by Jasdeep Sahota

Created on: July 08, 2009   Last Updated: July 18, 2009

Every great game has that profound moment, the moment you realise you're playing something special. For me in Red Faction Guerrilla it involved a brick wall and a sledge hammer.

What impressed me was how incidental the damage system was. Hit the wall straight down the middle and the bricks split in half, take a sideswipe at the edges and the corner bricks fly away. It also takes into account weight, speed and the inner construction of every object. An entire building won't be left standing on a small shattered wall and a two girders for example. After seeing it in action I came over with a destructive glee, my mind filled with all the potential carnage I could cause.

The entire game is built around its biggest strength, destruction. Whatever the mission objective you usually end up taking down a building or two, deliberately or otherwise. Specific 'Destruction targets' are marked on the map, you are constantly drip fed new upgrades (a few are total game changers) and some of the set pieces will see you gasping for breath. There are also Guerrilla actions dotted around the map outside of the main story. Some are mindless fun but others really show the true to life nature of the engine, taking down an entire building with a limited number of explosives for example.

You're also never troubled by typical open world annoyances. Your health rebounds at a balanced rate, you can flip overturned vehicles with a few taps of triangle, ammo crates are dotted around mission areas, and the sledge hammer is lethal at close range but isn't overpowered. I could go on but suffice to say, Red Faction is massively polished.

A control and morale system is put in place, both influenced by what you do in and out of missions. For example destroying a high importance target marked on the map will cause EDF (bad guys) control of an area for fall dramatically and Red Faction (good guys) morale to take a hike. With the story and characters being quite hackneyed the system is good way of involving the player and giving you an incentive to play till to the finish. It also becomes massively compulsive. 'I'll just take out one more EDF building', 'Maybe I'll do one more guerrilla action', 'oh look! A convoy just popped up, better take it down' are things your gonna be saying a lot.

You're probably thinking this is a gushing review, but sadly 'Faction does have it problems. At times it can be a bit trial and error. You're often tasked with going into a base filled to the brim with soldiers

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