So in violation of all my intentions, I bought Red Faction: Guerrilla on Tuesday. I’d been meaning to hold off for Prototype, which looks like it’s going to be the better game, but then I thought, “Why not both? I’ll stimulate the economy a little.” And with luck I can finish Red Faction in time to trade it in for Prototype when that game comes out next week.
The Red Faction series has been around for a while, and its real differentiator has always been a technology called Geo-Mod. In the first two Red Factions, Geo-Mod allowed you to break sections of rock off. In the context of the fully destructible environment we’d been promised, it was quite a disappointment.
Guerilla’s Geo-Mod 2.0 focuses on buildings, not rocks, and it works amazingly well. As a member of an underground resistance fighting the tyranny of the Earth Defense Force government on Mars, your job is to blow shit up. And with every single building calculating its own structural integrity at all times, and then collapsing uniquely in real time according to the damage done to its load-bearers, you can do it pretty creatively. I rigged a huge cooling tower to collapse sideways onto another building, essentially destroying two for the price of one. The destruction is huge, it’s gleeful, it’s satisfying. And while I question the rebellious Red Faction’s strategy of reclaiming Mars by destroying every building on it, well, what can I say… they give the orders, I follow them. “Knock that building down,” they say, and I do.
All in all Guerilla seems to be a solid open-world game so far, with an assortment of side-missions and several story missions scattered throughout each region. Load times are essentially nonexistent (except when you die, which you’ll do a lot), and the developers took advantage of the engine’s power to great effect. PC players willing to wait a few months will get a version that includes a dramatically enhanced lighting model, DirectX10 support, and higher resolutions.
The one complaint I have about Guerilla right now is the combat system. In general it works fine; the game lets you customize your controls to a degree and switching weapons on the fly is a breeze. But frankly it’s kind of hard to see enemies in all that red dust, and your health meter is displayed so improminently that you’ll rarely realize you’re seriously injured until you’re dead. The worst issue with combat, though, is the appallingly bad cover system. It’s essentially broken. Sometimes you stick to cover, sometimes you don’t, sometimes you pop off the cover when trying to aim, sometimes you can’t poke around it without popping off, sometimes you can’t crouch when you’re stuck to it… it’s a mess. Volition, if you’re listening, please fix it.
Volition also made Saint’s Row, so they know their way around open world games. As such the driving sequences, cash and upgrade acquisition, and other tropes of the genre are pretty well maintained in Guerilla. For sheer destructive joy, this is a potential hit despite the yawnathon story and shaky combat. Whether I return to it after Prototype, however, is anyone’s guess.
My own impressions are similar. Demolition is fun and the collapsing of the architecture is done convincingly, so driving cars into buildings, rigging them with explosives and finnishing them off with a sledge hammer is really good and soul-nurturing. However, combat is seriously imbalanced, and by that I mean it’s nigh impossible to be on the receiving end early in the game since you have what the other side doesn’t have – explosives. It’s fun blowing everyoine and everything up, but it’s not really challenging. The other complaint I have is that for an open world game, RFG so far seems to be pretty devoid of spontaneous stuff or, as they call it, emergent gameplay. It’s much more similar to Mercenaries than to GTA, so to say.
Just read this thanks to Tap at Random. I personally loved this game. I set it to the easy setting and just let loose with it. I’m not looking for story (which is laughable,) or shooter style combat (which is pretty weak.) I just love destroying giant buildings.. in video games.. obviously.
What sort of system specs (or console) do you have Armand ? I am having trouble getting this to run reliably and I think my system is too weak to manage all the work.
It’s a PC. Nothing mind blowing but it holds its own.
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz
2 Gigs of ram. XP crashes a lot if I try to use more.
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 vid card.
I can run a surprising number of games at full graphics settings on this without loosing much fps, including Red Faction. Between GTA4 and Left for Dead 2 I burnt out my old power source, Nvidia motherboard, and older Nvidia 8800 vid card. I’ve updated the power (850W) and vid card, but my current motherboard is an Asus board (I think) that’s a few years out of date tech-wise compared to modern boards.
Ai ai, poor folks..
You missed the point, here – go back to it oneday in an openminded kinda mood, and realise the tiny details every town and camp is packed with. In terms of hand-made detail in a large scale world, this trumps anything I’ve seen in GTA or its contemporaries in any generation. Only classic RPGs have a better sense of life in the world.
The howl of a marauder still sends chills through me, even after spending over a month modding the PC version.
Note some of the AI behaviours as well – I’ve not been as enjoyably challenged on ‘Hard’ difficulties since (insert Halo game here)..
