Red Faction Guerilla
Moderator: Thanas
Red Faction Guerilla
So - I picked this up last night from Blockbuster and hoo boy, am I glad! And by glad I mean underwhelmed and by "hoo boy" I mean "meh."
Lets start with story - First you're this guy who is so generic and uninteresting his name escaped me. Alex something? Dave? Doesn't matter - we'll call him Jeff. He gets off the boat - I mean plane...damn, ship - on Mars ready to start his new life working for the EDF (Evil Dark Forces wait, no, I mean Earth Defense Force). He is apparently retarded. His brother picks him up at the airport and starts driving him to his shanty. Along the way, the EDF dudes are observed shooting people, breaking into homes, and being otherwise dickheadish. Jeff, apparently seeing....something, inquires about the "Red Faction" to which his brother suddenly becomes all talky and goes on about how "Free Mars" is dead and the EDF are all evil and dickheadish and people need something to believe in. *sigh* So, this is apparently his way of saying he IS part of the Red Faction. Jeff, of course, being retarded, does not make this connection.
At the shanty, forgetting compeltely about the EDF and Red Faction, Jeff's brother suggests they get straight to work, handing Jeff a Sledge and some dynamite. Before leaving, some chick pulls up with Christopher Walken in a truck and her and Jeff's brother start yakking about stuff that Jeff can't hear because they're four feet away and talking loudly . Jeff, in a rare moment of lucidity, swears he seen her somewhere before. (PS - he has. About ten minutes ago, on a wanted poster at the airport, he even stared wistfully at it.)
After the chick and Jeff's brother finish their Lover's tiff, Jeff and brother jump into the Space Toyota Hi-Lux and head off to do some mining so they can make the benjamins. They arrive at a...place with some stuff. Buildings. Jeff's brother tells him that the two buildings in this place have got to be brought down. Jeff, naturally, inquires why they must destroy the buildings since usually one would obtain minerals by digging underground. Jeff's brother says some stuff about scrap being like gold and they can trade it for stuff, ergo, destroying these buildings is a worthwhile endeavor. Jeff, of course, being retarded, agrees. And by agrees I mean the game forces you to go blow up the buildings. While you're setting the charges, we find out in some witty banter between Jeff and his brother, that the brother IS, in fact, Red Faction *SHOCK*, and that the Red Faction NEEDS a retard like Jeff to do stuff. Jeff, of course, being retarded says some stuff about being in trouble back on earth because of his brother and continues to blow up the buildings. Because YOU HAVE TO. Now, it should be said, that before you even enter the buildings to blow the up, Jeff's Brother spots an EDF gunship and becomes afraid, telling Jeff to be quick, and that he will keep a lookout. Does Jeff make the connection that the reason his brother might be afraid of the EDF finding out they're there is because what they're doing is WRONG?
Nah.
So after Jeff blows up the buildings, the gunship finds them, and tells Jeff's brother via loudspeaker to surrender and he's under arrest because he's a terrorist. Jeff's brother tells Jeff to run, which, I THINK he does, but then the gunship blasts Jeff's brother with about 200 rounds from a 20mm martian gatling gun of win, without a speck of blood. This of course, knocks Jeff unconcious for some reason. He finds his dead brother, and closes his dead eyes. Not bothering to bury him, he heads back to his shanty, where there are five soldiers milling about outside. Jeff gets all righteous and tells them to stop trashing his place (They were....milling about outside...) they tease him about his brother, then tell him he's under arrest, and the leader guy orders Jeff summarily executed. Then the Red Faction Show up miraculously and manage to kill everyone bu the leader guy. Jeff, of course, does it for them with his sledgehammer.
Then some guys tells him "lol u aer terrorist now."
I'm not even a little bit joking - this is how the game starts. Who did they hire to write this crap? I mean seriously. The EDF are comically evil in every sense of the word. If you near them in the overworld they're all "GET THE F%(* AWAY FROM ME!" and "WHAT THE F()%* ARE YOU LOOKING AT, A$(HOLE?!". They're not even funny. I don't feel that they're menacing, or that they're a-holes because they need to be to keep the population in check, they just are. After being the GRAND LIBERATORS in RF. It is seriously, some of the worst character development ever.
I won't spoil anything else for you - instead let's jump right into gameplay.
