I got an odd impression from Red Faction: Guerilla when I got to view a demo by the design team at THQ. And by odd, I mean wonderful. As I watched Jason Whiteside, art director for the game, guide the protagonist around the surface of Mars, I felt that same giddy rush I had when I was a little kid smashing a sandcastle I spent hours making.
The game takes place in 2175 A.D. or so on Mars — originally inhabited by colonists from Earth but made inhabitable by terraforming. The protagonist is a normal human Martian citizen who gets caught up in a political revolution against the draconian government, the Earth Defense Force.
While the story was interesting, the destruction you can wreak in the game was the main draw. Almost every structure in the game is completely destroyable. You can take a sledge hammer and use it to take apart a building piece by piece and then watch it collapse. Or you can use a guns that makes microscopic machines dissemble the building to dust. Dreamy sigh.
I don’t know why watching things blow up has such a hold on me. Maybe the desire to crush video game buildings is as primal – for me at least – as the desire to eat pizza or push someone in a pool at a fancy party.
Anyway the ability to destroy things completely isn’t there just for aesthetics; you can use the havoc to your advantage. I watched Whiteside guide the main character across a bridge and break it up piece by piece with a sledgehammer, causing chunks to rain down on the EDF below him.
The game’s creators say that the full version of the game will have at least 12 square kilometers of space to roam around in, as well as six different types of environments.
I wasn’t able to play the game, which will be available the first quarter 2009. However, I’m already warming up my Gamefly (like Netflix for games) queue, so it’ll be ready when Red Faction hit’s the market.
The original Red Faction gained high marks from players … the sequel not so much. However I’m thinking this third version of the game will rekindle the franchise’s embers.
Or at least make THQ a lot of money.
