Daily Loaf

This week, GammaTesting.com fails to forget to smash the state with Red Faction: Guerrilla. We love the entirely destructible environments, open world environment and varied gameplay. Almost as much as we love bashin’ stuff with our mining hammer. And, for the first time in a while, we actually felt like we were doing some good while playing a game. At least until Red Faction: Guerrilla 2 comes out, featuring us ruling Mars with an iron fist.

Listen up! (Then check out all the other Gamma Testing episodes.)

Gamma Testing Podcast Ep13 – Red Faction: Guerrilla

I have certain weak points – topics that just get me interested and excited without hearing more than a few words. Armed revolution against The Man is one of those. I’m a sucker for tales of bold freedom fighters living underground and facing incredible odds as they try to tear down the system. Red Faction Guerrilla not only delivers a great smash the state simulator, it also gives you a great smash EVERYTHING simulator. Indeed, on reflection, the game’s central plot of freeing Mars from the tyranny of Earth is just fine but not thrilling, but the fact that very single building is destructible ii exciting, chain-reaction inducing, Mars-shaking ways, is what makes this game a ton of fun.

You’re just a working guy, come to Mars to make your way as a miner, but when the bastard Earth Defense Forces kill your brother because he’s part of the revolutionary Red Faction, it’s time to take up your sledge hammer and fight the man. The game is an open-world, third-person actioner, with Mars divided up into six different districts. Each district offers core missions that you have to complete in order to liberate the zone, but it also has a host of side missions that lower the EDF’s control. There’s nice variety in these side missions – driving around manning a turret for an insane revolutionary, freeing captured prisoners, intercepting EDF convoys, participating in Red Faction raids, stealing cars, and of course blowing up buildings. Most people will not enjoy all of these equally, but Red Faction’s OK with that – you never have to do all the side missions, and if there’s a type you don’t enjoy you can easily ignore them completely. In fact, you could ignore them all and just go around blowing up buildings and doing the core missions if you wanted to. I admire that level of freedom in a game like this.

More review and video below the jump: Read the rest of this entry »