Red Faction is a series that I have fond memories of. It was a very different style of shooter from THQ, but the series eventually went dead with the death of the original THQ. Now however, the series have been given new life thanks to THQ Nordic who have revived the series with Red Faction Guerilla: ReMarstered Edition.
Before you get super excited, I must dampen the enthusiasm a little. There are no major gameplay changes here. What was changed was the visuals, and they were changed for the better and the fact is that the gameplay didn’t need to be changed as Red Faction Guerilla is an all time classic. As the gameplay is the same, I will focus on what is changed before discussing the gameplay for those unfamiliar.
The game has updated lighting, shadows and shaders, post processing effects and improved textures. These all work in tandem to create a magnificent looking game that mostly holds up visually compared to most games released today. It is not perfect however, as the pre-rendered visuals and cinematics do betray the games age. This is in addition to other details such as texture flaws that were in the original and were carried over to this version, such as repeating textures. The game runs at a firm 60 fps for the most part, in 1080p on a standard PS4 or Xbox One ( a standard PS4 was used for this review, so no comment can be made on the 4K performance modes), which is a great accomplishment visually. Finally, all the DLC that had been released for the game is bundled here with this release.
How to describe the gameplay though? Red Faction Guerrilla is perhaps the gold standard for destructible environments in gaming. There is virtually no limit to how you can interact with the environment, and this clearly influenced later games from other developers. The drawback here though, is that some of the environment is bland and there isn’t much to do. The story is okay, but nothing special either. That said, when the game is good it is very good. I loved revisiting this classic and will encourage everyone to try it out. It is a literal blast from the past!
Disclaimer: A review code was provided