Review: Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered

You’ll be blowing more than the bloody doors off in Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered.

Title: Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered
Platform: PC, Xbox One, PS4 (reviewed)
Developer: Volition, Kaiko
Publisher: THQ Nordic
Release date: Out now
tl;dr: The perfect game for those who want to destroy shit!
Price: Console – Â£25/$30
PC – Â£15/$20
Family Focus: Click here for more information.

Back in 2009, THQ Nordic (or THQ as they were known back then) published the third installment in the third person shooter series, Red Faction. This was Red Faction Guerrilla, which was met with favourable reviews, but unfortunately, after the release of the fourth game, Armageddon, THQ decided to drop the brand, and the Red Faction name faded into obscurity. Fast forward to 2018 and Red Faction Guerrilla has been remastered, or should I say “Re-Mars-tered,” but the question remains – why? THQ dropped Red Faction due to poor sales, so unless there’s a reboot in the works and they want to test the market to see if people are still interested, I don’t see why we have a remastered version of a 2009 title that no one asked for.

Now, after that statement, you probably think that I didn’t like this game… Well, you would be wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed my time revisiting Mars, as I love my open world environments and with the added bonus of blowing shit up and smashing buildings with a sledgehammer; I couldn’t be more excited to dive into the experience all over again, and if there was a reboot with current gen tech, you can sign me up!

Red Faction Guerrilla has you follow the story of Alec Mason, a miner who has taken up residence on Mars with his brother Daniel, who is part of the rebel group, Red Faction, and they take the fight to the group government organisation, The Earth Defense Force, or EDF. Alec is reluctant at first to join, but after the EDF murder his brother, he’s ready to overthrow them. The story has you go around the various districts scattered about Mars to destroy the various bases of the EDF, which can get a tad boring after a while… the plot keeps you going because you want to know how the rebellion plays out, and it unlocks more of your arsenal, but the missions get repetitive traipsing back and forth between locales.

Unfortunately, there are issues in this remaster which were present in the original release back in 2009. For example, the vehicle controls are still sloppy, and they bounce about a lot; I know it’s set on Mars, but still! It makes things hard to control, especially when you need precision; for example, there’s mission early on where you need to knock over communication towers whilst escaping the EDF, but due to the floaty nature of the vehicles, you miss the towers about 70% of the time.Â The other issue is to do with gunplay, which doesn’t have the traditional aim down the sights with L2 or LB mechanic; instead, you’re forced to click the right stick, which I know is a minor complaint, but where L2/LB is the staple button for aim nowadays, you would have thought they would have included the option to change the configuration… which is unfortunate, because even now, I try and press L2 to aim down sights.

Let’s talk about the remastered aspects of the game, and let’s just say they do a good job of polishing a nine-year-old game. With the brand new lighting, shadows, and post-processing accompanied with updated textures, although the pre-rendered cutscenes and character models give its age away. However, it performs very well, at an almost perfect 60 FPS on 1080p with the occasional slowdown during big firefights; the game also runs well at 4K resolutions, although the slowdowns are more noticeable in areas where you trigger larger explosions.

Aside from the visuals, Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered doesn’t offer any extras to returning players like new weapons, expansions on the story, or challenges except for the original DLC thatÂ comes with the remaster. This means the original’s issues are still present, which is generally the masses of open areas that don’t have much to do, but the argument could be that this is how a recently terraformed Mars would look to start off with.

Overall, if you’re looking for an open world adventure filled with destruction, then Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered is right up your street, as the satisfaction of knocking down buildings by directly assaulting the support beams with your sledgehammer or carefully placing explosive charges fills my heart with pure joy; you can literally destroy anything except for the terrain, but buildings and structures like smoke stacks or windmills are fair game. Unfortunately, after a while, this may lose its appeal through the lengthy campaign with weak character development, as you are just sent on mission after mission without any real character interaction. However, I highly recommend checking out this game. It’s worth the price and definitely worth your time if you enjoy unadulterated destruction, plus as you continue through the campaign, you’ll unlock more weapons such as the rocket launcher, which brings all new destruction ideas into play!

(One last note; whoever came up with the title Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered… I love you and thank you for your service in the world of puns!)

The Good

The excitement to destroy buildings and structures is pure ectascy.

Near perfect 60 FPS makes the game a joy to revisit.

Damn, I love destroying shit!