Red Faction: Guerilla

[eels05]

I dont believe stealth would have worked in this game anyway.
Most building even with charges planted on supporting beams take more than one charge on that beam to bring down.So imagine taking an hour to deliberatley plant charges on a bridge undercover,sneak of to your vantage point,and press the detonator only to witness minimum damage,and most key structures still standing.

Thats not to say its a bad thing that its hard to bring a massive structure down,but for this game to work with a stealth element the difficulty of destruction would have to be balanced by the amount of time players would be expected to creep around.

Having finished this game I'd say bottom line the destruction is(mostly)awesome,and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for any future releases that involve this engine to be fairly balanced with other JUST AS IMPORTANT gameplay elements.

And please ditch the ultra aggressive for no reason enemy AI that see through walls.

 

[thisguyfromthere]

The minds-eye is a demanding mistress.

One might even be inclined to say a manipulative *****.

 

[Captain Pancake]

shit, i'm scared now. what if he calls me out on all those derogatory comments i've been making on his videos?

*physically shirks away*

 

[HardRockSamurai]

To be honest, I don't think we can can officially demote a game just because it doesn't meet a criteria it set in it's title. It's true that Red Faction: Guerrilla has one of the most misleading titles in video game history (assuming you're not already familiar with the previous games' focus on making things go boom); Red Faction: Lets Fuck Shit Up On Mars would have been a much better name (or Red Faction: Gorilla, for all I care.)

However, in this day in age, games rarely deliver what they promise to deliver. For example, Peter Molyneux promised that Fable 2 would be a "revolutionary life-simulator," instead, all we got was an average game with a shoddy frame rate and fart jokes (the worst kind of jokes.) At this point, I'm just thankful that the games I buy come in a box.

However, in Red Faction: Gorilla's defense, the game never really promises stealth gameplay. If Red Faction: Gorilla were the title for a movie, then yes, Yahtzee would have the right to be upset, since a movie title is supposed to summarize what you're going to see, or what the movie is about. Unfortunately, Red Faction: Gorilla is a video game; a medium where the titles, aside from serving as a brand name for franchises, translate jack shit.

Should Wii Sports be renamed to Look like a complete idiot in front of all your friends? No, because it doesn't have to.

Should Call of Duty 4 be renamed to Another FPS about war? No, because it doesn't have to.

Should Alone in the Dark be renamed to See how long you can play this game without killing yourself? No, because it doesn't have to..........and it probably wouldn't want to either.

You get my point (I hope.)

I agree with Yahtzee on many things, but this time, he's essentially telling us to judge a book by it's cover; only this time, the book costs $60.00 and doesn't have Fabio on the cover. I'm sure we can all agree that the Volition, Inc. employees that came up with the name for Red Faction: Chinchilla should be thrown into the company dungeon and forced to eat human flesh in order to survive, but that doesn't mean the rest of the team should suffer.

 

[Ninjagamer]

what you described is exactly what I expected reading previews of this game, a simulator of stealthy warfare that allows you to blow shit up in epic ways. When I played the demo I tried sneaking through the enemy lines, first step and they are on me like [insert hilarious metaphor here]
"See how long you can play this game without killing yourself?"
only 1 hour. I sold this game faster than [another metaphor, maybe one involving selling organs of drunks who passed out on my lawn]

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Also, does anyone remember that fucking joke of a mission where they say you need to use stealth to destroy some planes? There was no way to go through without being detected because everyone has a wireless "alarm button" as if it was a life alert on their wrist, and you could only use your hammer (and you can't use the cover button with that)...

False. I stealthed that mission quite easily. I snuck in from the mountains to the east, I then killed every soldier in the visible area one at a time, making sure to do so when no other guard would see. And of course, I used silent weapons like the Hammer and Nano Rifle. Of course using a Rail Gun or Assault Rifle would alert guards, they're loud.

I almost don't believe you. Not because you finished the mission, but because you said you were able to climb/get on a mountain. Anytime there was a small slant Alec would just slide down it and I could hardly ever get vantage points without the jetpack.

Unless there's some kind of "secret path" I never found, but even then it seems like there's always some sort of mysterious thing watching your every move and making enemies suddenly know where you are, or even worse - when the alert is up and you are surviving for a long time, the enemies spawn directly next to you.

So honestly, your response baffles me. I could do that in games like far cry 2 and even that had x-ray vision AI and such, but in RF:G it was go loud or bust. I suppose I just suck.

