Fun. That was a close second thought. If there’s one thing right with this game, next to the obvious destruction part and ditto Geo-Mod engine, it’s really the fun part. Granted, the blowing up part represents two thirds of that fun but it’s still genuine fun nonetheless. After a hard day of earnest yet mind numbing office work it’s a real blast to just drive around, start some uproar with some guerrilla comrades and blow the crap out of some innocent yet hostile occupied buildings.

The game starts off with you, Alec Mason, arriving on Mars to go work as a miner with your brother Daniel. Then a nasty picture of the escalating situation on Mars is painted as you get to see random acts of violence by the Earth Defense Force or EDF in short. Basically the Mars people aren’t digging the oppression from the government installed by our Earthly overlords. People are being killed, kidnapped and things are getting out of hand pretty fast so there is need for some action. In comes the Red Faction as the people’s voice against the bad guys. Toss in the fact that your brother gets killed before your own eyes but you get rescued by that very same Red Faction asking you to join their cause and voila, there is the story.

It isn’t much but the same can be said from some other game I reviewed which got a whopping score. As long as the gameplay is addicting, fun and keeps you entertained, it’s a-ok with me. For the concept of the game, Violition went ahead and borrowed plenty of things from GTA IV. Bad ass main character, check. Open world environment, check. Plenty of vehicles to ‘borrow’ and drive, check. Follow the story or just do your own thing, check. Set routes and waypoints, check. Plenty of stuff to compare the game to, but can it hold its own?

Because there are many of them and only few of you and they have outmatched and outgunned, your only possible tactic is the ancient old art of guerrilla. Sounds fun and actually quite refreshing as a point of view for a game and it also starts out like that. As you drive around there are a number of standard missions to play. These usually consist of destroying a building with limited resources, liberating prisoners, attack an enemy base, defend your own base or drive around with a crazy chauffeur trying to do millions of Mars' currency in damage or you find a car that needs to go some place and all hell breaks loose when you start its engine. From time to time you will get a radio message telling you to intercept a convoy, a courier or prevent an attack from happening. These missions are fun but they get quite boring after doing the same type of mission for the 7th time without additional elements to change the pace or difficulty.

There are also missions that are marked on the minimap with a yellow fist. These are ‘story missions’ which make you advance in the game upon completion. They vary a lot more and increase in difficulty with each of the six zones Mars has been divided in. Sometimes you have to abduct someone, other times you are running from mortar fire or investigating a lead.

If you are not interested in doing missions, you can just pick up some weapons and start destroying enemy structures. If you are making enough of a fuss, other guerrilla members will join you but the enemy will reinforce themselves. The buildings you destroy leave scrap metal when they collapse. You can pick it up, collect it and return it to your base where it can be exchanged for upgrades and weapons. Speaking of weapons, these are a big plus in the game. Right from the start you have a sledgehammer and remote charges which allow you to wreak some major havoc and without revealing too much, one of the weapons is actually a part of the story and a huge blast to play around with.

As said before, the Geo-Mod engine does a good job of the whole physics things but at the same time it’s really not doing too shabby with the rest of its job. Vehicles, guns, buildings, terrain and NPC’s are all very smooth and detailed yet the engine never really struggles to get it all rendered on the screen. It must be said that even though everything is detailed, I still miss creativity and enthusiasm in the maps. On purpose or not, because Mars is supposed to be desolate, the settings are quite depressing and bland at times.

The sound is topnotch, certainly when it comes to voiceovers. There are people talking to you in other languages than English and they sound genuine. The French I heard was actual French and not some cheap sounding Frenglish. All sounds effects are in the same class of excellence and they do a fine job without taking over the entire game.

When you finish the singleplayer or kick it aside, no one can really blame you, there is the multiplayer. Offline multi consists of just doing as much damage as possible and it is entertaining enough for a few hours when you have guests. The real treat however is the online play. This came as a true surprise to me as none of the modes are really creative. What really makes this a winner is the destruction, both your own and that of other players. This aspect of the battle constantly changes the tactics that need to be applied and it also enables the same maps to be played in numerous ways. I haven’t seen any game in multi that doesn’t condition players after some time to play one map with one or two tactics but as far as I’ve seen, Red Faction online is totally refreshing in this aspect and it cannot be acknowledged enough for this. If you intend to play this game online, go ahead and slap another ten percent on top of that score you undoubtedly already checked.