I was a big fan of the first two Red Faction titles, as a kid I remember thinking the idea of blowing up a wall or a floor to get through a level was the coolest idea in the world. And while I missed last year’s fan favorite underdog, Red Faction Guerrilla, I was on hand at E3 to get a first glimpse of the brand new title.
The plot for this game is that a group of terrorists unleashed a devastating attack, rendering the surface of mars inhospitable to the colonists. So they are forced to rebuild their lives underground. It’s here that they unearth ancient alien relics and technology and a new foe rises up. The main character is not the same one from Guerrilla but they are related and from what we were told this new main character is blamed for all the vile villains that begin to attack the new colony.
At first glance the new environment for the game may seem like a more- controlled area then the previous title’s more open world experience. However from what we saw this doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy the same level of destruction.
The game is however taking a more third person shooter approach then the last title, we saw an array of simple weapons that were used to dispatch these nasty looking aliens. All of it looked pretty standard until he brought out the wonderful gravity gun.
The Gravity gun is built with Red Faction in mind, allowing you to tether two objects together or to pull one object towards another. One of the outstanding examples of how this weapon worked was when a larger enemy was making its way towards the new main character so he attached one end of the gun to a towering structure behind the enemy and pulled the building apart sending a massive piece of the structure crashing towards the approaching foe and rendering him road kill.
We were then shown one of the other major new additions to the game, everyone knows when it comes to Red Faction it has always been about destroying everything in your path, but now you are able to rebuild what was once destroyed using nanites. This opens up a whole new field of gameplay for the player to enjoy. What we were treated to was rather clever and downright cool. The main character tore a piece out of a massive shipping crate as he was surrounded by enemies, he then got into the crate and used the nanites to repair the box allowing him to hide inside and let his health recover. We also saw a smaller example of this feature where he rebuilt concrete blocks to jam up his ever growing horde of foes.
The last surprise we were shown was this wonderful little mech, it shot out puppies and double rainbows. Of course by puppies I mean missiles of fiery death and by double rainbows I mean mini guns. This allowed us to see destruction on a large scale as he would literally cut a building in half and let it crush all dumb enough to not move out of the way.
By the end of the preview I was both impressed and giddy with excitement, the game looked more action packed then the last title with action being more focused, but it still contained all the sandbox fun that 100% destruction affords you. We’ll have to wait till 2011 for this bad boy, but so far it looks like it will be worth the wait.