While a lot of THQ’s recent Gamers Day event in San Francisco saw its titles face off against more established genre rivals, Volition’s latest entry in its explosive series was somewhat of a triumphant return. We’ve seen Battlefield: Bad Company try to introduce destructible environments into the next-generation shooter, taking the form of buildings left a honeycomb of their previous selves by disappearing entire walls, but when it comes to destruction the only thing to top Red Faction would be a stick of dynamite and an ugly tower block.

Guerrilla sees the action undergo a pair of equally important changes. Firstly, its setting returns to the dusty itinerant settlements of Mars, half a century after the events of the original Red Faction. Secondly, as per every other action game for the last two years or so, what was once a reasonably simplistic firstperson adventure has assumed a more dynamic perspective (or whatever the PR buzzword is at present), over the shoulder of lead man Alec Mason. Now there’s the greatest videogame hero to have walked straight out of Coronation Street.

Naturally enough, the first thing any selfrespecting gamer would do when let loose in this virtual building site (rather than the real one your mother told you to avoid because of its many tramps and liquor bottles) is set about destroying everything in sight. Sure enough, only a brief hop into an armoured SUV provided sufficient weaponry for the task. Taking a nearby bunker as our target, no doubt filled with tens of our own screaming men (but that’s not important), it was full steam ahead into the weakened corner section. Sure enough, in the blink of an eye it was reduced to rubble, without any trace of pre-determination. What’s more, remnants still grimly clinging on to the top of our newly created alternative entrance continued to tumble down like you’d expect of hastily constructed concrete tombs of post-apocalyptic warfare. That is to say, a lot.

Once again, ignoring the stated objectives almost completely we decided to head off in a different direction, looking for the disgruntled miner’s best weapon against the Earth Defense Force – a bipedal Walker, of course. Climbing into the cockpit proves a simple enough task, and before anyone can say “and who exactly gave him a licence for all this madness” you’re away, using its sweeping arm attacks to level structures, and that’s if you grow tired of just running through them. By this point, the assault you’re meant to be launching on an EDF base, one of many you’ll perform to ‘persuade’ forces to leave your land and followers to join your cause, becomes lost in a sea of crush, kill, destroy! And that’s not even the best bit. Rumour goes that one of the eventual multiplayer online modes will see one player in charge of the behemoth while others, armed with the regular armoury of machine guns, rocket launchers and satchel packs (what was that about sharing technology?!), try to bring them down. What a mouthwatering prospect that is. We can’t wait to feed our appetite for destruction in fact, so it’s off to the seaside for us, ready for a little sandcastle stompin’ until we can wreck the place for (semi) real…

Dave Shaw