Welcome to my all-time favorite destruction derby game – Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-Tered (Yes, THQ, we saw what you did there, and we love it). The game is almost a decade old, but blasts its way onto the Nintendo Switch, packing lots of explosive and hammering fun! Let’s get reviewing.
Red Faction?
For those unfamiliar with the Red Faction Series – Red Faction is a game series about colonizing Mars, mainly for mining purposes. The game spawned four games in total, with Guerrilla, being the third, and best installment in the series (in my opinion). Red Faction: Guerrilla takes place in the year 2126, a whopping 51 years after the first installment. The Earth Defense Force, or EDF, the allies in the original Red Faction, have become the main antagonist of Guerrilla. Although initially supportive of the Martian miners, Earth’s natural resources have run scarce, and as a result, its world economy has collapsed from rampant speculation of commodities and lack of production. Under pressure by Earth’s corporations and leaders to acquire the resources of Mars at any cost and at a pace to meet Earth’s high demand, the EDF has forced Martian society into a permanent state of unfree labor. Welcome to a world of Martial Law, in which the EDF controls everything and even commits large scale genocide to revoke its laws. The newly reformed “Red Faction” arises to revolt against the EDF, drive them off the planet, and begin fairer negotiations with Earth.
Miner for hire
Guerrilla Warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a type of asymmetric warfare: competition between opponents of unequal strength. It is also a type of irregular warfare: that is, it aims not simply to defeat an enemy, but to win popular support and political influence, to the enemy’s cost. Accordingly, the guerrilla strategy aims to magnify the impact of a small, mobile force on a larger, more-cumbersome one.[3] If successful, guerrillas weaken their enemy by attrition, eventually forcing them to withdraw. By destroying the EDF forces and their structures, you will gain the support of the people of Mars. Morale will increase, you will get more resources to upgrade your gear and people will join forces when they see you are in a pickle! Tactically, guerrillas usually avoid confrontation with large units and formations of enemy troops but seek and attack small groups of enemy personnel and resources to gradually deplete the opposing force while minimizing their own losses. The guerrilla prizes mobility, secrecy, and surprise, organizing in small units and taking advantage of terrain that is difficult for larger units to use.
Hammertime!
Red Faction Guerrilla uses these aspects to the maximum. Mason is armed with a sledgehammer and mines as primary weapons. You can equip yourself with other types of weapons, ranging from shotguns to submachine guns and rocket launchers. But nothing beats blowing up some EDF guys with mines or cracking some skulls with your sledgehammer, Half-Life 2 style. Add in the fact that you can destroy everything around you, and you get yourself a great game, with lots of tactical movement and options to create diversions or ambush EDF forces.
Then the question remains – why is it called the Re-Mars-Tered edition? Well, THQ updated the lighting, shadows, shaders and some post-processing effects (I don’t know much about how these work) to really tune up the way the game looks. No, it’s not a modern-day-standard game, but I don’t play Nintendo for those quality games. I play Nintendo Switch for the entertainment value. THQ Really delivers a solid port of a great game from 2009. I do recommend playing this game with the Pro Controller. For the sake of the review, I played most of the time in handheld mode, just to see if I could (since it’s a third-person shooter). And yes, you can and, yes it works, but it feels better with a Pro Controller.
So, if you are into Mars-games and want to experience a top-notch port of a great Red Faction game? Then pick up this Re-Mars-ter of a game. If you want something more up to today’s standards, pick up a PS4 or Xbox One/Scarlett instead. I’m going back to liberating Mars from the EDF. Mason out.
