Preview by: Brian Rowe

Woven into the prologue of Red Faction II, Guerilla jettisons Earthly confines in favor of the Martian landscape where it all began. 50 years have passed since the Earth Defense Force (EDF) liberated the populace, only to fall victim to greed. Marshall Law, imprisonment, and death are the standard working conditions for the voiceless colonies of miners. Alec Mason couldn’t have picked a worse time to change employers. Barely a day after stepping on the red planet, his brother is murdered and he is deemed a terrorist by the EDF. With no way out, his only option is to pick up the hammer and join Red Faction.

Mason isn’t a streetwise thug, a police enforcer, or any of the usual suspects to front an open-world game, nor is he down for playing dress-up in the shopping district or delivering pizzas. He’s just an average Joe (with a shady past?) who has a knack for demolition, and you better believe he puts that talent to extraordinarily gratuitous use. Within a few minutes of grabbing the controller and arming my first bomb, all doubts regarding my beloved series’ transition from a FPS were brutally expelled with the force of a servo-powered sledgehammer.

If the Red Faction series is allowed one claim to fame, it’s GeoMod technology. The first outing gave creative players the ability to tunnel through walls with explosives in search of secrets and shortcuts, while Red Faction II mostly relegated GeoMod to eye-candy, adding tension to firefights while players hid behind crumbling pillars. In Guerrilla, GeoMod is front and center as the star and stage of the show. Nearly every manmade structure across the vast expanse of rust-tinged mountains can be stripped down via brute force, explosions, or a little driving maneuver that I like to call the ‘dump truck bomb.’ Don’t think for a second that this is only a gimmick though.

Mass-destruction is the critical strike that will bring the EDF to its knees and restore hope to the people toiling in the work-camps permeating every cliff and crag of the terrain. Six sectors wait for your hand to open the detonator, flick the switch, and cripple their captors through industrial terrorism. Whether you drive through the countryside in an all-terrain buggy, complete with jury-rigged machineguns, searching for EDF property, or take your orders from Red Faction, every stroke lowers EDF’s control and brings you one step closer to a free sector. It could be a simple action like wrecking a fascist billboard with your hammer, a chaotic raid for supplies, or an imposing standoff against a high-walled fortress.