Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered

Blows the roof clean off.

While Red Faction Guerrilla‘s performance and visuals have been finely polished in this re-Mars-ter, its gameplay is still a little rough around the edges. Gunplay isn’t that much fun, for instance; I found myself hitting enemies with my trusty sledgehammer where possible. Making your way through rubble after toppling a building can be problematic too, but it has to be done to collect any valuable scrap. The fact that you can just walk though a building in a mech or drive through walls with a truck makes it ever so appealing though.

Despite having a title that deserves a firm slap across the face for the marketing executive who thought it up, Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered is a great get for those who may have missed it the first time around, or anyone who might want to revisit (and re-destroy) the red planet. It may not add any new content to address the empty open world and bland story, but it does perform well, and everything I loved about Red Faction: Guerrilla is still front and center and looking better than ever.

If you’re a fan of Just Cause or Saint’s Row, then Red Faction Guerrilla might well tickle your fancy. In the days of sprawling open world titles with hundreds of missions tied together with awful stories, the simplicity of this game makes a welcome change. Violence is not big, hard, or clever, but it sure is a hell of a lot of fun. Red Faction Guerrilla Me-Mars-tered is the remaster no one was asking for, but has turned out to be a welcome surprise.

Here we have a remake of a fun open-world third-person shooter. However, is it good enough to stand out in this day and age?

We tell you, it’s a good game! It’s not average! It might have some problems here and there, but you have to admit it is a “Good” game.

Red Faction Guerrilla was a frantic open world romp and mayhem simulator. This remaster is a total recall of the original with a fresh coat of paint.

While not necessarily a great example of how a remaster should be done, Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered still serves as a reminder of how enjoyable it is to bash buildings to rubble with a big sledgehammer. We recommend you get your ass back to Mars sharpish.

The visuals are adequate for the most part, though the characters’ faces are somewhat off-putting during cutscenes.  Mars itself is entirely brown and red, which doesn’t exactly make for the most diverse setting. It’s difficult to tell areas apart, with only the occasional landmark standing out as visually interesting. The Nintendo Switch version of Re-Mars-tered also struggles with audio quality, as most of the dialogue is of low quality and constantly peaks, which is a tad annoying.

I'm not using that title in the review itself more than once.

I just wish all the performance issues were resolved before shipping. In all good faith, I can’t recommend you rush out and grab this immediately with how shoddy the performance can be. It would be one thing to deal with a crummy framerate, but having the game crash as often as it did is no good. I want to destroy buildings, not sit through boring-ass dialogue, have my game crash and then sit through that chatter again.

Mars. Fourth planet from the Sun, likely next candidate for human habitation, and a great setting for a video game. In addition to the Warmind expansion for Destiny II and one of the announced Far Cry 5 DLCs, the latest Mars-based game to come out this year is THQ Nordic’s Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered for the PS4, Xbox One and PC.