I bought this game at release on Xbox 360 and found it to be an incredible technical showpiece but not much fun to play. My 2nd crack at it on PC ended the same way. Red Faction Guerrilla's main hook is, even 10 years later, still a really good one: the destruction. The way you can destroy buildings bit by bit and watch them break apart and collapse is still pretty remarkable, and it's not scripted. it comes with limitations, like lots of copy pasted buildings and a generally dull setting, but honestly, it works. This game really does look the way one would expect a mining colony on Mars to look. There are several different sectors that all look different and have a different feel, so there is variety.

A game that lets you go nuts and blow up tons of stuff sounds like it should be a blast. But it's really not, thanks to the way the game forces you to play as a hit-and-run guerrilla. The enemies swarm and attack at the slightest provacation - it's like GTA where the alert level goes to 3 stars immediately. Their ferocity, accuracy, and tendency to spawn right behind you while you're dealing with enemies in front of you really sucks a lot of fun out of the game.

That said, the game does get a bit more manageable around mid-game, with better weapons and upgrades, until the enemies reset in the last sector with massive shields, super powerful weapons, and even more swarms. At that point I just turned off the game, it wasn't fun anymore. Ultimately, I'm not sure why Volition was so hesitant to let us just go nuts as a superpowerful one man army. There's a lot more here that gets in the way, like limited ammo counts, high upgrade costs, and confusing navigation, especially on the last sector. I wanted to love this game, and this version runs well and plays nicely with mouse and keyboard, but it's just frustrating to play and not fun.

I bought this game at release on Xbox 360 and found it to be an incredible technical showpiece but not much fun to play. My 2nd crack at it on PC ended the same way. Red Faction Guerrilla's main hook is, even 10 years later, still a really good one: the destruction. The way you can destroy buildings bit by bit and watch them break apart and collapse is still pretty remarkable, and it's not scripted. it comes with limitations, like lots of copy pasted buildings and a generally dull setting, but honestly, it works. This game really does look the way one would expect a mining colony on Mars to look. There are several different sectors that all look different and have a different feel, so there is variety. A game that lets you go nuts and blow up tons of stuff sounds like it should be a blast. But it's really not, thanks to the way the game forces you to play as a hit-and-run guerrilla. The enemies swarm and attack at the slightest provacation - it's like GTA where the alert level goes to 3 stars immediately. Their ferocity, accuracy, and tendency to spawn right behind you while you're dealing with enemies in front of you really sucks a lot of fun out of the game. That said, the game does get a bit more manageable around mid-game, with better weapons and upgrades, until the enemies reset in the last sector with massive shields, super powerful weapons, and even more swarms. At that point I just turned off the game, it wasn't fun anymore. Ultimately, I'm not sure why Volition was so hesitant to let us just go nuts as a superpowerful one man army. There's a lot more here that gets in the way, like limited ammo counts, high upgrade costs, and confusing navigation, especially on the last sector. I wanted to love this game, and this version runs well and plays nicely with mouse and keyboard, but it's just frustrating to play and not fun.