Red Faction: Guerrilla

Red Faction: Guerrilla is the third installment of the franchise and is a blast to play. Smashing apart buildings with your sledgehammer and detonating large quantities of explosives is basically what it's all about.

Even if the tame storyline lets you forget exactly why you're doing it, it's easy to surrender a few hours to Red Faction Guerrilla without even realising. Just have a few swings of the sledgehammer, the world's newest classic game weapon, on the Martian surface. You'll be hard-pressed to disagree.

It has become a fashion for developers to focus on realism, when it comes to creating shooting games. Titles such as Call of Duty, SOCOM and Killzone 2, are popular shooters due to the high level of realism, as well as adequate multiplayer features.

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.

Guerrilla is the third game in the rather successful Red Faction series. The series has been a staple in the industry not just for it's high review scores (due to being great games), but it's well known because of it's destruction system.

Alec Mason, a recent Earth-to-Mars transplant looks to make his fortune as a salvager, but after a run-in with the Earth Defense Force, a group hell-bent on controlling Mars's resources, he finds himself drafted in Red Faction, an underground Mars liberation group.

you want stuff to splode

you're burnt out on sandbox titles

The original 'Red Faction' was one of the most under-rated games on the PS2 (and PC) when it arrived. Offering an engaging story amidst a huge and destructible alien landscape, it further cemented Volition as an AAA shooter developer.

Huge Martian landscape to explore; Lots of missions; Excellent destruction-based gameplay; Great sci-fi atmosphere

Goofy driving and destruction physics; Often incredibly frustrating; Much more linear that other sandbox games

Science fiction's love affair with the planet Mars has endured since the genre's formative years, delivering countless imaginative adventures across multiple mediums. While the gaming world's relationship with the Red Planet may not be as fruitful as its big screen and literary counterparts, it has...

Check out the video review. In 2001, the original Red Faction introduced gamers to a futuristic version of life on Mars. Eight years have passed since then, and technology has improved dramatically.