Red Faction: Guerrilla - Enjoying the Destruction

So, I know I've been quiet these past few months. And now I'm here on Blogger again. But you all know why. Life's been a busy crazy ride for a while now, and it's only starting to calm down. I won't bore you with too many details, but I am indeed finding myself head over heels in love with a beautiful girl who drooled on me one random night in her sleep. I'm still working at the Department of Veterans Affairs. I'm 4 months out from finishing my Masters in Information Systems. I'm the Art Director for a soon-to-be launched geek interest site. I'm reading a crap-ton of comics from Ground Zero in Strongsville, Ohio. I'm still doing comics and other art for Ten Ton Hammer. And I'm still playing games whenever I actually can squeeze some time in with one.

That's probably why you're here at all reading my blog, so then you'd probably like to know what it is I've been playing. Ladies and Gentlemen... let me detail the beauty of Red Faction: Guerrilla. I'm not playing any MMOGs at the moment, as I await Champions Online. I've been dabbling in Left 4 Dead, Rock Band 2, and The Orange Box a bit. That is until I took a leap of faith based on a game-store clerk's opinion and purchased Red Faction.

How do I put this game's enjoyment into words? Let's put it this way: when I sleep I dream of either naked ladies or destroying buildings with my sledgehammer. Or Don Knots. But let's not get into that last one.

I was tempted to get Prototype instead just because the thought of ninja-kicking a helicopter seemed too enticing to pass up, but I am very pleased I went with what the store's peon suggested. RF:G is a third-person open-world shooter that has you playing the role of a mining colonist on Mars who gets caught up in a struggle for the control of the planet's terraformed landmass. You see, virtually everything on Mars is controlled by the giant conglomerate militaristic corporation called the Earth Defense Force. When you arrive on the surface, you just want to make a living and enjoy your life... but your brother's a member of Red Faction a Che Guevara-like movement to free the people of Mars from the EDF. When he's killed for apparently no reason at all, that's when you get pissed and take up his mantle as liberator.

The game then folds out with a series of missions and random occurrences and miscellaneous goals that basically have you destroying every building erected by EDF, and killing lots and lots of the little military bastards. As you break down the walls of their strongholds, the colonists begin to rally behind you, and soon you find yourself with an army of people helping you revolt against the EDF. There are guns, mines, hammers, arc welders, bazookas... it's everything a boy could want to destroy things with. You can drive trucks, pilot space-ships, and in general lay havok to everything you see with anything you see. I once took an entire building out just by hammering the crap out of its support beams. The satisfying rumble of the controller and the screen made me smile as I walked away from the debris.

It's just a very fun game, and comes highly recommended if you're looking for a strong action game to add to your Xbox (or PS3) library that's not GTA IV. It's out on the PC in August if you feel like waiting. Multiplayer's a blast both locally with an ingenius pass-the-controller type game mode, and online with a host of different game modes for competitive play.

4 Bildos out of 5. Ha!

Sony "Awakens"?

From Next-Gen.biz:

"All in all, the world is much as it was yesterday. Sony is still trying to sell an extremely expensive games machine, with a limited number of blockbuster games, and a legacy of poor performance. But the Blu-ray factor has now been conjoined with an obvious understanding of all this community and UGC stuff that, as Harrison says, “will shape the decade ahead”. Doubtless the PS3 story still has some set-backs and disappointments ahead, but finally, we get the feeling the worst is over."

I really, hope for Sony's sake, that this is true. The full write up covers the key components of Phil Harrison's GDC presentation today, including some extremely promising software like HOME and LittleBigPlanet.

I'm a long time Nintendo fan, but I'm an equal-opportunity gamer, and have owned everything from an NES to a Dreamcast and a PSOne even a little ol' Gamecube, and most recently a Wii. Nintendo's got my heart when it comes to their IP and 1st party games, a strength that Sony's never had.

However with the announcement of HOME and LBP, I think Sony's going to be making a name for themselves all over again that could pull them away from all the bad press they've been getting with the PS3. Networking, user-created content, and the like are all the future of gaming, whether people want to believe that or not, and like Microsoft before them (Xbox Live), Sony's diving head 1st into that space with the PS3's forthcoming updates.

Now if only my Nintendo would get the hint...