After watching the opening stuff, I decided it's probably best to ignore the rest of the game, and just focus on having fun blowing things up, which it is! Except that the buildings, walls, and all manner of other things are trivially easy to destroy. I understand this is what it was like in the first game, too(?). Still, it's pretty satisfying, truth be told. The combat is retardedly easy, at least so far, and the limited ammo you can carry will surely become a problem later. The system of "outrage" they have in the game (whereby doing guerilla missions, blowing up EDF stuff makes the population angry enough to join you in firefights should they see that you're in one) is silly because if they JOIN you in a firefight, and they are KILLED in the firefight (Note that I did not ASK them to join) then morale goes down. if it goes down low enough, they will stop joining you.
Also, if you die, morale goes down.
So, in a nutshell, RFG is a fairly fun game to play, because it's always fun to blow crap up with reckless abandon, but the story is complete retardation, there is no coop, which is an extreme disappointment, and the multiplayer is, as Stark put it, "Uninspired poo." All in all, if you can turn your brain off, and put up with trivially easy combat, Red Faction is probably worth a rent and a weekend of time wasting, but do not buy this game outside of a bargain bin unless there is some kind of ridiculously awesome DLC that comes out (And I cannot see how even that would make this better). I don't really want to assign a score to what amounts to a tech demo with a ham-fisted pseudo-story slapped on it, but we'll say....
5/10 for being meh, but still kind of fun.
Lets start with story - First you're this guy who is so generic and uninteresting his name escaped me. Alex something? Dave? Doesn't matter - we'll call him Jeff. He gets off the boat - I mean plane...damn, ship - on Mars ready to start his new life working for the EDF (Evil Dark Forces wait, no, I mean Earth Defense Force). He is apparently retarded. His brother picks him up at the airport and starts driving him to his shanty. Along the way, the EDF dudes are observed shooting people, breaking into homes, and being otherwise dickheadish. Jeff, apparently seeing....something, inquires about the "Red Faction" to which his brother suddenly becomes all talky and goes on about how "Free Mars" is dead and the EDF are all evil and dickheadish and people need something to believe in. *sigh* So, this is apparently his way of saying he IS part of the Red Faction. Jeff, of course, being retarded, does not make this connection.
At the shanty, forgetting compeltely about the EDF and Red Faction, Jeff's brother suggests they get straight to work, handing Jeff a Sledge and some dynamite. Before leaving, some chick pulls up with Christopher Walken in a truck and her and Jeff's brother start yakking about stuff that Jeff can't hear because they're four feet away and talking loudly . Jeff, in a rare moment of lucidity, swears he seen her somewhere before. (PS - he has. About ten minutes ago, on a wanted poster at the airport, he even stared wistfully at it.)
After the chick and Jeff's brother finish their Lover's tiff, Jeff and brother jump into the Space Toyota Hi-Lux and head off to do some mining so they can make the benjamins. They arrive at a...place with some stuff. Buildings. Jeff's brother tells him that the two buildings in this place have got to be brought down. Jeff, naturally, inquires why they must destroy the buildings since usually one would obtain minerals by digging underground. Jeff's brother says some stuff about scrap being like gold and they can trade it for stuff, ergo, destroying these buildings is a worthwhile endeavor. Jeff, of course, being retarded, agrees. And by agrees I mean the game forces you to go blow up the buildings. While you're setting the charges, we find out in some witty banter between Jeff and his brother, that the brother IS, in fact, Red Faction *SHOCK*, and that the Red Faction NEEDS a retard like Jeff to do stuff. Jeff, of course, being retarded says some stuff about being in trouble back on earth because of his brother and continues to blow up the buildings. Because YOU HAVE TO. Now, it should be said, that before you even enter the buildings to blow the up, Jeff's Brother spots an EDF gunship and becomes afraid, telling Jeff to be quick, and that he will keep a lookout. Does Jeff make the connection that the reason his brother might be afraid of the EDF finding out they're there is because what they're doing is WRONG?
Nah.
