrounded by about fifteen enemies before having my ass blown halfway to the moon, to I blew up both staircases to this level, giving me the time and cover to take down the snipers. That's just one example of the many ways to use this excellent system. The shooting controls are tight and responsive, with a semi-auto lock-on to allow for much easier gun control, which is rare in a third person shooter. The controls themselves are quite good, mapping the weapon switching to a combination of the RB and the face buttons, allowing for quick and easy weapon changes. Also, melee is mapped to the Left Trigger, allowing for easy beat downs in the midst of a gun fight. The upgrade system is also awesome, allowing you to pick up "salvage" by mining rocks, blowing up buildings, or doing missions and then use to it buy new weapons, upgrade them, and buy yourself new equipment that becomes unlocked later, like armor and a jetpack. The difficulty of this game feels just right on normal. No so easy that you can complete every mission with a flick of the wrist, but not so hard that you're pulling your hair out. That, with the fact that the penalty for death is very minor makes for a great experience.
Now for the bad news. As I mentioned earlier, there is WAY too much open space. I really would have loved to see some big cities to cause destruction in, but the best I got were a few military bases that blew my face off before I was six steps in. More stuff to destroy would have been great. Also, the missions, while quite fun when playing the main guerrilla quests, were very repetitive and made me want to see more quests other than another house arrest mission. More of the main guerrilla missions would have been great, along with a wider variety of the side quests. But, that's only a minor knock on such a fine play of a game such as this.

Lastability

Surprising as this is, the lastibility isn't too great. With the missions being so repetitive, no "moral choices" to extend it, no great places to really explore to find new and interesting things. The game quickly loses it's luster after you beat it for the first time, although it might have one more play left in it after I finish up my current one. I might even dare to try the hardest difficulty! But anyways, it's still an open world game, but not implemented nearly as well as they could have made it by adding a lot more area and missions to play around with.

Overall

With all that being said, this is still a great game at least worth a rent. I haven't played multiplayer yet, but I assume it's great, which will probably label this as a buy, possibly even a "must buy" depending on how great the mutiplayer is. With all that being said, play this game, one way or another, because I promse you that you won't find a game where you can collapse a building on yourself, stand up, fire a rocket that blows up half of another building, stick a charge to a guy who, in panic, runs over to his friends where you detonate it and kill them all, and then shoot a beam of nano bugs at an enemy who slowly disintegrates into nothing.

So go out, play, and remember, "Better Red than Dead."

Final Score: 88%