Red Faction Guerrilla: Re-Mars-tered Edition

This is the blandest open-world game in existence blessed with one hell of a killer feature. It can't really offer you anything but blowing stuff up, but it is the best blowing stuff up money can buy.
It is kind of sad, really, the fact that no one has made this obsolete yet.

A fantastic remaster of a criminally underrated open-world sandbox.
In my opinion, this is the peak of the series. While it certainly has its flaws, the core experience is incredibly unique. The biggest highlight is the destruction mechanics, honestly, they haven't been matched by any game since. Even with its annoyances, it’s hard not to recommend this one.

Pros:
Unmatched destruction.
Responsive controls.
Great optimization.
Fun combat.
Awesome arsenal.
Good gameplay variety.
Decent story.
Great voice acting.

Cons:
It can feel repetitive in the late game.
Shooting mechanics are a bit mediocre.
Driving physics can feel overly "jumpy" and light.

This game puts destruction physics front and center, and that is where it shines. Blowing up buildings never gets old, and the chaos alone makes it worth playing.
Everything else feels like it comes second. The story and characters go nowhere, which is fine for a gameplay-focused game but could have been handled better. Movement with both the jetpack and vehicles feels clunky and restrictive. You cannot even jetpack over a simple hill, and those limitations make the supposedly open world feel smaller than it should. Ammo is also stingy to the point of killing the fun. You spend more time scavenging ammo crates than going wild with weapons (on hard difficulty). The races and destruction challenges sound cool, but they are all timed, which makes them frustrating. The races in particular feel almost impossible without looking up a YouTube video to find the right shortcuts.
There is also a small DLC included where you play as a female character, which is very cool, but aside from that it only adds some collectibles and plenty of bugs without offering anything meaningful to expand the base game.
Despite all that, it is still a decent 7/10. The destruction is UNMATCHED, and if you are in the mood to turn your brain off and wreck everything in sight, or just kick fascists off Mars, it delivers.

Awesome game. Classic by now. You can destroy everything. Cool atmosphere that will make you feel like you are on Mars. NPC's and news reports react to how you play. So if you destroyed some important building for example, you gonna hear about that in the news, which is pretty nice touch that makes the world feel organic.
Also quite underrated soundtrack.
Still closest thing we have to Total Recall the videogame :) Game crashed twice within 35h of gameplay so no big deal. Other than that it works just fine.
Now get your ass to Mars!

Sorry to say. This game did not age well. The remaster is hardly a remaster. A few upgraded textures.
Im giving this a positive review becuase back when this game came out it was the only game of its kind. And actuallly till this day it kinda still is. The Destruction of all bulldings was amazing.
After playing it for 3 hours. The game did not age well at all. Since i already beat it in the past i wont be finishing it

