Title: Red Faction Guerrilla: Re-Mars-tered
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One [reviewed]
Developer: Volition, KAIKO
Publisher: THQ Nordic
Release: July 3, 2018
Price: $29.99, Free (PC owners of original)
The Red Faction series has always been a strange one; one that never really managed to grow beyond its first iteration. What was once a bog-standard FPS, Red Faction sold itself on its GeoMod technology that allowed players to destroy just about everything they saw/wanted.
As the series progressed it lost the FPS aspect (which is fine), but it also lost the magic and scale that was GeoMod. Red Faction: Guerrilla seems to try and recapture the GeoMod styling but in doing so loses any sort of narrative structure in the process.
The story of Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered isn’t so much secondary as it’s non-existent. The opening cinematic throws you into the action and explains everything in about five minutes. I still have no idea what’s going on other than you are fighting and evil corporation on Mars because they killed your brother thirty-seconds after you arrive on Mars?
In 2018 it feels so strange for a major game to not care about the narrative like it was some NES game. Even when Red Faction: Guerrilla originally released in 2009 it felt weird. The largest problem this causes in a single-player game is that the player has no emotional reason to keep doing what they are doing.
In a multiplayer game this isn’t much of an issue, but when it’s just you there has to be a reason for the player to complete the tasks the game gives you. Since we don’t build a connection with out hero or his allies, the only reason we have to play is the destructible environments.
If you are new to the Red Faction series this might be enough as bringing down buildings is a heck of a lot of fun, but if you’re like me, you’ll be left wondering why the GeoMod technology has regressed so much since the original game. Where once the world could be altered and destroyed, now it’s relegated to structures.
This is all well and good, but because this is Mars everything is really bland and lifeless. The team did its best to mix things up with varied structures but everything ends up looking the same pretty early in the game. The game just doesn’t give the player a lot of reasons to play for extended periods of time.
Then there’s the gameplay which I can best describe as floaty. I don’t know much about Mars and its gravity but everything just feels slightly off, especially when dealing with vehicles. Everything you can drive feels the same and floaty, and while they are all wheeled vehicles they all feel like driving a broken hovercraft.
Case in point was a mission very early on in the game that has you destroying communications towers by running into them and knocking them over. This one mission highlighted all of the problems in Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered that it almost shocked me.
Since you are driving you’ll be chased by enemies in their own military rides. This makes sense, but the A.I. isn’t so much broken as it’s non-existent. Enemy vehicles will just fly at you from every which way including up. They don’t maneuver to cut you off or anything tactical, they simply target you and fly full speed at you by the dozens.
This mission was particularly bad and I was forced to replay it half a dozen times because cars were flying at me from every direction and boxing me in. If you slowed down, stopped, tried to back up you were a goner. And ground enemies are much the same way, but at least they try to take cover even if it’s in a position that exposes them even more.
The ground based fighting is better but lacks much impact early on. You run and shoot, and while you can take cover, the game doesn’t really push it. You can upgrade weapons, and some of them are a lot of fun that add to the fun, but your two main tools are going to be your hammer and your sticky bombs.
These will help you in mining ore and destroying buildings to earn scrap, which in turn is used to upgrade weapons. It’s all pretty basic but it works well enough. Taking down buildings is clearly the focus of the game and hands-down the best part of the game.
The enemies are just there to give you a bit of a challenge, but they end up just being more of a hindrance to the fun. They are a roadblock to the enjoyment Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered tries to offer up. Add in the fact the are dumb as moon rocks and you’ll hate dealing with them to get to the boom boom stuff.
This is all made worse when you start taking down buildings because the enemy forces will swarm you in droves and kill you in short order. So just when you are having some fun you realize you have troops on your ass, thus negating the joy of finding fun ways to take down structures.
The core of the game is like an open-world game broken up into regions on Mars. I don’t know the size of Mars but it sure feels pretty small. You can pick your missions but the goal is to liberate various regions from enemy control by completing tasks. There are a few other mission types other than the standard “blow up enemy building” but not many.
Graphically Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered look pretty good. It was never a great looking game to begin with and the fact that Mars is just shades of red, the team did a pretty good job. It’s not going to blow you away but it looks nice enough. You still get some stuttering when destruction gets heavy which is a shame, but it doesn’t kill the game. What might are the abysmal loading times!
Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered is a remaster of a game that wasn’t all that great to begin with. That said, it makes sense to release this one as so many people missed out in 2009 as the game launched at the start of E3. Protip: Don’t release a game the week of E3 if you aren’t a AAA studio with a huge marketing budget.
In the end Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered feels like a bit of a relic in terms of gameplay and narrative, but it’s also hard to not love the destruction elements the game gives lets us partake in. If you want a game to pop on and simply play for a few hours Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered will probaly satisfy.
If you are new to the series you can’t really go wrong here, especially at only $30. But I can’t really recommend Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered for those looking for a strong narrative or deep gameplay. If you missed this one and are a fan of the series then go for it; if not then pass or wait until it goes on sale.
Final Score:
2.5/5
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