Red Faction Guerrilla
War on Terra.
The nature of your targets begins to get more complex as well. Enormous bridges and fortresses shrug off your now-feeble remote charges and rockets, and you need to start finding more inventive ways to wreak havoc. Quantum bombs and thermobaric rockets certainly do the job, but must first be unlocked and then purchased. Although you're free to replenish ammo at safehouses, actually improving your arsenal depends on how much scrap you've collected. This crude currency can be found in the wreckage of vehicles and structures, and equivalent value can also be mined from large crystals dotted about the planet surface.
You can trade this bounty in at Red Faction bases for better armour, new weapons, modifications to existing weapons and useful abilities. Some, like the ability to pick up scrap while driving, offer inessential conveniences. The option to travel directly to safehouses, on the other hand, makes a huge difference to the amount of mindless scenery chugging you need to do, and it's a bit baffling that it's something you only earn after irritation has already set in.
Over the long haul, however, the pleasures and pain come to a sort of equilibrium, helped along by a thoughtful array of multiplayer options. Online play offers Anarchy and Team Anarchy - deathmatch by any other name - as well as the obligatory Capture The Flag options. More interesting are modes like Siege, where teams take it in turns to try and remove each other from key fortified buildings. Damage Control is a base-capture variant, made different by the fact that the bases can be demolished and rebuilt, and Demolition casts one member of each team as the Destroyer, ensuring everyone scrambles to kill or defend the chosen one.
The weapons are familiar from the single-player game, but the addition of a repair gadget, to put buildings back together, and other different abilities contained in backpacks makes it a distinct experience. Jetpacks are the most obvious function on offer, but you can also generate localised earthquakes, run through walls and turn invisible. It's neatly balanced as well, with the benefit of each pack being countered by another. In a genre where make-do multiplayer is a common sight, there are enough fresh ideas and new takes on old standards here to show that Volition put some extra effort in for online, and it's appreciated.
The game even finds space for local multiplayer, an area so often forgotten these days. There's old-fashioned System Link for those with wires and tellies to spare, but even those with just a single joypad can have some fun in the shape of Wrecking Crew. These pass-the-joypad challenges concentrate on point-based carnage against a time limit, using a series of unlockable sledgehammers (including the infamous ostrich), the various backpack powers as well as limited demolition weapons. Fast, silly and making intuitive use of the excellent environment physics, it calls to mind Burnout's marvellously addictive Crash Junctions, and has much the same gleefully explosive allure.
Taken as a whole, the net result is a generous game that remains fun despite its frustrations, yet never quite achieves its full potential. Think of it as the game that Mercenaries 2 should have been. The presentation is polished, the visuals solid, the core gameplay gimmick amusing enough to keep you playing even as irritation creeps up. The gameplay has its ups and downs along the way, and some will find its lumpy structure a problem, but Red Faction is the very definition of a solid 7/10 - a game that should have been better, but offers more than enough to warrant a purchase during the quiet months.