Red Faction: Guerilla demo released

[chitoryu12]

So, I just finished downloading the demo for Red Faction: Guerilla last night, and I've been playing today for the past four hours.

The demo is pretty small, and only gives you about three distinct areas to blow the shit out of as you go to steal a construction mech, then there's a chase down the highway with you using the rocket turret on the back of a flatbed to hold off the EDF trucks. Despite the small area you have for free-roaming, it's enough to prove that the game, when released, will be fucking awesome.

The most obvious aspect is Geo-Mod 2.0. When they said everything could be destroyed, technically they lied; you can't deform the terrain. Other than that, you can have at just about everything else. The remote charges, disappointingly, are pretty small in their explosive power, and even four of them aren't enough to take out a building the size of my house. Still, they took out large portions of the walls and roof, and unlike a certain game where previews hyped the destructible environments *coughbadcompanycough*, you really can bring the buildings down. Unfortunately, there's not much difference in the materials. Metal breaks into pieces like you're smashing apart drywall, and rock and concrete both crumble into large pieces and dust clouds. Instead of bending the metal walls when hitting them with a car, they just break like you snapped a cracker into pieces. The other major problem is that the buildings can defy physics to stay up. I've taken out so much of a building's walls that it should have logically collapsed, but it stayed standing on a few pieces of wall the width of my own torso until I smashed out one or two, bringing it down. Pieces also have an unfortunate tendency to phase through the terrain and disappear, especially when a large section of the roof just disappeares into the sand while the rest disintegrates into its component pieces.

The sledgehammer, funny enough, is perhaps the strongest weapon in the game. You wield it like the mighty Thor, and it's small beans to remove metal support columns and concrete walls just by whacking them. It's very good for precision destruction: putting small holes in walls to climb or shoot through, taking out load-bearing pieces of a building until it collapses, hitting an EDF soldier so hard he smashes down a rock wall, etc.

The best moment was when I took it to a ten-room, two-story building near the objective. I knocked down the rear walls, then went up to the second story (exterior staircases and a catwalk along the front face) and started smashing out the floor with downward swings. Suddenly, the whole rest of the floor collapsed and dropped me onto into the room below. Undeterred, I whacked my way through the interior walls until I got to the last room, the screen and controller shaking the whole time as dust fell from the ceiling. Right as I began to whack at the last room, there was an ominous rumbling and cracking. I said "Oh, shit," and ran out the door. I turned around just in time to see the left two-thirds of the building collapse on their own footprint in a cloud of dust, right before the right third toppled over.

The driving is pretty polished as well. There's a good variety of vehicles for the demo: a big-ass pickup, a one-man transport (basically a glass pod with a small, flat bed behind it), a futuristic Humvee (some with machine guns or explosive plasma guns), a six-wheel APC, a box truck, a flatbed (non-drivable, though you do get to man a rocket turret on the rear for a car chase), and a construction mech. The driving isn't at all hard, and all the vehicles except the small transport can easily smash through buildings.

The mech is especially fun. It basically walks through whatever you want it to, including the hanger it's placed in. Along with just walking through everything, you can swing both arms left and right, as well as smash them down or sweep them up to launch cars. One swing can total a car, and unlike most games, the turret gunners on trucks WILL fall out if the vehicle flips.

The ending vehicle chase is basically a chance to show off the explosives and physics when a near-miss with a rocket knocks a truck around. The AI are actually pretty good drivers, not at all like I expected, and don't go crazy over the road. I expected to be able to shoot the big power-generator windmills down and watch them crush some cars, but they're surprisingly resilient; it took two or three rockets to the thinnest part of the tower to bring it down, and even a truck smashing through half the supports didn't take it down.

[CaptHawkeye]

If they don't get rid of that fucking mission timer it'll be awful no matter how cool the physics are. I thought we learned 20 years ago that arbitrarily god-handing the player in a game was a very bad design choice?

Other than that blatant insult it's fairly good. I sometimes think the destruction is a bit *too* generous, just like Bad Company. Generally this is done to make it clear that "rarar destructible environments are now a possibility!" in current gen games. The problem is it sometimes makes the environments laughably fragile. Don't get me wrong, I want my deformable terrain. I just don't want a guy with a hammer to be capable of bringing down sky scrapers.

[Stark]

Wait, a demo released before the game came out?

What is this, 2001??!!?!? I'm stunned!

[chitoryu12]

Since they advertised it as an "open-world" game, I'm going to assume it'll be a sandbox-style game without you worrying about timers except in certain missions. Hopefully.