The Most Underrated and Misunderstood Shooter of All Time
To put it simply, Red Faction Guerrilla is one of the greatest open world shooters of all time. It just got ridiculously unlucky. It was overlooked by more popular games of its time when it came out, and unjustly hated on by modern gamers who don't understand how the game is meant to be played.
Both critics and fans of this game all say the same false statement word for word:
“The only good thing about this game is the destruction, and everything else sucks.”
Let’s talk about why that’s completely false, why so many people don’t understand this game, and how YOU can!
First of all, keep in mind you’re playing a 2009 game with updated visuals, not a modern remake. 90% of players completely forget that and call the gameplay broken. I’m going to be honest, if you don’t play anything outside of the modern era, it is going to feel way more janky and hardcore then what you’re used to, sure, but compared to other games of its era, Red Faction Guerrilla’s gameplay has aged shockingly well.
Secondly, this is not a Just Cause game. RFG isn’t a simple run around jumpy shooter, cover and strategy matter a LOT. Stand out in the open without a plan and you will die FAST.
Understand those two things and you’ll suddenly realize most of the hate for this game is based on misunderstandings.
Why Do I Consider Red Faction Guerrilla One of the Greatest Shooters of All Time?
There’s four main reasons.
The combat:
The combat is genius. It’s the main reason I consider the game as good as it is. One of the most common complaints for this game is that the combat sucks, but that’s because most people suck at it. Most people expect it to be as simple and dumb as Just Cause when it’s the entire opposite. It’s a very unique, strategic, cover heavy, style of combat, and since everything you take cover behind can be actively destroyed, every fight feels different. You have to think strategically about how you’re utilizing your surroundings to your advantage and your enemies disadvantage, and as fights go on the battlefield changes overtime and you have to actively adapt to that. For example when the building where the whole fight is taking place suddenly collapses leaving you standing out in the open with very low health you better think of a new plan FAST. You can easily take a lot of damage, so you have to plan out every engagement and be precise. You always want to know what your next move is, and when something happens that makes that move you had planned a bad one, you have to suddenly remake an entire new plan. The key to winning fights in this game is being in control when everything around you is completely out of control. This style of combat is entirely unique to this game, though there are games that have some of the attributes of this combat. There’s actually a name for this style of combat. The game names it Guerrilla style combat in its description, but doesn’t really elaborate on what Guerrilla style combat actually is. Overall the combat is utterly brilliant and ridiculously fun once you understand it. Seemingly few people understand it though. Most players expect a run-around, jumpy, shooter, play the game with these expectations in mind, and get completely destroyed in every firefight, and then proceed to call the combat brokenly hard, unsatisfying, frustrating, etc. If you can understand it you’ll love it.
The world and artstyle:
No clue how, but everyone seems to overlook the unique atmospheric world. The world looks scarred, lived in, and harsh but in a beautiful way. The world seems like it has a lot of history about it. Especially with all the Ultor ruins in the Badlands. Everything is futuristic but industrial at the same time, like my futuristic car runs on propane and sounds like it’s about to break down or something, but not completely steam punk type futurism. The world feels very lived in and interesting, and combined with the soundtrack it's just really cool to look at before blowing up.
The soundtrack, gaming’s best:
I genuinely believe this game has the greatest soundtrack composed for any game ever, and literally no one knows about it, and no one talks about it. I want you to know this is coming from a guy who has listened to a LOT of game soundtracks. The combat scores are the most polyphonic music I've come across, it's not just traditional combat music it's sort of like a badass techno remix of normal combat music, and the ambient music is so emotional in a sad/nostalgic way but it's also haunting or eerie at the same time. It's really unique. The ambient tracks make it seem like Mars is hiding something horrific or tragic. Some parts of it, especially the music that plays during the night, make exploring the world feel like a horror game, but take the music out and exploring doesn’t feel that way at all. Not much else about the game gives off this eerie feeling other than the music. That actually makes it feel even more idk strange or uncanny. The music shapes the world into a much more horrific picture somehow.
The game uses a dynamic music system that strings together musical passages (around 15 to 30 seconds each), based on the current situation, which makes the in-game music very unpredictable to listen to. It could be playing ambient music, then you get in a fight, and a yellow alert transition plays which takes whatever part of the ambient music that was playing and plays a remixed version of it, then plays the yellow alert combat music. Idk if I’m explaining it very well but all you really need to know is it’s uh… dynamic. I wish every game had a dynamic music system like this. If you want to listen to the soundtrack I would recommend checking out this music edit I made for one of the combat themes “Uprising Combat” which has the exact parts I’m talking about when I say it has one of the best combat scores for any game:
And of course, the destruction:
It’s jaw-dropping even by today's standards. I don’t need to elaborate.
So now I’ve talked about two things: Why most of the hate for this game is invalid, and why I think this is one of the greatest shooters ever, but something I haven’t talked about up to this point are any of the games flaws, and I mean actual flaws that aren’t based on a misunderstanding.
The actual flaws of the game are this: The story sucks, some of the world feels too empty, AI teammates are dumb, the driving is slightly slower than it should be, and the side missions are unapologetically identical. These are common complaints that are undeniably true, but they all seem like only minor flaws to me compared to everything good about the game except the story, that’s the biggest flaw of the whole game, but clearly most people don’t care about the story anyway lol.
I’m not saying the game is perfect, but the good things about the game far outweigh the bad, the only problem is most people overlooked the good aside from the destruction. Thus the common false statement: “The only good thing about this game is the destruction, and everything else sucks.”
No one else has pointed out what I’ve pointed out in this review, or at least I haven't seen anyone else point these things out. Most people (both people who love and people who hate the game) somehow all agree that the game sucks aside from the destruction. You can’t agree with that once you realize that’s entirely based on misunderstandings.
The truth is Red Faction Guerrilla is a masterpiece that just got ridiculously unlucky. It was overshadowed by bigger games of its time when it was released in 2009, and later misunderstood by modern gamers, and probably always will be misunderstood… forever, but if you can be one of the few that do understand it you are going to LOVE it. Thanks for reading and enjoy playing if you decide to buy!

This game is all about blowing stuff up, and it absolutely delivers. Even after all these years, the destruction physics are still some of the best in gaming. Watching buildings crumble never gets old. The story is nothing special, and the gameplay can get really repetitive, but the variety of weapons and ways to cause chaos keep it fun.
If you just want to wreck things and have a blast doing it, this game is 100% worth playing.