On Monday, March 16th and 17th, I along with several other online game journalists had the rare and enviable privilege to attend a two-day event in Las Vegas, hosted by THQ to promote their upcoming game Red Faction: Guerrilla, developed by Volition Inc. This two day affair involved a solid eight hours with the latest build of the single player game as well as three hours of hands-on time with the multiplayer modes, interspersed with various fun activities such as firing live weapons at the Desert Lake Shooting Club (more on that in another article) and face-time with both the producers and developers of the game over great food and a generous amount of alcohol. When the dust settled, I returned to Toronto, Canada with a wealth of life lessons, a jetlag hangover that I will not soon forget, and to my extreme joy, a gaming experience that, while still a little rough around the edges, could quite possibly become a blockbuster hit in 2009 the same way that Capcom’s Lost Planet did when it carved out its own niche in the third-person action-adventure genre over two years ago.
STORY
Taking place 50 years after the events of the original Red Faction, the story thrusts the player into the role of Alec Mason, a blue-collar drifter who comes to Mars in search of mining work after years of hard luck back on earth. Alec’s younger brother, Dan, who has already been working as a miner and demolitions expert on the planet for over a year, has offered him a place to stay until he has found his feet, so for once things seem to be looking up for Alec. However, it is only minutes into the game before both Alec and Dan find themselves on the wrong side of the Earth Defense Force, the current oppressors of the Martian colonists. A violent (but not completely unexpected) incident occurs, and Alec is unjustly accused by the EDF as being a member of group of rebels called Red Faction, for which the penalty is death. Alec ends up being rescued by members of the very same group he has been accused of being a part of, and joins them in their cause. As all of this occurs within the within the first ten minutes of gameplay, players are given very little insight as to the kind of person Alec is or what he and Red Faction truly stand for, but it’s enough to get the job done.
GAMEPLAY & SINGLE-PLAYER
While developer Volition Inc. may not have taken many risks with the story, they have certainly done so with the gameplay, making significant changes to the two pillars that the series has relied upon since its inception, the first-person-shooter perspective and the original Geo-Mod engine, the latter which can be argued to have pioneered lasting environmental destruction on consoles. So, the question is: Is the gamble likely to pay off and will fans of the previous games embrace it? Well, based on my experiences with both the single and multi-player elements of the game, the answer for me is a resounding YES.
The move to a third-person perspective has not only separated Red Faction: Guerrilla from the already overcrowded FPS shooter genre on the current generation of consoles, it also allows the player to have a much greater sense of situational and environmental awareness that a first-person perspective simply cannot provide. For example, blowing up an EDF facility looks a hell of a lot cooler when you can calmly walk away from the explosion and witness the building come down behind you in an avalanche of smoke, fire and twisted metal – preferably on top of your enemies. More importantly, while environmental destruction has always been a key mechanic of the Red Faction franchise, in Guerrilla it is more central to the gameplay than ever before, as bringing down enemy structures produces valuable salvage that can be used as currency to either purchase new weapons or upgrade your existing ones.
And RF: G supplies plenty of “creative” tools to help you wreak havoc. In addition to the old standbys like EDF pistols, assault rifles and shotguns, the Red Faction have also adapted several of their mining tools into makeshift weapons to help even the odds against the EDF’s superior firepower. The melee weapon that is always in your inventory and can be relied upon at any time is the high velocity Sledgehammer, which is perfect for close quarters combat and can also make short work of any minor obstacle. Within seconds you can bust straight through the wall of a building and create your own shortcut to the heart of battle, or make a quick escape. The satchel charge from the previous games has returned as the Remote Mining Charge, which when thrown will stick to any surface, be it a wall, vehicle or even a person. Several can be laid at once and they can be detonated simultaneously at will, so the possibilities are endless, and once you acquire Proximity Mines and Smart Proximity Mines (which only detonate when enemies approach them), all hell will break loose. Depending on how much salvage you have collected and exchanged with Samanya the weapon smith by the time you have completed the Parker sector, the Arc Welder (RF: G’s Lightning Gun) gun and the Grinder (a nasty weapon that fires spinning blades) will also become available to you, and there are plenty more weapons that can be procured from fallen EDF soldiers as you push their forces further back and liberate once occupied territory. Vehicles, such as jeeps and trucks with mounted weapons, EDF tanks and construction walkers bring up the rear of your arsenal, giving you even more means to lay waste to structures, convoys and enemies, as well as serving transportation and added protection.
