Red Faction: Guerrilla
Hands On: Red Faction: Guerrilla is a continuation of the Red Faction series started last generation by Violation Inc. And while I confess that I never had the chance to play the original game, this (quite short) demo may make be believe I've been missing out on something quite special. However, on reflection I may just be a bit too interested in the game's weird and wonderful feature; destroyable surroundings.

Red Faction: Guerrilla shouldn't really be considered a Red Faction III by any means, a perspective swap from 1st person to 3rd person is a huge leap for a game to make, however the game does have a lot of good to be found in it. Some may not find that this is the Red Faction that they know and love, but in essence it's still there. With super destructible environments and an open world for players to explore, Red Faction: Guerrilla does play out fairly well. Of course, this demo is limited to one section of the game's world but does demonstrate how the game will play out.

But let's talk about gameplay; it's not half bad. It plays out like most 3rd person shooter games you've played. You walk about and shoot stuff. However, the creative take on weapon choice and disconnected cover system places a huge rain cloud over an otherwise sunny picture. In the Xbox 360 demo, the game requires that you hold down the RB shoulder button and then press one of the face buttons (A, B, X, Y) to select a weapon from a four-place weapon cache. Meanwhile, the D-Pad sits there unused (at least in the demo). So while weapon switching could very easily be a one-press switch, it now requires the holding down of one button and the pressing of another. The cover system, while somewhat unneeded would be a nice addition, if only it wasn't so hard to use. You tap the LB (Xbox 360) button when near a wall and equipped with a weapon to cling to it and take cover, however the 3rd person perspective doesn't give that great-a-detail as to exactly how far away from the wall you are and so pressing LB only makes you dash towards the wall.

The cover system in the game is nice though, once you get into it you can crawl along the wall you're clinging to, by continuing in the same direction when you come to an opening, you stick your head and gun out and are able to shoot. Bring the left analogue stick up to resting and you'll ease back into wall-clinging. The cover system isn't all that advantageous though, only giving you instant cover. Sticking your head out makes you vulnerable from quite a few angles, something which the AI isn't frightened of using against you. Sadly, the AI is pretty stupid. It will often ignore cover near by and continue to kneel down in a wide open space and attempt to shoot you. Even when you've moved out of line-of-sight, they will stay put, tongue out, tail wagging waiting for you to happily find the nearest vehicle to run them down with. Those who do hide behind cover are easily picked off because their head will clearly stick out from whatever crate, barrel or random metallic object which has no real purpose but is there just to give effective cover they choose to cower behind.

Where this game really excels is destructibility. The game has amazing destructibility of vehicles, objects and even buildings. This is probably the most interesting aspect of the game as the mission in the demo revolves around you breaking into an enemy strong hold and taking back a robotic walker. Fun times are had shooting smaller objects into nothing, driving vehicles into railings and smaller objects and using the walker to just completely dismantle an entire building. Sure, some of the physics are a bit "uhh..." when you've taken away the base of a building with a single wall holding up the entire complex in a corner but you know what? That doesn't matter, the fact you can take down a building completely unscripted by the game is pure awesome in digital form. In fact, the way you get into the building which holds the walker is to blow up a wall using explosive barrels found around it and then simply walk the walker out, leaving a walker-shaped hole in the door or wall or hell, just completely destroying the building it was housed in.

Visually the game is pleasing, can't say anything against them. Motion blur seems to make the game feel a lot more cinematic and it's subtle use sure helps the game's presentation, with no visible frame drop even when lots of physics-controlled objects were flying about. Some nice rag-doll effects made enemies falling into barrels realistic hang their leg over a barrel after knocking it over or enemies falling from railings to take a railing or two with them. Audio in the game is somewhat forgettable and mostly generic, but does fit right in there with the game. The opening movie to the demo was somewhat comical in the fact that it was portraying itself as this year's big no-brainer Hollywood action flick, but hopefully that wont be included in the final retail version of the game. Voice work isn't terrible from what was present in the demo.

The demo, albeit a short but sweet demo, was a very enjoyable experience. Driving, shooting and special gimmicks were all reasonable in control scheme and functionality, the destructible environments are fun to mess around with and I can see how the 16 player online multiplayer can be extremely fun indeed. Sadly, the demo doesn't cover that aspect, so we'll have to wait until retail to see if my hunches are correct. But all in all, overlooking questionable cover and weapon mechanics, Red Faction: Guerrilla seems to be a solid title.