Red Faction Guerrilla

[FullAuto]

RFG, as any fule kno, is a free roaming destruct 'em up. Placed in the clunky metal boots of Whogivesashit McProtagonist, your task is to assist the Red Faction, a rebel movement on Mars against the evil Earth Defense Force, a group of fascist morons incapable of squashing a grassroots insurrection. The RF are mostly miners. The EDF are mostly futuristic strikebreaking soldiers. Oh dear.

 

You help by blowing things up. People, stuff, you name it. You blow it up. Oh my do you ever blow things up. Fighting the soldiers head-on can only ever be done on a strictly limited basis. Your ammo load is small, and you're limited to three weapons (four if you count your sledgehammer). So, you must strike and run/drive away. Laughing is optional.

 

Explosions and physics feature heavily. A case in point. Pinned down behind a skip, I had no ammo and no explosive charges left, and the EDF were in a building on a hillside, giggling and shooting. I whipped out my trusty sledgehammer, sprinted under the building, and swiped its supports aside with several wild swings of my tool. The EDF's hilarity turned to horror as the house collapsed around them, and I cackled, until I looked up and saw a tidal wave of debris and bodies coming down the hillside at me. Ah.

 

The hammer really is a great tool. Pinned down inn the corner of a base, hemmed in by walls and enemies, with no explosives left? Go straight through a wall, any wall, with a few swings, and if there's an enemy on the other side, bash his head in.

 

But it can backfire. I took out a billboard with a single strike, and watched it come down, top-heavy, on my head. Oops.

 

Explosives, however, take all the labour out of demolition. A few carefully-positioned charges can bring down massive buildings, wreaking havoc. Fuel tanks, vehicles, guard posts, bridges, all can be wrecked. The terrain is indestructible, but structures are up for destruction.

 

Bridges, for instance, are fun. An EDF assault on a RF base was brought to a halt when I detonated a pair of charges, dropping a bridge almost whole onto the attacking force.

 

An EDF vehicle, turret spewing bullets as it advanced over a bridge, nosedived into a hole I blew to dissuade pursuit.

 

I had the distinct pleasure of demolishing a chimney, toppling it into a narrow footbridge packed with enemies. Nowhere to go but flat.

 

The shortage of ammunition and plethora of enemies means you need to improvise with explosives. Take out that group using a charge as an impromptu grenade. Take out that sniper by shooting the gas canister next to him. Create a roadblock by blowing a pipeline into the road. Blow a vehicle off a bridge and into a squad of enemies below (totally intended, not an accident). Clear buildings by destroying their rooms.

 

Sometimes, though, you can't get close enough to use hammer or throw charges. What I usually do in this case is steal a big and/or fast vehicle and run it right at the objective. If one were to then, say, hit a sentry, plough through a checkpoint, bash through a perimeter wall, smash into the objective building and finally come to rest with guard pate dripping from your bumper...all well and good.

 

It's similar to Just Cause 2, but you're nowhere near as overpowered. It's a good thing the RF join in then, but a bad thing is that they're rubbish. So it's mostly down to you. You'll have to plough a tank through a field of turbines. You'll have to bring that building down with only a handful of charges and a hammer, while under heavy fire. You'll have to fire and move through enemy bases, blasting soldiers into piles of explosives and watching them fly.

 

What a shame.

[silencer_pl]

I found this game pretty boring. You win the sector by rising the power for rebels in a province then do the final province mission. Then - you do the same.... how obvious.

[FullAuto]

You could easily say the same about Just Cause 2. The missions in both games are quite unimaginative and by the book, its the free-roaming that's the fun. Deciding your objective, and then working out how to do it, using vehicles, charges, gas canisters, MOABs, etc is 95% of the game. The 5% that isn't only happens in short bursts 3-5 minutes long.

[silencer_pl]

Free roam is fun, but then you wake up and you are hit with very cold water of same missions over and over agains.

[Knan]

Why wake up?

[silencer_pl]

You can't free roam for ever

[FullAuto]

Come back to this and it's ridiculous fun.

 

Headed to reinforce a guerrilla raid in a kind of Martian pick up truck, three guerrilla fighters riding with me, one in the cab, two in the back. Hit a slope at high speed, while turning gently. Truck performs a barrel roll, throwing the two terminally unlucky fighters in the back out about fifty feet up. Came down on two wheels, in the middle of the firefight, and drove on, crushing a fascist soldier against his car, bringing us to a halt. Got out, crushed some idiots with my hammer, we won.

 

One thing I think is truly great is that if you go on a rampage, it counts. If you destroy an enemy building, checkpoint, outpost, etc, it stays destroyed, and control of that sector is reduced. It makes long orgies of violence no longer pointless!

 

Lots of exploration too if you want, discovering resources, massive bombs to use and so on. Really enjoy nosing around, lots of rough terrain to navigate.

[Jman4117]

I've been watching this on youtube the past day or so. Looks like it'd be fun if not for all the repetitive driving missions.

[FullAuto]

I can't think of any driving missions off the top of my head. Plenty of them involve driving, and driving is by far the most common form of transport, but driving is rarely 100% of the task. It's generally drive somewhere and blow something up, or ride shotgun as the gunner while someone drives. According to the game stats, I've put 18 hours into it, and 45 mins have been spent on missions.

[silencer_pl]

Soon the bus of "Again same shit" will hit you hard.

[FullAuto]

I propelled that bus forty feet into the air using demolition charges and then shot it with a rocket launcher before it landed.

[silencer_pl]

Still it will hit you back.

[FullAuto]

Not if it keeps surprising me with new ways to die, e.g. hit a propaganda billboard with my hammer, and it toppled forwards onto me, comedy style.

 

I was speeding towards a walled enemy base, knowing I had to take out a guard tower, and thinking that instead of jumping out of my buggy and entering through one of the gates, I'd merely find a nearby slope, and use it as a ramp and jump over the wall. Took the run up, aimed for the tower to land in its vague direction, and roared up the ramp, cleared the wall easily, and flew right into the tower, killing the guards and taking out the guns.

 

With this firmly in mind, a little later, I did a similar thing, using a slope to jump my buggy through a propaganda screen. It worked a little too well, I smashed right through the screen, and flew on. "Yeehaw!" To land on a pair of gas storage tanks.

 

Carrying out a raid with two dozen guerrillas, we started taking a bit of a hammering from a gunship, so I whipped out my missile launcher, got a lock on, and fired. The gunship, busy killing rebels, took the missile amidships and went down like a lead titanic, crashing into an EDF monument, one of the sector objectives, destroying it. I cheered.