All of this ties back into RF: G’s most important feature, Geo Mod 2.0, which finally realizes what the original Red Faction Geo Mod engine was only able to tease at. Just about any building or structure in RF: G can be destroyed, and by “destroyed”, I mean that in most cases about 90% can be completely flattened, both in single-player campaign as well as in multiplayer. This means that over the course of a battle, the combat environment can be transformed dramatically, such as a building serving as cover being reduced to rubble within seconds, or a fallen tower providing temporary cover that was not originally there. None of the destruction is scripted – buildings and bridges never collapse the exact same way, walls break apart differently and shrapnel and debris fly in different directions every time. Also, the architecture of all buildings in the game is based on real world physics, which means that a building will come down much quicker when attacks are focused on its main supports. Consequently, player attack strategies can fully take advantage of Geo Mod 2.0 to change the course of battle. For example, it is completely possible to single-handedly take down a building containing EDF soldiers by rigging a truck with remote charges, drive it straight towards a support pillar, jump out of the vehicle, watch it plough into the building and detonate it while running away. Red Faction fans who were hoping for more tunnelling and underground fighting will be disappointed to know that RF: G is strictly a surface-based affair, but given the Hollywood-esque production values and dramatic effects that Geo Mod 2.0 combined with the new third-person perspective bring to the franchise, I believe that people will quickly begin to understand why the changes were made. After all, blowing the top off of a hill is only fun a couple of times, but bringing down a bridge never gets old.
Another major change to Red Faction tradition that cannot be overlooked is the shift to an open-world, Grand Theft Auto-style sandbox environment – allowing you to explore the surface of Mars and take on missions in any order that you want. In order to progress through the game you must liberate EDF-occupied sectors one at a time, requiring you to complete all “Guerrilla Actions” within a sector before you are allowed to move on to the next one, but as you are part of rebel faction battling to rally support and expand your influence across the colonies of Mars, this type of progression makes total sense within the context of the story and does not impede the fun in the slightest. Accordingly, all the mission types (nine in all) lend themselves well to the open-world environment and offer a good deal of variety. As a player who enjoys teamwork-based affairs, the modes I found the most entertaining were “Guerrilla Raid” (where you help your fellow Red Faction members assault and take down an EDF controlled facility), “EDF Assault” (where you must help defend a stronghold against an EDF onslaught), “House Arrest” (where you rescue detained colonists guarded by EDF thugs) and “Collateral Damage” (where you ride shotgun with a crazed fellow Guerrilla named Jenkins laying waste to EDF structures). Finally, “Demolitions Master”, a mini-game that that challenges you to take down certain buildings and structures within a certain time limit with a specific combination of weapons or tools serves not only as a mission itself, but also provides excellent practice for other challenges in the game, such hitting random EDF targets scattered throughout each sector that are not tied to missions but still offer valuable salvage. As “Demolition Master” missions are infinitely re-playable and your character essentially cannot die, they also are a great stress reliever after failing a difficult mission.