So after Jeff blows up the buildings, the gunship finds them, and tells Jeff's brother via loudspeaker to surrender and he's under arrest because he's a terrorist. Jeff's brother tells Jeff to run, which, I THINK he does, but then the gunship blasts Jeff's brother with about 200 rounds from a 20mm martian gatling gun of win, without a speck of blood. This of course, knocks Jeff unconcious for some reason. He finds his dead brother, and closes his dead eyes. Not bothering to bury him, he heads back to his shanty, where there are five soldiers milling about outside. Jeff gets all righteous and tells them to stop trashing his place (They were....milling about outside...) they tease him about his brother, then tell him he's under arrest, and the leader guy orders Jeff summarily executed. Then the Red Faction Show up miraculously and manage to kill everyone bu the leader guy. Jeff, of course, does it for them with his sledgehammer.
Then some guys tells him "lol u aer terrorist now."
I'm not even a little bit joking - this is how the game starts. Who did they hire to write this crap? I mean seriously. The EDF are comically evil in every sense of the word. If you near them in the overworld they're all "GET THE F%(* AWAY FROM ME!" and "WHAT THE F()%* ARE YOU LOOKING AT, A$(HOLE?!". They're not even funny. I don't feel that they're menacing, or that they're a-holes because they need to be to keep the population in check, they just are. After being the GRAND LIBERATORS in RF. It is seriously, some of the worst character development ever.
I won't spoil anything else for you - instead let's jump right into gameplay.
After watching the opening stuff, I decided it's probably best to ignore the rest of the game, and just focus on having fun blowing things up, which it is! Except that the buildings, walls, and all manner of other things are trivially easy to destroy. I understand this is what it was like in the first game, too(?). Still, it's pretty satisfying, truth be told. The combat is retardedly easy, at least so far, and the limited ammo you can carry will surely become a problem later. The system of "outrage" they have in the game (whereby doing guerilla missions, blowing up EDF stuff makes the population angry enough to join you in firefights should they see that you're in one) is silly because if they JOIN you in a firefight, and they are KILLED in the firefight (Note that I did not ASK them to join) then morale goes down. if it goes down low enough, they will stop joining you.
Also, if you die, morale goes down.
So, in a nutshell, RFG is a fairly fun game to play, because it's always fun to blow crap up with reckless abandon, but the story is complete retardation, there is no coop, which is an extreme disappointment, and the multiplayer is, as Stark put it, "Uninspired poo." All in all, if you can turn your brain off, and put up with trivially easy combat, Red Faction is probably worth a rent and a weekend of time wasting, but do not buy this game outside of a bargain bin unless there is some kind of ridiculously awesome DLC that comes out (And I cannot see how even that would make this better). I don't really want to assign a score to what amounts to a tech demo with a ham-fisted pseudo-story slapped on it, but we'll say....
5/10 for being meh, but still kind of fun.
- CaptHawkeye
- Sith Devotee
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Re: Red Faction Guerilla
The single player demo was fun for about 5 minutes. Then the gimmick of the building destruction wore off when I realized it was A. Hilariously easy and B. Did not apply to terrain. RFG claimed "procedural" destruction of buildings that looked quite impressive. It's pretty clear game development stopped about there. At that point the developers had this wonderful physics engine in their laps and said "well shit we kinda need a game to go with this, don't we?".
It just seems really lazy of them after all that leet demo physuks lol. Was it really so hard to just insert a couple of wave booleans on the ground here and there? That's something high school kids using 3DS Max learn. Even Bad Company had deformable terrain.
Additionally, i'm getting kind of tired with the industry fascination with home made weapons and passing them off as "original weapon design". Sorry, but nailguns, physics guns, lighting guns, and molotov cocktails are *not* unique gameplay design anymore.
It just seems really lazy of them after all that leet demo physuks lol. Was it really so hard to just insert a couple of wave booleans on the ground here and there? That's something high school kids using 3DS Max learn. Even Bad Company had deformable terrain.
Additionally, i'm getting kind of tired with the industry fascination with home made weapons and passing them off as "original weapon design". Sorry, but nailguns, physics guns, lighting guns, and molotov cocktails are *not* unique gameplay design anymore.
Best care anywhere.
