Terraform this

Red Faction is a series that has lain dormant for so long you’d be forgiven for thinking it was dead. Chronicling an uprising of, and subsequent resistance to, a totalitarian regime on Mars, the original Red Faction and its 2002 sequel revolved around the conceit of completely destructible environments.

Long before the rampant cover-shooting mechanics of today, these first-person shooters took theoretically show-stopping physics and put you in command. In other words, the games gave you free license to blow shit up.

Guerrilla, on the other hand, is a beast of a different sort. Gone are the first-person perspective, linearity and technologically inhibited Geomod engine of its forerunners. You’re still resisting totalitarian domination on Mars, but the game now has upgraded technology, a third-person perspective and an open world, although none of that really matters.

What’s important is that the game is still about blowing shit up, and in this regard, Guerrilla is a hell of a lot of fun.

Thanks to Geomod 2.0, you can now take apart a building practically brick by brick with your trusty sledgehammer. Or use remote charges to blow it sky high. Or, my personal favorite, use the biggest, heaviest piece of machinery you can and drive straight into it.

The arcade-like physics lack any real feeling of weight, but it’s still quite a rush to watch the game’s generally reactive physics in motion at whatever your current target of destruction is, be it an observation tower or a network of drainage pipes.

Destroying Earth Defense Force property and facilities is also so much fun (especially with a dump truck) that you probably won’t care. I probably spent a comparable time taking down EDF installations to time spent in missions within the game proper.

But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves—there’s an entire game waiting for you outside of just causing grief for the EDF. Missions are split up by six sizable sectors within EDF control, and it’s the Red Faction‘s job to drive them out and liberate Mars.

All your standard mission types are present, from story and chases, to rescuing hostages from EDF bases, along with a few more interesting ones, such as demolition challenges given a limited toolset and “collateral damage,” which challenges you to cause millions of credits in damage to your enemies.

But I say standard for a reason. Outside of the sheer destruction, Guerrilla is relatively straightforward. Interestingly, even when compared to the relatively few types of missions in, say, In Famous, Guerrilla still feels a little wooden (this may have to do with the simplified graphics necessary to keep the game running smoothly).

Collecting salvage parts to upgrade weapons and raising resistance levels (which yields more citizens pulling out guns against EDF troops) can help, but I somehow feel the game’s scope could have been slightly more compelling. Still, for a seemingly one-track action game, Guerrilla is fun, challenging at times and damn exciting—at least with the right explosives.