Red Faction Guerrilla Comments by Dan Whitehead

Looks like my opinion remains the same as after playing the demos. Will definitely get it, but that can wait until I find it used.

And yeah, quiet month it is not. Sims 3, Prototype, Batman, Blood Bowl... plenty of games, plenty of genres, it's gonna be hectic.

@TheJuriel

What do you mean by Batman. Batman Arkam Asylum isnt coming out for months.
Prototype could be good though. Its out next week too.

7, though it would have been less looking at the demo.

A Miss...

Sooo, if the US came to "liberate" the UK and I fought back, I'd be a "terrorist"? Heehee

Anyhoo, I find the demo somewhat lacking and while I know it's not indicative of the final product, I shall give this a pass.

Although...Geomod is fun, fun fun.

I played the demo and loved the fact that you can drive a truck through a building, and everyone in it.

@ dr_faulk

loved the fact that you can drive a truck through a building

If you're doin that then you have to stick detpacks all over the truck and drive it through the middle, get out, escape, detonate.

"Anyone who complains about a score that is +/-1 away from their own is an idiot. "

Funny how all the "Should have been an 8" comments stopped after this :)

I think Crofto is genuinely tapped in the head.

Just got me Red Faction & Fuel
both cracking games :P

7's good for me. Eurogamers 7's ive found are usually better than the cack they give 10's too imo

Only cause you're not expecting much! Some fantastic 7's in the last year though. But a 7 is a good score, if I like the sound of a game a 7 does not put me off.

@TheJuriel
Blood Bowl isn't out for a while either.

I enjoyed the demo but I was expecting the game to get slated. Definitely sounds like something I'd like to play after I finish Infamous...

Personally I couldn't give a toss about EG's review, I'll use the two demos to make up my mind. Some number, arbitrarily doled out by a 'web journalist', who doesn't sound like he's played the game at all, is a poor representation of a game's playability.

@bratmandu

What utter nonsense. Dan is a respected games writer, and the review is fair, measured, descriptive and accurate throughout. I disagree slightly with his overall opinion of the game, but it no way are your suggestions even slightly founded. The score is wholly immaterial.

difference between iraq and red faction- the red faction insurgents don't blow each other up and kill their former neighbours because of petty differences and then still try to pin it all on the EDF.

lewis- respected? really? Guess you really don't read the comments after most of his reviews much lol

Respected by his peers, not the trolls who frequent this wretched hive of scum and villainy.

It's not a complete thread until Crofto has had his personal blurb cut and pasted into a message:

'Yeah, a big gamer with pretty strong but informed views on gaming, which often leads to me looking down on most gaming reviewers since they talk complete nonsense. I know what makes a good game, and what makes a bad game... I've been wasting my free time playing the bloody things long enough to tell the difference (unlike most gamers out there).

You'll not often find me lavishing unfounded praise upon the likes of Grand Theft Auto or Gears of War, but rather on actual high quality games such as Okami and Super Mario Galaxy, which really are examples of excellent and polished gaming design.'

Genius. It's looking increasingly more likely that he's not even joking when he says that, though!

you should all know by now that all the Eurogamer writers are massive geeks and massive geeks are always the fucking worst authority on anything. Fact.

"Respected by his peers"

That is what I was aiming for, yeah.

@jstar
Personal jibes are completely unnecessary. Can't we keep the discussion to Red Faction?

Thought the review was fine meself...

Agree that the game needs more stealth options but I'm having a blast (no pun intended) with it so far, great stuff.

The demo was yawntastic. I wonder if I could like the full game. Probably a no buy for me.

I think jstar is being sarcastic. I certainly hope he is, anyway.

Looking forward to this, a good bit of creative destruction is always nice and I'm kind of sick of linear games.

I have to agree with the majority of this review. I was about ready to quit after one suicide run too many, however, I stuck with it, manly due to the review mentioning things get better and now I'm glad I did. It still annoys me though and could do with a lot more strategy to the attacks. A bit of stealth ability wouldn't go amiss and would it have been so hard to let me have a bit of fun before you call in every bloody troop on the planet to stop me?

Why can't I take out troops without immediately raising the alarm? Heck you can't even get away with bumping into a fence without infuriating the entire army. Why can't I create a diversion by blowing something else up? They always know it was me, always.