BUGS
There are still some serious gameplay bugs that need to be ironed out in single-player, however. For instance, Red Faction: Guerrilla sports a cover system much like Gears of War where the player can take cover behind objects such as walls or vehicles simply by pressing LB. However, I was unable to successfully do this during the entire eight hours that I spent with the single-player campaign. I was also able to confirm the problem with one of the other journalists that had been invited to the event, so the problem was not isolated to my console or lack of ability. Complicating matters further was the very Gears-like decision to assign the “roadie run” function to LB as well, which resulted in many instances where I would run out into the path of enemy fire instead of taking cover from it. In the end I simply gave up on the cover system and just crouched behind objects old-school. I still managed to enjoy the campaign, and I completely expect these problems to be fixed in the final build, but to not be able to fully take advantage of the dynamic cover provided by the Geo Mod 2.0 engine was a bit of a disappointment.
Another problem with the build that will hopefully be improved before the final version is the A.I., particularly NPC allies, as their competence is directly tied to the experiences that you will have when attempting to complete nearly any mission in the game. As you progress through the missions in each occupied sector and begin to wrest away control from the EDF, you will build morale in that sector, which is literally represented on your map as a thermometer-like “Morale Meter”. The higher the morale you have in a sector, the higher likelihood that fellow Guerrillas (Red Faction members and civilians alike) will come running to assist you if you instigate a conflict. This is one of the most enjoyable gameplay elements of Red Faction, as there are many missions that you will often have to start on your own or at best with a single A.I. partner, and more often than not you will find yourself outnumbered and outgunned when the EDF comes to “apprehend” you. Imagine being pinned down in a crumbling building while heavily-armed grunts close in, and then breathing a sigh of relief when a rag-tag Guerrilla cavalry arrives with guns blazing, giving you that much needed distraction to slip away, re-arm or exact deadly revenge. That said, your NPC allies sometimes fail to take cover or refuse to actually take aim and shoot, instead spinning about in circles until an enemy dispatches them with a hail of bullets, and if those walking targets happen to be civilians, they can negatively affect your morale. Also, once a conflict finishes, NPC allies are sometimes quick to disappear shortly after a conflict is resolved, such as taking out a random EDF-owned structure. This can be extremely frustrating if you are trying to take out two or more significant EDF targets within very close range of one another, as you’ll find yourself all alone again when the second round of EDF reinforcements arrive. The ability to call allies who are already on the battlefield to your aid would go a long way to ensuring you aren’t completely caught with your pants down in the middle of an extended hit and run.
Fortunately, other than the above and a few other minor bugs not worth mentioning here, the single-player campaign appears to be fairly solid, and there are still a couple more months left for Volition to tweak the game before it is released in June. I was only able to get about a third of the way through the campaign’s second sector, Dust, but when my play session ended all I could think about was regretting that I would have to wait until summer to continue where I left off.
MULTIPLAYER
On the second night of the RF: G event, all journalists were invited to the Presidential Suite of the Four Seasons Hotel to take the game’s offline and online multiplayer modes for a spin. A PS3 unit connected to the suite’s large flat-screen was set up to demonstrate “Wrecking Crew”, an offline, pass-the-controller mode much like “Demolition Master” where players take turns causing as much havoc and destruction as possible within a time limit, while a network of 16 Xbox 360 units ran a local multiplayer session. Bearing a strong, spiritual resemblance to “Crash Mode” from Criterion’s Burnout Revenge, “Wrecking Crew” features four different variations on the same theme, and the exercise in one-upmanship provided no shortage of laughs, especially once the alcohol began flowing.
However, despite the undeniable charms of “Wrecking Crew”, the real place to be was the networked Xbox 360 multiplayer table, where sixteen players at a time faced off to test the skills they had honed in the single-player campaign. While there were six multiplayer modes available from the get-go, the evening’s favourites were the classics, Anarchy (AKA Deathmatch), Team Anarchy (AKA Team Deathmatch) and Capture the Flag, as these modes were the easiest to play while everyone became used to the controls. Multiplayer controls are almost exactly the same as they are in single-player, except that the “roadie run”/cover function assigned to the LB button has been replaced with a “Backpack” function, which I will get into shortly. Obviously, the aforementioned Geo-Mod 2.0 engine is in full effect in multiplayer and just like in the single-player campaign it immediately adds an entirely new level of strategy. Have a lousy sense of direction when you’re on the way to a firefight? Punch through a concrete wall with your sledgehammer and make your own beeline for the action. Tired of that sniper who keeps picking off you and your teammates from a tower? Take down that tower with some well placed rockets and force that camping coward to change his tactics. Trying to keep the upper-hand in a nail-biting Capture-The-Flag match? Use remote charges to bring down bridges and catwalks to slow your opponents’ progress, or demolish an entire building to expose their approach routes and take them down from long range.
However, while Geo-Mod 2.0 definitely adds more than just a few new gameplay wrinkles to multiplayer, the real wild card in the mix is the Backpack. Not only are there 10 different kinds of Backpacks available, each rewarding the wearer with unique and lethal abilities, they can also be swapped out on the fly at any “backpack rack” on the battlefield, much like the weapon pickups scattered throughout each map. This means that yours and your opponents’ weapon/backpack mix can (and will) change constantly during the course of a single match, and as a result your tactics will also need to adapt just as quickly if you want to come out on top. This can be daunting at first for players who have not progressed far into the single-player campaign, as one quickly needs to get accustomed to how each individual weapon and backpack looks visually along with their respective icons. There are no text descriptions in the HUD to describe what weapons you are carrying, nor for any weapons you are about to pick up. However, once I overcame this learning curve I found the multiplayer to be quite satisfying, especially once I managed to find a weapon and backpack combination that best suited my play style.
What is really refreshing about the RF: G multiplayer is that while a skilled player with the right combo of backpack and weapon can be lethal, there is always a combo that can easily undo him or her. For example, the Stealth backpack, which grants its wearer temporary invisibility, combined with the sniper rifle is the perfect combination for a player who likes to covertly pick off his enemies from afar. However, anyone wearing the Vision backpack can see the heat signatures of all players on the map and verbally expose the enemy’s location to teammates, or take out the sniper himself with a similar long-range weapon. A Fleetfoot backpack wearer could use super-speed to quickly close the distance between herself and the sniper, run up the stairs and quickly dispatch the assassin with the sledgehammer, or a Tremor backpack wearer could sneak into the building and create a destabilizing shockwave to knock the sniper off his feet, or even bring the building crashing down around him. A Rhino backpack wearer can charge right through a building support beam to level the entire structure, and a Jetpack or Thrust pack wearer could simply use a flying leap to reach the sniper’s level and rain bullets down on him with the assault rifle. And so on. In short, finding the perfect combination of backpack and weapon to suit your style of play for each kind of situation encourages experimentation and is a big part of the fun in multiplayer.
Finally, I would be remiss to mention multiplayer without mentioning some of the fantastic level design. As practically none of the journalists at the event were able to complete Dust Sector from the single player campaign, “Wrecking Crew” and traditional “Multiplayer” were our only chances to get some hands-on time with some of the other environments that did not resemble the typical “red earth” look of the game’s early stages. Several of the multiplayer arenas are intricately designed set-pieces that realize Volition’s vision of an aggressively terraformed Mars, with snow-capped mountains, valleys lined with blossoming vegetation, and bottomless, icy crevasses, all with man-made factories, plants, residences and other structures built perilously in-between, just waiting to be blown to kingdom come in the heat of battle. I have not seen such varied and interesting multiplayer environments since Lost Planet, and the possibilities of what can be done in these levels with Geo Mod 2.0 and the wide selection of weapons, backpacks and equipment make that game seem completely tame by comparison.
PROGNOSIS
A month ago, Red Faction: Guerrilla was barely a blip on my gaming radar, but after only 11 hours of play it has officially become one of my most anticipated games of 2009, and I cannot wait to see how much tighter and polished the finished game will be. RF fans of old and action shooter fans of all types should watch this game closely. Stay tuned for more news from the event!
Preview By: Khari Taylor
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