GameSpite: Blowing up the sandbox, Guerrilla style

Wes — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:28:14 +0000

Remember Mission to Mars and Red Planet, the two films Hollywood cranked out in 2000 that coincidentally starred imperiled astronauts on desperate trips to our closest galactic neighbor? If not, I can’t blame you — despite solid casts, both movies managed to be utterly blase. That’s what I was expecting when one of my friends showed up with Red Faction: Guerrilla last week. I’d hardly even been aware that the game existed. Maybe I’d skimmed over a demo on Xbox Live, but I quickly assumed Red Faction: Guerrilla was just another third-person shooter, an average action game with nothing but the setting of the rocky Martian surface separating it from its contemporaries.

Boy, was I wrong.

The open-world, third-person action game genre remains as flooded as ever; this year may be even more jammed than the last, with Infamous, Prototype, and Red Faction: Guerrilla all competing for sales in the month of June alone. Compared to the anticipation I’d seen on the web for Sucker Punch’s first Playstation 3 outing and the ultraviolent screenshots of Prototype, Red Faction hardly garned a bit of hype. But after a couple hours of playing Guerrilla — followed by a couple days of playing Guerrilla — I realized this sandbox action game is much more Total Recall than it is Mission to Mars. Totally ridiculous, but in such a good, good way.

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Wesley Fenlon | Not with a bang but a whimper. » red-faction-guerrilla

GameSpite: Blowing up the sandbox, Guerrilla style