Red Faction: Guerrilla - PS3

Red Faction: Guerrilla is the third instalment in the Red Faction series and departs from the first-person shooter genre used in the two previous instalments, featuring an open-world sandbox environment similar to Mercenaries, Grand Theft Auto or Saints Row (which the developer, Volition, has also worked on).

Set on Mars 50 years after the events of the first two games, the planet has been freed from the treacherous Ultor Corporation by Red Faction and the E.D.F. (Earth Defense Force), who stepped in to help the mining community get back on its feet. The E.D.F. has since become an occupying force, taking over the planet, executing citizens and imposing martial law. As a result, a new element of the Red Faction has formed to fight the E.D.F. and once again bring peace and freedom to the Martian landscape. The player takes control of Alec Mason, a recently arrived dissident from Earth who hopes to start a new life on Mars with his brother Dan, only to be drawn into the revolution and tasked with liberating five sectors of Mars (Parker, the Badlands, Oasis, the Free Fire Zone and Eos) from E.D.F. control. To do this, the player must complete missions and destroy E.D.F. vehicles and property, reducing their control over each sector and boosting the morale of the local population.

Missions range from story missions, whose purpose is to advance the plot, to other missions including Transporter (returning certain vehicles to a safe house within a set time), Guerrilla Raid (in which the player and a group of rebels attack and destroy E.D.F. buildings), Heavy Metal (where the player creates a distraction that allows other rebels to complete another mission without alerting the E.D.F.), Demolition Master (where the player must destroy a target within a set time and with a limited supply of ammunition) and House Arrest (where the player must rescue hostages and return them to a safe house).

There are also missions that appear from time to time, including 'Courier' (where the player must track down and kill an enemy spy to gather the information they are carrying), 'Assault' (where the player must defend a specific target against incoming E.D.F. forces) and Convoy (where the player must either destroy a series of vehicles or capture a target vehicle and return it to a safe house). Completing these missions reduces enemy control over the area, boosts citizen morale, earns scrap and unlocks more advanced weapons. To liberate each section, the player must reduce E.D.F. control over the area to zero and complete the story missions. Once the player has done this, a final story mission is unlocked that liberates that sector and unlocks story missions for the next one.

Players have a wide variety of vehicles to choose from, ranging from cars and trucks to dune buggies, dump trucks, tanks and APCs (Armored Personnel Carriers). There is also an abundance of weapons, including pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, the sledgehammer (the player's main weapon, which cannot be removed), remote mines, anti-personnel mines, rocket launchers and the feared nano rifle (which fires a beam of nanobots capable of dissolving targets in an instant). The player can carry four different weapons at once and swap them out by accessing their safe houses or via ammunition crates scattered across the landscape. The most advanced weapons, such as the nano rifle, are only unlocked through story missions, while some can be found in E.D.F. buildings (such as the Singularity Mine), and every weapon can be upgraded at safe houses, which contain additional ammunition and increased firepower via scrap. Scrap is the game's currency, earned by completing missions or destroying E.D.F. buildings and vehicles.

The game also features an updated Geo-Mod 2.0 game engine, which allows the player to destroy a building virtually and realistically, for example by tilting it to the left by blowing up the left side of the building, or leaning it forward if the front is blown apart. Players can use this to their advantage against enemies, for example by destroying the ground floor of a building to bring it crashing down on enemies and vehicles, or by destroying the support structures of bridges with explosives, causing the bridge to collapse with a convoy of enemies on it. It also features the Havok physics engine for character physics.

There is also an offline two-player mode called Wrecking Crew, in which two friends take turns playing set rounds across four different modes, such as Barrel Dash, Total Chaos, Rampage and Escalation, to win an event. Online multiplayer modes are also available, including Anarchy, Team Anarchy, Capture the Flag, Damage Control, Siege and Demolition, in which players earn experience points that let them customise their online characters and acquire more advanced weapons. In addition, there are backpacks for the Wrecking Crew and multiplayer modes that enhance the player's abilities, such as Jetpacks, Stealth, Vision (essentially an X-ray) and more power-based abilities such as Concussion, which knocks down nearby enemy players, and Tremor, which can damage both enemies and buildings.

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