 

[wikicated]

i tried to play this game in guerilla-esq manner didnt turn out well but i must agree where a game with ambushes traps sabotage and stealh would in fact be epic, but sadly this game had none of that.
EDIT: the game should include improvised weapons system collect item put them together blow stuff up. is there a way i might be able to sell my ideas?

 

[Layzor]

I don't think that it is valid to criticise Red Faction for not being a stealth game. Yes the title is misleading but the problem is in the title not the game, changing the title to something generic like Red Faction: Judgement Day or even Red Faction 3, would eliminate this slight confusion. I think here that Mr Croshaw has made a rather big deal out nothing, Red Faction is not a "bad stealth game" because it is not a stealth game at all, it is a fairly bog standard fps with a slightly misleading title, a title which anyone who has played a previous RF game or even looked at the back of the box would not even notice.

 

[Saskwach]

I almost don't believe you. Not because you finished the mission, but because you said you were able to climb/get on a mountain. Anytime there was a small slant Alec would just slide down it and I could hardly ever get vantage points without the jetpack.

Unless there's some kind of "secret path" I never found, but even then it seems like there's always some sort of mysterious thing watching your every move and making enemies suddenly know where you are, or even worse - when the alert is up and you are surviving for a long time, the enemies spawn directly next to you.

So honestly, your response baffles me. I could do that in games like far cry 2 and even that had x-ray vision AI and such, but in RF:G it was go loud or bust. I suppose I just suck.

I can't speak to whether that approach was possible for the plane mission (I went the boom-boom route) but I can definitely defend his assertion that slopes are usually scalable - you just need a vehicle. Vehicles still have a limit to their climbing, but they're incredibly useful to help you approach by stealth (paradoxically). For example, I've used it several times to get straight at a Transporter mission from behind - or to quickly escape a large base once I'd stolen the vehicle.

This Extra Punctuation makes a bit more sense than his ZP, which I guess was the point. While there are some valid points, though (why the hell can't I blow convoys with my remote detonators?) the review is essentially about the fact that "Guerrilla" is misleading and the game should be a bit like Thief 2 (in SPAAAACE!). So the marketing team made a boo-boo. It's no less or more a game than if it were called Cabbage Patch Adventures.
I wish it were a game about guerrilla action. That was disappointing. But I still love it. I love that it's impossible to just rampage indefinitely across the map but you still get to be very explodey. It takes the guerrilla concept and takes a low-brow approach that works. That it wasn't the high-brow approach to guerrilla warfare is sad but irrelevant. To present your own ideal version of the game and call it a review is a bit like a bug reporter passing off his game design ideas as bug fixes.

 

[InvisibleMilk]

Good article from the clever witty Yahtzee. Red Faction:Guerilla atleast has fun and exciting multiplayer. But you didn't say anything about that?

 

[Saskwach]

Good article from the clever witty Yahtzee. Red Faction:Guerilla atleast has fun and exciting multiplayer. But you didn't say anything about that?

Yahtzee isn't interested in MP.
And I agree: it's a really kickass multiplayer.

 

[Mr. Socky]

Now I won't be able to enjoy the game because I'll want it to be sneaky. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

 

[Agent Larkin]

I really really really want that kind of a Guerilla Warfare game. It would be just so much fun to bluff your way through a military base before blowing it up.

 

[darthzew]

So now we know that everyone's favorite professional troll actually reads what we say about him. Yahtzee is watching you!

Anyway, I liked Red Faction but I do have to agree with the whole Guerrilla thing. If you just ignore this fact, however, it actually amounts to being extremely good sandbox destruction fun.

 

[Drag0nWarri0r]

You know I forgot to add this in my post [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.126584?page=7#2684533] to the review (as well as my post earlier in this thread) but perhaps it was best. See I was going to say that perhaps Yahtzee did in fact like the game very much, and that this review was more joke than in earnest. The reason I thought this upon 1st viewing was because he even started the review stating that this was his opportunity for revenge for his disappointing experience with a game from 8 years ago. That alone shows his bias against it, and I thought his stating such was him acknowledging said bias would cause the review to be more 'nitpick the little things for comedic purposes though he actually enjoyed it', as in his Bioshock review. His problem seemingly being more with the cover than the book so to speak also reinforced that thought. Then he went and wrote that Extra Punctuation article, which now makes it seem like he really meant that review. If that is the case, how can anyone take it seriously then with that biased intro and more problems with the title than the content arguments? I almost can't believe it could be serious considering those 2 factors alone.

I almost don't believe you. Not because you finished the mission, but because you said you were able to climb/get on a mountain. Anytime there was a small slant Alec would just slide down it and I could hardly ever get vantage points without the jetpack.

As Saskwach said, use a vehicle. I prefer the dune buggy type one but most any will do. Use it to climb up the mountains from the East-North-East of the base, but don't go high enough that you crest the top so that they can see you. Jump out, crouch, and walk up over, and drop down to a ledge a little below. Stay crouched, and look around for the guards. That's the start of it anyway.

I have to agree with his argument here, as well. I haven't played Red Faction: Guerilla (in fact, I only ever played the demo for the original), but the widespread view of guerilla warfare is of infiltration, sneak attacks and hit-and-run, jabrwock's ultimately correct definition notwithstanding. Games that force you into their own method of combat by letting the enemy automagically know where you are at any given moment are bad enough (there's a reason that almost all games these days have at least some sort of "where did he go" AI routines for its enemies), but when it blows the expected premise out of the water that thoroughly, I could see where it would be doubly disappointing.

What's bolded above is exactly why you're an idiot for agreeing with him. If you had played the game and agreed, you could be justified forming an opinion about his "review", though it'd still be wrong. As I said earlier here and in the review's thread, just because it is not as easy to go unnoticed in RF:G as it is in other stealth-for-dummies games, and keep the alert level at green, does not mean it can not be done when scouting, planning, and patience. That seems more real to me than how must games have it. The game does not automatically let the enemies know where you are unless you loud, destroying a important target within their base, or are seen killing a soldier by another. In fact, even when you do get noticed and the alert raises to yellow, don't be stupid and stay in the same spot you were noticed, make your way unseen away from that point and you can wait out the alert back down to green.

Overall bottom-line is, as I've stated before, this: Red Faction Guerrilla is one of the most fun games I have played in a long time. That's games are supposed to be about, fun gameplay above all else, right? I'm glad Volition embraces that philosophy in an age when many game companies focus on graphics, story, or gimmicks as a higher priority than actual fun gameplay. I highly encourage anyone who has not yet played the game to rent it. The single player is thee most fun open-world game I have ever played, Wrecking Crew is the most fun hotset MP mode in a long time (and coincidently, the mode where you can just blow shit up without worrying about enemies getting in your face, Yahtzee), and the plethora of online multiplayer modes are extremely well done and a blast to compete in.

 

[Booze Zombie]

I think there's some silly mechanic in Red Faction where the stealth doesn't work unless you're crouched.

I've never used it, but I've heard it's there.

Just saying.
Anyway, great article, Yahtzee. You should stop and write more often.

Also, ease up on the Alex Mercer jokes. I actually liked him as a character... sure there were some odd moments, but he did what he needed to, got angry when the game was frustrating and in the end, he stopped more deaths than he caused.

But, I raise this point: If you're not smart enough to get out of the way of a bloody tank, were you really going to survive that long anyway in a bioweapon-virus outbreak?

 

[Sigenrecht]

While I can see Yahtzee's point with side-splitting clarity, I simply don't treat it with the expectation of it to be an actual "guerrilla" experience. Smacking some poor sod in a Master Chief styrofoam suit in the side of the head, with a sledgehammer, through a wall, has nearly endless appeal, and I hold no delusions about parallels with real guerrilla war, drastically improving the playing experience. I mean, realism took a seat on the bench the moment I killed twelve people with my near-bare hands, hijacked a tank, drove it into a building and hit it around until said heavy military piece blew up and took the roof down on it... and I get up a few seconds later, unscathed and ready to carry on the good fight. Yum, laser bullets and hot glowing spermatozoa. Err, plasma.

On the other hand, Yahtzee's concept sounds great, as long as the protagonist looks like Pierce Brosnan.

 

[theultimateend]

Woah..he reads the comments of the forums?

I'm kinda blown away here. I should watch my mouth.

Also, does anyone remember that fucking joke of a mission where they say you need to use stealth to destroy some planes? There was no way to go through without being detected because everyone has a wireless "alarm button" as if it was a life alert on their wrist, and you could only use your hammer (and you can't use the cover button with that) - so what did I do? I ran through planting the altimeter charges right in front of those idiots and they still got in the planes and died.

I'm almost certain that if I didn't already trigger the alert, my next objective would have been to cause an alert to get someone to fly the planes.

I'm pretty sure he just knows that someone will say the cliche dumb ass thing in response to something he says.

Most of the time I watch the videos and think "Someone is going to say Y" and within the first 50 comments at least one person says Y .