As for the destruction.. I am unable to avoid the unintentional pun ‘groundbreaking’. Although that’s the only thing that doesn’t break. The physics change everything so much, and the basic model of gameplay is one of the most entertaining I’ve ever encountered.
The ability to play saboteur, angry rebel or sociopath, or simply ‘deranged trucker’ in any mission, to choose how you complete your objectives is incredible. The tricks I’ve used to sneak into well-defended compounds, planting bombs as I go and preparing my escape route by hammering the odd fence panel or fuel pipe, then taking out the target and running like hell..
Incredible sense of freedom. Only elsewhere found in the Hitman games.
Blah, why do I preach? I simply adore this game. So few people seem to have recognised it for how utterly ahead of its time it is.
… Pity the story is so bad. It has a great setting, just a bad plotline specific to this game.
Greatly anticipating the next one, although I’m sad to hear it won’t be as free-form, it won’t be openworld..
I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying Jakkar. I may not be as crazy about it as you, but it’s not every game I play through twice. Hell, many games I never even finish!
I only played it on easy during my second run as I wanted to focus on blowing things up. It becomes a relaxing meditative experience then.
What mod were you working on? Anything I should try?
Wow. I’d forgotten this article existed, or that I had commented here. I apologise for never replying, Armand. I wasn’t quite aware I even read Tap Repeatedly this long ago.
The mod was never finished, but to explain it in brief it’s a polish-up of the game physics, weapons and damage systems. I’ve tweaked every kind of explosion, every weapon and almost every single vehicle to remove certain inconsistencies and illogics, while drastically increasing the difficulty of the game.
Player health now recharges as a drastically reduced rate, vehicles no longer succumb rapidly to light weapons fire, most firearms have massively increased recoil coupled with greater damage – there’s more blood in general spattered around the gameworld, the hammer now takes several blows to get through a wall rather than simply cutting through it like warm butter.. Significantly, light weapons fire has been very carefully tweaked such that every conventional firearm in the game now very slowly damages structures – meaning even solid cover will eventually crumble under sustained machinegun fire, changing the dynamic of large battles considerably.
Destructive hysics meanwhile have been smoothed out, providing a less clunky collapse mechanic. Now, a shattered structure will slowly crumble over time for a considerable duration after initial damage, and buildings will no longer often remain standing on a single ‘leg’ beyond believable physics.
Essentially, I’ve turned ‘Hard’ difficulty into a massively more intense and realistic experience that strongly encourages ‘Guerilla’ gameplay due to the massive risks now involved in sustained combat with EDF forces.
However, as I said, I never finished it – as I’m now writing an article about RF:G that expands upon what I wrote above back in 2010, I feel my interest rekindled and hope to reacquaint myself with the packing tools and .xtbl files and finish it off for release π
Hah hah. I keep thinking about this game. I don’t know why it keeps drawing me back. Wonder if I should install it again. Not sure if I’d wanna use your mod though Jakkar, that sounds brutal.
Ah, it’s the very heart of the game, Armand! The heart and soul. It’s in the name; Guerilla – this game is meant to be about the underdog versus the oppressor – and unless you unlock Insane difficulty you don’t get too much of that feeling – Alec Mason is something of a tank.
I get the feeling earlier builds of the game must have been a lot more difficult – but play-testing probably revealed a distinct lack of patience with the challenge. Like Left 4 Dead, this is a game the experienced player realises was -made- for the highest difficulty, the lower options only designed later for those who are more interested in a casual experience, or unable to meet the demands of intensity.
STALKER is a game that pretty much ignored that demographic, opting for intense difficulty even on the lower settings π
If you don’t play it yet, I hope you’ll feel inspired when I publish the article – the biggest problem I’m having with it now is knowing when to stop writing – I’ve written around eleven pages, which is several pages too many, and I don’t feel like I’ve scratched the surface. There’s so much to discuss, the subtle ways the economy, morale and control systems work, the way the sandbox freedom was taken to an extreme and the emergent possibilities born from it. The AI, Geomod 2.0 and the way it all comes together to make a million wonderful war stories.
*wistful sigh D:*
I think I need to play it now..
I’m not really that crazy about the combat in Guerrilla. Really, I just find it relaxing to smash building. What they really need is some sort of free-for-all sandbox mode where you can just smash away without having to worry about getting shot.
I’ve been in a gaming funk (can’t play anything for more than a short while) so I’m sure I’m gonna play this sooner or later again. Looking forward to your massive article in the mean time though. π