Red Faction Guerilla
Posted: 2009-06-03 08:04am
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.