Re: Red Faction Guerilla
Well, I'm easily amused by Ooooooh shiny, so I doubt that the building-killing will get old too quickly with me - The story is what's killing me - and the lack of blood/goore/whatever. I mean seriously, not even a splatter. I dunno...it is totally uninspired and the saddes tthing is that I probably had more fun playing mercenaries which had building-death as well, but a far more engrossing storyline (Not mercs 2, but playground of destruction) and was not at all ZOMGGRIMDARK. Seriously, you can't just take half-assed graphics, smear orange mist all over everything and expect people not to notice it's half-assed. How much time did they spend modelling the rubble anyway? It's seriously the prettiest part of the game. And that's just sad.CaptHawkeye wrote:The single player demo was fun for about 5 minutes. Then the gimmick of the building destruction wore off when I realized it was A. Hilariously easy and B. Did not apply to terrain. RFG claimed "procedural" destruction of buildings that looked quite impressive. It's pretty clear game development stopped about there. At that point the developers had this wonderful physics engine in their laps and said "well shit we kinda need a game to go with this, don't we?".
Re: Red Faction Guerilla
Rly? I had been led to believe that there was co-op.Chardok wrote:there is no coop, which is an extreme disappointment,
That's volition crossed off my christmas list then.
- SylasGaunt
- Sith Acolyte
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Re: Red Faction Guerilla
Eh? I've seen blood splattered about, though granted it's hardly mortal kombat levels but there's some.
One thing I noticed here that I didn't see in the Demo is that if you tear a building up enough it can suddenly collapse without warning even if you haven't knocked out the entirety of its lower levels.
One thing I noticed here that I didn't see in the Demo is that if you tear a building up enough it can suddenly collapse without warning even if you haven't knocked out the entirety of its lower levels.
- chitoryu12
- Jedi Council Member
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Re: Red Faction Guerilla
Generally, it happens if you hit the support beams first. Look for the thick metal beams in the walls and give them a few hammer whacks to knock them out, and it greatly increases the likelihood of the building toppling.SylasGaunt wrote:One thing I noticed here that I didn't see in the Demo is that if you tear a building up enough it can suddenly collapse without warning even if you haven't knocked out the entirety of its lower levels.
Re: Red Faction Guerilla
Remember in Halflife and Blood when shooting a rubbish bin and having it 'fragment' into bits was cool and 'dynamic'? That's what happens when you have a half-assed system. The way building damage works in RFG is 'better' than other stuff (maybe) but it isn't 'good'. It's 'knock triangles out because everything is 100% rigid and brittle except your hammer'.
Re: Red Faction Guerilla
Man, I must've killed a hundred dudes and I have never ever seen a drop of blood. and when your brother gets raked from the gunship, there's ZERO blood and no wounds at all on him during the cutscene. It's just a bunch of extreme laziness.
- chitoryu12
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1997
- Joined: 2005-12-19 09:34pm
- Location: Florida
Re: Red Faction Guerilla
Just a few things I wanted to know if they changed from the demo.
One, is the mission timer gone?
Two, is the stress system fixed so that structures no longer defy physics and stay standing if only one of their four supports is still intact?
One, is the mission timer gone?
Two, is the stress system fixed so that structures no longer defy physics and stay standing if only one of their four supports is still intact?
Re: Red Faction Guerilla
Most missions don't have a timer. The structures are still dumb though.
Then you get teh nanoz and the game becomes retarded.
Then you get teh nanoz and the game becomes retarded.
- Ford Prefect
- Emperor's Hand
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Re: Red Faction Guerilla
STALINSOPOT!?Stark wrote:Then you get teh nanoz
The second game might have been ass, but like the first game it had its charms. In this case StalinSopot.
What is Project Zohar?
Here's to a certain mostly harmless nutcase.
Here's to a certain mostly harmless nutcase.
- SylasGaunt
- Sith Acolyte
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- Location: GGG
Re: Red Faction Guerilla
Sometimes, sometimes not. When buildings get really torn up they get kind of unstable. I dunno what finally causes it but sometimes a building will seem to be holding rock solid with only a few scraps holding it up like in the demo.. of course other times a similarly torn up building will collapse on your head when you walk in to lay some more charges. I have seen torn up buildings gradually fail and collapse though instead of just standing there forever, though they seem to vary wildly over how soon they collapse depending on where and how you've damaged them.chitoryu12 wrote:
Two, is the stress system fixed so that structures no longer defy physics and stay standing if only one of their four supports is still intact?