Sometimes, though, the destruction is either too fragile or too tough. I was confronted by basically a futuristic porta-potty, and managed to bash off every single wall until the roof was attached only to the pipe coming from the water tanks, yet it still stayed perfectly attached, even though the weight would have presumably broken the pipe as the roof no longer had support. Similarly, when faced with the windmills in the car chase, just two of the four supports are enough to keep the whole thing in the ground. You would expect it to have toppled over after losing one.

And I reiterate that metal, wood, plastic, and plaster walls all break like drywall. When I whack metal with a sledgehammer, I expect it to bend, not break into pieces. Still, it certainly makes it easier to break a hole to get into a building with just your Hammer of Thor (tm).

One thing I especially don't like is that the EDF security dudes automatically known when to attack you. If you're just walking by the solar panels at the start of the mission, they don't have any problem with you. Go over by a building? "We've got a problem here!" *BLAMBLAMBLAM*. Similarly, they know it's you who just detonated those remote charges on the Mysterious Explosive Substance Tanks (tm) and blew away two porta-potties nearby, even if you weren't in the area and nobody was around you when the detonator was hit.

[Oscar Wilde]

I noticed some quirks with the physics as well, I'm going to, for the moment, attribute it to being a demo and having some glitches.
I've brought down walls and watched buildings collapse. I even got one of the chemical offices roofs to slowly sink, giving me a small ridge.
And actually stealing the mech, plowing through everything...
I only hope the gunship is in it. Think how rad that would be, fly around an enemy compound launching chainguns and rockets, run out of ammo, crash into the big bads building, such shenanigans and etc.

[chitoryu12]

They showed a fighter jet quite prominently in the opening cinematic/trailer (It was FMV, though), so there's a possibility that some air vehicles will appear in the game, though not necessarily in the capacity to be piloted. However, seeing how large the map is, it would likely be a good idea for them to implement aircraft, if only to speed travel.

[Enigma]

I'm assuming the demo was for the Xbox360\PS3? I'm going all over the place to find a PC demo version.

[chitoryu12]

I'm assuming the demo was for the Xbox360\PS3? I'm going all over the place to find a PC demo version.

Apparently, yes. The Wiki article states that only the consoles got the demo.

[Enigma]

Crap. I also noticed the PC version of the full game comes out two months after console. I assume the demo for the PC will probably be available in a couple of months? Bah!

[Stark]

I didn't want to ruin the 'omg whut damn consoles' stuff by predicting it.

What are the multi options like?

[Aaron]

Seeing as this is only available to Gold members at the moment, how does this compare to the last open-world game I played, Far Cry 2? Namely does it suffer from "suicidal space jeeps" and do the buildings pop back up after five minutes?

[DesertFly]

Seeing as this is only available to Gold members at the moment, how does this compare to the last open-world game I played, Far Cry 2? Namely does it suffer from "suicidal space jeeps" and do the buildings pop back up after five minutes?

Not sure what "suicidal space jeeps" means, but it seems that you can actually have an effect, at least on buildings. Of course, the demo is only one mission, and it can be finished in ~10 minutes, so who knows if you'll be able to go back later and have the place still destroyed, or if it will magically get better. Ideally it would be a mix where some of them have been repaired, or jury-rigged back up, but I sincerely doubt that.

Guns are disappointingly underpowered, and wielding the hammer makes you basically Thor. The regenerating health informs that aspect as well. At least the explosives you start with are fairly effective, and the turret you use during the end chase is suitably impressive (if ridiculously easy, even compared to the rest of the level.)

[Stark]

If it leaves your destruction behind I would be very surprised. Even games with 'building destroyed y/n' flags eventually reset them, so with actual complex deformation it's unlikely they stay that way.

[Aaron]

Not sure what "suicidal space jeeps" means, but it seems that you can actually have an effect, at least on buildings. Of course, the demo is only one mission, and it can be finished in ~10 minutes, so who knows if you'll be able to go back later and have the place still destroyed, or if it will magically get better. Ideally it would be a mix where some of them have been repaired, or jury-rigged back up, but I sincerely doubt that.

In Far Cry 2 the baddies patrolled in Land Rovers, Jeeps and an old coupe and if they spotted you or you blew through a checkpoint they would give chase. And no matter how many you destroyed, they would just keep committing suicide. Hence "suicide jeeps". I wondered if this suffered from the same.

[Stark]

When you said 'suicide jeep' I thought you were referring to the way that the driving AI consisted of nothing but 'drive towards player', so that if you saw a jeep coming the other way, as soon as it ID'd you it would TURN DIRECTLY INTO A HEAD-ON COLLISION.

