Watch us play through Red Faction demo

By Tom Bramwell Published 6 April, 2009

Demo available early to THQ web sign-ups.

THQ has announced that the Red Faction: Guerrilla demo will be available exclusively to special people for a short time when it launches this month.

Similar to the US GameStop pre-order deal, there's a temporary period of exclusivity for anybody who signs up at THQ.co.uk, with PS3 and Xbox 360 demos set to be made available through a key giveaway page.

Although it's not clear when exactly the demo will be made available, THQ has told Eurogamer it will be very soon.

We also know what's in it, because we've been playing it. You take control of player character Alec Mason, and fight your way through EDF forces to claim control of a walker. Using a hammer to slap troopers around, you get to experiment with the game's vaunted destruction technology.

Let's just say that that gets amped up a fair bit once you get into the walker. After a brief trot back to a colleague's flatbed, you then get to take control of a turret section. Turret sections are better with Geo-Mod 2.0, on this evidence.

But hey, don't take our word for it - check out the embedded video below to see what happened when yours truly had a crack. Apologies for cack-handedness.

See Tom play through the upcoming Red Faction: Guerrilla demo, or click through to Eurogamer TV for a high-resolution encode.

You can also check out our recent hands-on preview and Eurogamer TV Show for more.

UPDATE: And here's another video. This one focuses on using the remote charges to blow stuff up, which is what you would have imagined we would do in the first one, had the amazing player at the controls bothered to explore weapon-switching before hitting 'record'.

Watch Tom blow things up, or go through to Eurogamer TV for the higher-resolution version.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (29) Latest comment 3 years ago

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  • DFawkes #1 3 years ago

    That looks pretty good, though that hammer is a tad too wall carvey.

  • dudefella #2 3 years ago

    Looks like a lot of fun!

  • Wastelander #3 3 years ago

    Why is everything made out of big chunks of polystyrene?

  • killercow #4 3 years ago

    Apparently, on the french page of the demo it says april 9. So i guess that's the date they will open up the demo code.

  • Lim-Dul #5 3 years ago

    Hmmm - the building destruction looks pretty nice but it's a bit silly to see a guy with the hammer smashing solid concrete walls as if they were made out of cardboard.
    It's also a pity that there seems to be absolutely no terrain destruction whatsoever - a thing that was one of the main selling points of Red Faction in the previous installments.

    What also annoys me is that it's another game with the "recharging health" mechanic. I mean - where did we go wrong that ALL shooters have to have it now? It absolutely takes away the sense of danger and, I dare say, challenge (if you adopt a certain gameplay style). Tom was just running around with the hammer and taking out guys SHOOTING at him - that's just absurd. I know that if there were more enemies this would have proven to be a stupid tactic but still... :-\

  • PearOfAnguish #6 3 years ago

    The soldier shouting "he's after me, help!" when the walker stomps toward him is a nice touch.

  • AphoticCosmos #7 3 years ago

    Looking very, very good. Multiplayer is going to be fun :p

  • BadBoyBonner #8 3 years ago

    Thought that I was watching Blast Corps for the 360 ! ;-)

    Always interesting to see a bit of something slightly different being launched - not sure if this will be the killer game for destructibility - but having it certainly changes how you think about game worlds - must make design a bit of a mare to begin with.

    Come on Rare where's Blast Corps?

  • Cadence #9 3 years ago

    like the music!

  • TRUTH #10 3 years ago

    Looks great 'BUT' it seems like no strategy is needed!...just one hit kills, no thought needed or planing for destruction needed, no worries about ai putting any real challenge in battles - it just will end -up getting boring real quick...Ai should be able to use environment a lot better and vehicles should not simply blow up with one single hit...Seems like a good blast but rather brainless fun that will get boring rather quick due to lack of challenge from the demo example!...Hope I'm wrong though.
    Edited by 1 at 06/04/09 @ 18:55

  • sneetch #11 3 years ago

    The strongest man on Mars. :)

    As others have said it seems a bit too easy to destroy reinforced concrete with the hammer. Still, we'll see when the demo lands.

  • markd250 #12 3 years ago

    EDF! EDF! EDF!

