Red Faction Guerilla

Third person/action. Sandbox.

The Good.

This is basically grand theft auto on mars. Unlock different zones for the terrorist group The Red Faction on the planet as you play carjack and kill people for the greater good. There are a variety of different weapons but you can't be separated from your hammer which you can use to smash buildings, people or anything that gets in your way. There are loads of different missions to do with plenty of variation. There is not story or long cut scenes to drive you mad. You can do what you like until you die when you are teleported to a home base with few consequences. There's even a mayhem counter that tots up damage costs for the enemy. The best bit: completely destructible maps and a gun that dissolves buildings.

The Bad.

The AI is very poor with helpers often standing in your way or getting themselves killed when you were supposed to be rescuing them. The computer enemies seem to know where you are all the time so it's hard to hide when you're damaged. The biggest problem though is the money system where you collect salvage by running around collecting it from the floor like sonic, which is a slow process you then use it to pay for your upgrades and weapons. This is normal practice in most games and fine but it's so hard to find you have to aimlessly wonder around for hours smashing stuff up to get it in the earlier levels, which can get a bit tedious, you will probably never buy all the weapons. The weapons don't hold much ammo which can be quite frustrating when you run out and the enemies have infinite supplies and always know where you are at which point you have to run to a red crate to refill a little bit, you can buy upgrade but it isn't much more and it's more wondering around in the desert blowing shit up for salvage which is fun to a point. Friends often have better weapons so you find yourself bludgeoning them to death for them because you A: can't afford them or B can't find them anywhere else.

The Rating.

Despite this massive negative section. This is a really fun and playable game but the greatest joy is destroying property and breaking into enemy bases to see how much damage you can get away with before escaping in a tank. This is worth a buy if you see it cheap but don't shell out loads for it! The more you play it though the more you'll like it.

Larnerman