➤ Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered, the review 🎮

The Red Faction series didn't have a good fate. Red Faction Guerrilla was the third installment of the franchise: it still happens to find the cases in the second hand department of a certain well-known video game chain, abandoned in a corner and usually cheap. Some, however, still remember it, and it is to the latter and to the many who at the time were too busy with GTA IV that THQ addresses with Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered. A nostalgia operation probably low-cost in development, an almost incomprehensible strategy if we think that the series was shelved in 2011 due to unsatisfactory sales: maybe THQ intends to give it one last chance in the near future? Meanwhile, there is plenty of time to take a look at what is probably the most successful chapter of the whole family.

A plot based on martial law, indeed Martian

It is 2075, man has arrived on Mars and has discovered that he can exploit even a second planet in the Solar System after the Earth until exhaustion: on Mars there do not seem to be intelligent life forms, but the subsoil is very rich in raw materials, and they are particularly useful since everything on Earth is practically finished. But as history has always taught, where there is a precious source of supply, someone who wants to control it also arrives: this is the case of EDF, a real military dictatorship organized on a planetary basis, which in the space of a few years launched martial (indeed, Martian) law. The suspected traitors are shot on the spot, their homes confiscated along with their personal property, the freedom of the planet is only a distant memory. We impersonate Alec Mason, a member of the revolutionary guerrilla who will try to make good old EDF reason with explosives, work hammers, guns, and then again explosives, but bigger than before.

Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered, the review

Alec is not a warrior nor a revolutionary, but life goes on its own: after the death of his brother Dan, a real rioter of the Red Faction, Alec in turn enters the clandestine organization, gradually becoming an increasingly important member. In short, we will give him a hand to recapture Mars by removing the planet from the control exercised by the EDF dictatorship, within a fairly vast open-world, but which feels like the game mechanics proposals for the full weight of his nine very long years. Because Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered it is not a bad game: it is a modest title, which in its time greatly innovated the franchise (for example by passing from the first to the third person), but always remaining a step below the fierce competition of the open-world action sector. Imagine the situation almost a decade later, when the genre has reached very high levels and Alec's adventures can only count on a light dusting on a technical and graphic level, without changing anything within a game formula that a counting does not really manage to entertain for more than a handful of hours.

PlayStation 4 Trophies

The Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered Platinum Trophy doesn't seem like anything too complex to achieve, as long as you want to spend a really, really long time in the company of THQ's title. In fact, it will not be enough to complete the story of Alec on Mars, we will also have to take care of all the secondary missions, the Demolitions, the challenges, as well as the online multiplayer mode by playing at least one game in each of them, using all the weapons, and also getting a certain number of wins. With a little patience (more than skill) we will make it!

I'll blow your gameplay too

Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered it doesn't go too far: the player's goal is to destroy everything he sees, saving only the civilian population (and not always). Demolitions, explosions and dynamite charges represent the soul of THQ's title, as well as the main offer from the gameplay point of view, thanks to the use of the GeoMod 2.0 physics engine that already nine years ago allowed the presence on the screen of many destructible buildings . Unfortunately, apart from the interest you may have for the plot (however linear and free of huge surprises), the Red Faction offer is all here: a large game map divided into six different sectors freely explorable (and destructible), main and secondary missions to be completed (based on explosives), and weapons and upgrades to be collected to expand Alec's arsenal (in order to destroy everything in a more artistic way).

The rich offer of weapons of destruction represents one of the valid points of the production, unfortunately everything else is easily forgotten, already seen or extremely subdued, and the flat and sandy setting of the red planet certainly does not help. From a technical point of view, the re-edition for current generation consoles has certainly been carried out with commitment, but the levels reached are not exceptional: the frame rate is stable and the action fluid, the movies have been significantly cleaned up, the textures improved. and enhanced levels of detail and lighting, uploads are never invasive; yet it is evident from the first glance that we are dealing with a visibly aged product, and unfortunately not too well, regardless of the point of view that we decide to take into consideration. Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered is no longer innovative as at the time of its first arrival on the market, but it remains an enjoyable title, which must be taken for what it offers without expecting the levels reached by the current open-worlds. Finally, in multiplayer mode it always offers a few hours of carefree fun.

Comment

Tested version PlayStation 4 Digital Delivery Steam, PlayStation Store, Xbox Store Price 29,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

7.0

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8.0

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THQ tries to bring Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered back to life, updating it from a technical and aesthetic point of view: more than a commercial operation at a low cost it seems a real act of love, the attempt to give a second chance to a series that perhaps did not deserve to end up in oblivion as quickly as it did. If you like light-hearted open-worlds where there is little to think about and so much to destroy, you may have found the title for you. Provided, it is intended, to postpone the obvious limits of an extremely repetitive game formula and a visibly dated technical sector.