[Aaron]

When you said 'suicide jeep' I thought you were referring to the way that the driving AI consisted of nothing but 'drive towards player', so that if you saw a jeep coming the other way, as soon as it ID'd you it would TURN DIRECTLY INTO A HEAD-ON COLLISION.

I forgot about that bit.

[Erik von Nein]

As far as your question, Kendall? Yeah, there are suicidal space jeeps. Well, APCs and jeeps. Especially in the end chase. No matter how many you kill they just keep on coming. Same with the part previous. They just keep driving trucks loads of grunts up to your position and vomit forth some more cannon fodder until you're drowning in their bodies. At least, that's what I guess their plan is.

[CaptHawkeye]

When you said 'suicide jeep' I thought you were referring to the way that the driving AI consisted of nothing but 'drive towards player', so that if you saw a jeep coming the other way, as soon as it ID'd you it would TURN DIRECTLY INTO A HEAD-ON COLLISION.

Or how they could just be driving down the road after a nice smoothie at the local gas station, would see a typical 2 civic quickly whiz by and IMMEDIATELY know it was the player. After which they would of course follow the aforementioned KAMIKAZE AI mode.

[chitoryu12]

I think it really depends on the area. During the demo, you could be on the road or in the starting area by a bunch of solar panels at the edge of a small cliff dropping down to a chemical depot. The guards would threaten you, but they wouldn't attack unless you went toward one of the chemical depots or walker hanger (basically all of the buildings). You can also drive or walk down the road, and they won't attack unless you try to go through the gate.

For building destruction, it's pretty much guaranteed that they'll pop back up after a certain amount of time or certain distance away, though I don't know the exact time or distance.

[Enigma]

I think it really depends on the area. During the demo, you could be on the road or in the starting area by a bunch of solar panels at the edge of a small cliff dropping down to a chemical depot. The guards would threaten you, but they wouldn't attack unless you went toward one of the chemical depots or walker hanger (basically all of the buildings). You can also drive or walk down the road, and they won't attack unless you try to go through the gate.

For building destruction, it's pretty much guaranteed that they'll pop back up after a certain amount of time or certain distance away, though I don't know the exact time or distance.

From what I understood, that if you destroy a military building, it gets rebuilt stronger than before so theoretically, you cannot destroy it the same way twice.

[chitoryu12]

From what I understood, that if you destroy a military building, it gets rebuilt stronger than before so theoretically, you cannot destroy it the same way twice.

That's a first for a free-roaming game: logical rebuilding of the game world to fit the player's skill. How far do you think the upgrading of buildings will go?

[Enigma]

From what I understood, that if you destroy a military building, it gets rebuilt stronger than before so theoretically, you cannot destroy it the same way twice.

That's a first for a free-roaming game: logical rebuilding of the game world to fit the player's skill. How far do you think the upgrading of buildings will go?

We won't know until it goes retail now won't we? Most likely it'll be a pathetic attempt and that in no way will the AI develop a building that cannot be destroyed\infiltrated.

[chitoryu12]

Making an indestructible building would kill the whole game, anyway. Most of the fun I had playing the demo was from knocking down all the different buildings. A player who plays long enough will eventually have destroyed and rebuilt every building in the game, and if they were all made to the point they couldn't even be brought down again, then what? Geo-Mod 2.0 goes right down the toilet, and you're left with another third-person freeroamer.

[Enigma]

Making an indestructible building would kill the whole game, anyway. Most of the fun I had playing the demo was from knocking down all the different buildings. A player who plays long enough will eventually have destroyed and rebuilt every building in the game, and if they were all made to the point they couldn't even be brought down again, then what? Geo-Mod 2.0 goes right down the toilet, and you're left with another third-person freeroamer.

I do hope that Geo-Mod 2.0 gets implemented in other games like GTAIV. Think about it, destroy a bridge\house\building\left testicle\etc... and it gets rebuilt but from a different design within a resonable amount of time.

[chitoryu12]

Making an indestructible building would kill the whole game, anyway. Most of the fun I had playing the demo was from knocking down all the different buildings. A player who plays long enough will eventually have destroyed and rebuilt every building in the game, and if they were all made to the point they couldn't even be brought down again, then what? Geo-Mod 2.0 goes right down the toilet, and you're left with another third-person freeroamer.

I do hope that Geo-Mod 2.0 gets implemented in other games like GTAIV. Think about it, destroy a bridge\house\building\left testicle\etc... and it gets rebuilt but from a different design within a resonable amount of time.

Fuck yes! Imagine crashing a helicopter into Star Junction with fully-destructible buildings.