    (sorry, had to be said)

  • Borealis_UK #13 3 years ago

    FYI of everyone complaining the hammer just smashing through walls, the hammer does have little explosions at the business end of it. Pretty sure I saw that on a video somewhere.

  • thesonglessbird #14 3 years ago

    Love the physics on the vehicles...the destruction isn't bad too ;) Gotta agree with people's sentiments on the hammer being somewhat overpowered. Maybe there's a reason for that. Probably not though.

  • makeamazing #15 3 years ago

    Looks pretty good, seems like fun. Nah not bothered about the hammer being too strong, its the future I am sure they have made them more powerful than todays hammers :D

  • Scimarad #16 3 years ago

    That looks like lots of fun:)

  • Darren #17 3 years ago

    Looks kind of fun smashing everything up even if, as others have commented, it comes across as ridiculously unrealistic, as if everything is made of cardboard!!! And what a tear-fest, a typical Volition game really. I know it's not finished but I'm betting that it isn't fixed for the final release. If the game is actually any good then I'll get on the PC, thank you.

  • mooseman721 #18 3 years ago

    Looks dull.

  • Gearskin #19 3 years ago

    I cannot believe that people actually moan about the level of destruction. I mean FFS. So what if the hammer can be used to smash a wall? If the game were going for realism...

    - It wouldn't be set on Mars
    - One man could not fight an army
    - It wouldn't feature giant robot suits

    Since when did everything suddenly need realistic physics. You have COUNTLESS games out there where you can't interact with the scenery and not one person moans. Grenades don't blow holes in anything. Vehicles cannot ram through structures. This can be said of the best games out there. Halo. The COD series. Half Life.

    But Red Faction comes along, and suddenly you CAN wreck things... and it's a problem people notice? WTF!?!?

  • GlassMoon #20 3 years ago

    FUN!, looks more like a high scores kinda game than a straight up shooter

  • PearOfAnguish #21 3 years ago

    What is this 'Red Fraction' Mem is talking about? I have never heard of it. Is it some kind of maths-based physics game set on Mars?

  • TRUTH #22 3 years ago

    All the destruction and physics would be a marvel, only if there was a point to it in the gameplay!...From the demo it seems that all the destruction is justthere with no strategy or thought needed - with what seems to be non existent ai against a one man army with a hammer that is more powerful then machine guns and tanks!...What will be the point of all this destruction if there's no real purpose for it. Games with no form of strategy or thought usually get boring very quick, no matter how impressive they look.

  • Pastici #23 3 years ago

    Dammit, my laptop is too shit to watch the video smoothly :(.

  • schnide #24 3 years ago

    Fuck Guerilla - I want Red Fraction.

  • TheBard #25 3 years ago

    The wall smashing hammer bit is actually explained in one of the weapon videos. It's an Impact Hammer, with some kind of artificial gravity force field thing which amplifies normal kinetic energy delivered by a hammer blow times one hundred or something.

  • mkreku #26 3 years ago

    Everything looks like it's made of paper! There's no resistance to the destruction! It looks like if he had taken his normal character and run up against a wall, the wall would have crumbled like the rest of.. everything.

    I mean, look at the video. He strafes with the walker into a concrete building.. and the walker doesn't even slow down as the building crumbles around him, like it's not even there.

    I want to like this game, but that's a major flaw right there.

  • NonniR #27 3 years ago

    Wow, it looks awesome. I'm only hoping that this idea of total destruction will work for the entire game unlike for example Assassin's Creed that took another pretty good idea but after two or three hours it just got repetitive and boring.

    Also, that "walker" reminded me of the main-characters mech in Steambot Chronicles.

  • septimus #28 3 years ago

    Looks hideous. 6. At most.

  • Darren #29 3 years ago

    The game is set on Mars, a planet this is noted for being red and having no atmosphere but is otherwise similar to Earth gravity-wise. The character you play as runs around without a helmet on and apart from the abundance of red it might as well be set on Earth in the Nevada desert because it sure as hell doesn't look like another planet to me. Looks initially fun but will probably be mediocre but it would be nice if it wasn't. Console versions look graphically awful though as if all the focus was put on the destruction at the expense of the quality of everything else.