Re: Red Faction Guerilla
That's obviously because they don't simulate structure physics all the time. It's the same reason why detonating 5 charges at once might not destroya building, but detonating them each in turn will; because the longer it simulates physics before deciding 'it's stable' the longer it has to fall down.
This is how drainpipes and ladders can hold up buildings.
This is how drainpipes and ladders can hold up buildings.
Re: Red Faction Guerilla
*Sigh*
"Nanite Launcher" (Nanoforge rifle) = You win.
Seriously, did we NEED more game-breaking weapons beyond the Rock-it Launcher? Was it REALLY a problem for the devs?
"Man, I just did this mission on insane, and I ran out of charges and rock-its. If only we had a gun that melted everything destructible within a 3 meter radius of where the round impacted."
"WAIT A MINUTE! We're GAME developers! Why CAN'T we do that?"
"Come on, we have the rock-it launcher already, that would just be silly."
"Silly, please, you honestly think people expect a GOOD game from us? I mean, just lookit Saint's Row 2 - Everyone hated that that and it wasn't even a little fun to play!"
"I guess you're right."
ENTER THE NANOFORGE!!!!!!!!!!
Building melter 2.0
"Nanite Launcher" (Nanoforge rifle) = You win.
Seriously, did we NEED more game-breaking weapons beyond the Rock-it Launcher? Was it REALLY a problem for the devs?
"Man, I just did this mission on insane, and I ran out of charges and rock-its. If only we had a gun that melted everything destructible within a 3 meter radius of where the round impacted."
"WAIT A MINUTE! We're GAME developers! Why CAN'T we do that?"
"Come on, we have the rock-it launcher already, that would just be silly."
"Silly, please, you honestly think people expect a GOOD game from us? I mean, just lookit Saint's Row 2 - Everyone hated that that and it wasn't even a little fun to play!"
"I guess you're right."
ENTER THE NANOFORGE!!!!!!!!!!
Building melter 2.0
Re: Red Faction Guerilla
Wait, you know what? I'm going to ask some more questions.
#1 - If Ultor had the Melt Thing 2000 like a hundred years ago, why in GODS name do they bother with human miners? Clearly the thing does not affect usable ore, given that you can mine with it.
#2 - If Ultor had the Melt Thing 2000 like a hundred years ago, why in GODS name didn't they bother, like, I dunno, shooting the EDF with it when they came to crash their party?
#3 - If Ultor had the Melt Thing 2000 like a hundred years ago, why in GODS name did they just LEAVE it there for who-the-hell-ever to pick up?
#4 - Why in the dogshit did the EDF never find this APPRENTLY EXTREMELY IMPORTANT MELTER THING THAT THE CAPTAIN OF THE HYDRA CLEARLY KNEW EXISTED in the hundred years they've been oppressing (Read: Upholding democracy) on Mars?
Man, could I ever go on....
#1 - If Ultor had the Melt Thing 2000 like a hundred years ago, why in GODS name do they bother with human miners? Clearly the thing does not affect usable ore, given that you can mine with it.
#2 - If Ultor had the Melt Thing 2000 like a hundred years ago, why in GODS name didn't they bother, like, I dunno, shooting the EDF with it when they came to crash their party?
#3 - If Ultor had the Melt Thing 2000 like a hundred years ago, why in GODS name did they just LEAVE it there for who-the-hell-ever to pick up?
#4 - Why in the dogshit did the EDF never find this APPRENTLY EXTREMELY IMPORTANT MELTER THING THAT THE CAPTAIN OF THE HYDRA CLEARLY KNEW EXISTED in the hundred years they've been oppressing (Read: Upholding democracy) on Mars?
Man, could I ever go on....
- Ford Prefect
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Re: Red Faction Guerilla
It's hilarious that from this framework you could easily build a compelling narrative and world. You know, if it wasn't entirely broken and stupid.
What is Project Zohar?
Here's to a certain mostly harmless nutcase.
Here's to a certain mostly harmless nutcase.
Re: Red Faction Guerilla
Y'know a part of me wants to know where they're going with the maruders = ultor, ghost of Parker business. But the game is just so much not-fun I don't think I can play it anymore.
Once you get to Oasis, it's NOT EVEN MARS ANYMORE. It's just Mercenaries 2 but less fun.
Once you get to Oasis, it's NOT EVEN MARS ANYMORE. It's just Mercenaries 2 but less fun.