
	Platform Xbox 360 Genre Action Publisher THQ Developer Volition ESRB M (Mature) Released June 2, 2009

- Blowing stuff up has never felt better - Like Crackdown. On Mars - Lots of different vehicles - Being able to just explore on your own and still be rewarded for it - The narrator from Crackdown

- On “normal” mode the game is more often frustrating than fun - Leaving your Red Faction buddies behind - Not all that destruction is permanent

Review: Crackdown (360) Review: Dead Rising (360) Review: Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned (360)
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Red Faction: Guerrilla

Score: 9.0 / 10

Volition’s Geo-Mod 2.0 technology should immediately be implemented in all future open-world sandbox games. After only an hour, I was completely sold on what Geo-Mod 2.0 had to offer but after a few hours of bringing down buildings and bridges with well-place explosives and a massive hammer, I actually feel the need to evangelize the technology. The powerful feeling of sticking a bunch of remote charges to a large vehicle then smashing that vehicle into an EDF structure, leaping out and running away as the enemy troops scramble to your position, then activating the charges and the whole building explodes, which causes a small chain of explosions as some nearby fuel tanks ignite and the building to collapse, crushing any enemies that weren’t caught in the initial blast.

And that’s only the opening salvo. As your Red Faction compatriots roll up and open fire on the enemy, you flank the enemy position, bash a hole in a wall for

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access to the compound and begin raining rockets down on the EDF position. You’ve taken some casualties, but the EDF outpost is eliminated and it really looks like a massive exchange of firepower has taken place.

The experience is just so satisfying!

The flexibility of the combat and guerrilla, hit and fade tactics, extend to other parts of the game. Like Crackdown,

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you’re not tied to a strict mission structure and the story is only a peripheral aspect of the overall game. From the overhead map, you can choose your own missions; some relate to the story, but there are plenty of clearly-marked optional missions and targets that can be approached at your leisure.

Though you can careen from one mission to the next, the game also offers rewards for going off the beaten path and really exploring or messing around in the sandbox and making your own fun.

If the wide-open world setting somehow gets tiring, Red Faction: Guerrilla's multiplayer and Wrecking Crew options are perfect alternatives for players that want to concentrate on destruction and combat, rather than exploration. Wrecking Crew’s simple pass-the-controller, almost party game atmosphere focuses on causing as much destruction as possible as the counter runs to zero and really does put your demolition skills to the test. Multiplayer is practically its own game. No cover is safe, movement is constant, and the nuances of weapon/backpack load-outs can make a huge difference no matter the play mode but, like the single player portion, those that take a creative approach will generally have the upper hand. Given some downloadable content over time, and Guerrilla's multiplayer may have legs for a long time.

Sandbox destruction at its finest, Red Faction: Guerrilla will surely satisfy action gamers because many of the constrictions we’ve all become used to – that waist-high wall that stops you dead – are blown up. With dynamite. And becomes a place where fun trumps story and is stronger for it.

- Aaron Simmer

(June 11, 2009)