PAX 08: Hands On With Red Faction: Guerilla

by Wade Larson on August 31, 2008 at 12:50 pm

PAX 08 is rocking gamers with plenty of hands-on demos on the show floor, as Fall’s big-name titles make the rounds for their adoring public. Gamers queued up to get their greedy claws on Gears 2, Left 4 Dead, StarCraft II, and many others.

But one of the surprising hits of the floor was Red Faction: Guerrilla. It doesn’t take long to realize why the game has been in development for four-and-a-half years: the destructibility of the environments is complete.

Not “Yea, you can break most stuff,” or “Blow up sections of walls” destructible. I mean, completely destructible. Some sniper camping you from the third floor of a building? Bring the whole thing down. Stuck in a corner? Make yourself a back door. Every piece of every structure is just waiting to be smashed. But how do you bring down a whole building?

With a hammer.

Right up there with Gordon Freeman’s crowbar, the RF:G hammer is destined for iconic status. A quick flick of the D-pad switches from a gun to the hammer, which can be used to smash pillars and skulls with equal efficiency. It’s not quite as satisfying as the chainsaw bayonet, but can a chainsaw drop the roof on an enemy?

“Everything is build around destruction,” said Sean Kennedy, associate producer with Volition Inc., the team that has been working away on the game for almost five years.

To make the physics for total destruction possible, the team at Volition had to build the game from the ground up, engine included. The game recalculates the physics of the buildings every second, and applies the damage effects to structures. It’s such a complex system, that buildings have to be constructed realistically, with metal supports and concrete frames.

“We had to train the whole team to be architects,” Kennedy said.

The physics makes for a chaotic multiplayer, with buildings crumbling and cover quickly disappearing. Kennedy promised that destruction would be even more impressive in the single player experience, and alternate multiplayer modes will feature destruction-– and reconstruction-– as key elements.

The other key feature that sets RF:G apart was the use of backpacks. No, not the kind you wear to school, but jetpacks. Jetpacks that can be switched in-game for bonuses. The playable demo featured a standard jet pack (for flying around), a Rhino pack for charging enemies, a concussion pack for creating a shockwave around the player, a pack that grants temporary unlimited ammo and a firepower bonus, and fleetfoot, which lets players sprint, and is useful for ninja hammer strikes to the back of the skull. Kennedy said there will be more than 10 packs available in the final build, including a thrust pack which shoots the player straight up for quick dodging.

The build is nearly complete, and Kennedy expects the game will drop sometime early 2009. If the game maintains the level of destructibility shown in the demo and adds some more variety in terms of guns and bonus backpacks, Red Faction: Guerrilla could smash out its own niche in the crowded world of shooters.

Share This: