Red Faction: Guerrilla’s story probably won’t win any awards for science fiction writing, and the logic behind the game’s setting makes Star Trek look realistic. But the narrative provides just enough impetus to pull you along this tale of freedom and oppression, to a new world filled with piles of smoldering wreckage. Set 50 years after the first Red Faction, Guerilla finds the Earth Defense Force, the “good guys” from the first game, abusing their power and generally making life bad for the Martian colonists. You take the role of Alec Mason, an everyday miner who just happens to have an arm like Babe Ruth, and works on making Mars a safer place.

The degree to which you can destroy the environment is Guerrilla’s most prominent feature. Unlike the previous games, you don’t spend any time digging into the ground, but you can dismantle pretty much anything man-made, piece by piece. Your prowess with hammers and explosive charges lets you make your own doorways through buildings, and, if a structure takes enough damage, send it toppling over. The wanton explosions you create channel other mayhem-friendly games like Mercenaries 2, but here, you get to see the effects of those explosions. Sure, you won’t take down any skyscrapers, but it’s more fun to take down a three-story building piece by piece than it is to just watch a larger monument disappear in a puff of smoke. That’s what Guerrilla does best: It convinces you that its physics are real. If you take a wall out in just the right place, it can cause the entire structure above to slowly teeter before it eventually crumbles.

Popularity: unranked [?]