Having to run in and, immediately, out all the time is boring, it is not fun, and more to the point, it's not the tactics a small rebellious faction would use. They would be a little more smart about their attacks. Go for weak points. Get in and out quickly, but without generating too much heat on themselves. Use diversions, stealth and planning. Not just drive a truck into a building and then leg it before the tanks come - wash, rinse, repeat. That's just stupid.

This game could have been amazing, I was really looking forward to it. The simplest of changes could help make it great. As it is, I'm just trying to find silver linings so I don't feel I wasted my money.

@ Crofto: Have you played the full game though? There is no tearing/pop-in to be seen.

@ LewisResolution

"What utter nonsense. Dan is a respected games writer, and the review is fair, measured, descriptive and accurate throughout. I disagree slightly with his overall opinion of the game, but it no way are your suggestions even slightly founded. The score is wholly immaterial."

Condescend much? I agree that the score is immaterial, and would rather read reviews that don't have scores. What I don't want to read is a plot summary, description of minor irrelavent details like how icons appear on the in game HUD, and I was hoping to hear much, much more about the multiplayer aspect, perhaps half the review even.

Now I understand that review copies arrive early and there are few people online before the release date to play with, but I still feel this review shed little light on the overall game. IT'S MY OPINION that a review should focus less on the minor details, and more on how much fun it is, playability, lifespan, etc.

I agree the review is accurate and descriptive, but fair and measured? How can you possibly justify the complete lack of information on the multiplayer aspect, and the other modes, Wreckin Crew, etc, which I was looking forward to getting some information on.

Well the game arrived today anyway so I'm about to find out for myself.

"I agree the review is accurate and descriptive, but fair and measured? How can you possibly justify the complete lack of information on the multiplayer aspect, and the other modes, Wreckin Crew, etc, which I was looking forward to getting some information on."

A) because it was you that was looking forward to such information, not me.
B) because writing a fair and measured review does not necessarily mean talking about everything in the game.

Your comment was ignorant and offensive to those who invest a lot of time and effort into producing high quality writing on the internet.

a) I expect, (not 'looked forward' to as such), to be informed on an aspect that is crucial to long term enjoyment of the game.

b) A fair and measured review does not start talking about George Bush and HUD icons, and certainly covers the most important parts of the game.

I respect your dedication to this reviewer - but I stand by that IT IS MY OPINION that the review did not cover the aspects of the game which are important to whether or not I (and a lot of other people) would enjoy the game.

I know first hand that reviewing can be a difficult balancing act, and I respect anyone who does it as a career, but it is also the duty of a reviewer to play the game fully, explore the major aspects of play, and must themselves respect the teams who put these games together, by writing a complete review, not focussing on irrelevant referrences and minute details.

I really don't get why you feel the need to resort to flaming me for stating my opinion just because this reviewer is your boyfriend or something, if he's wrong he's wrong.

I'm sorry if you feel this review didn't give you the exact information you wanted, and in the exact required ratios you prefer, but to say that there was a "complete lack of information on the multiplayer aspect, and the other modes, Wreckin Crew, etc" is demonstrably wrong.

Number of words spent talking about various multiplayer modes: 371

And, since this seems to be a peculiar obsession for you...

Number of words spent describing the HUD: 14

I got it now and I like it, especially the various modes of MP.

Counting words now? 14 on the HUD is 14 too many for such a trivial thing. Are you including 'and' and 'to' and the like?

It's horses for courses I suppose, but when I read a review, I want to know virtually nothing of the plot, save maybe the quality of it. I want to know about different modes and ways of playing, including single player AND MP, how it feels, what you can and can't do, and how much life you reckon it has.

Seriously, all of that info is in the review. There's literally one paragraph on the plot. I'm sorry that one sentence on the icons used to differentiate mission types on the map is such a distraction for you, but all the things you're complaining about amount to maybe a few hundred words in a 1,910 word review.

Ok you have your opinion about what should be there and what shouldn't and so do I. Like I say, horses for courses. I made my own mind up from the demos and playing my friend's version.

Oh my great goodness.

Surely flaming would be somewhere more along the lines of making gay jokes or insulting Dan's (and, by extention, my) integrity as a "web journalist", rather than calling you out on misrepresenting the situation and posing your views as objective certainty.

Big sighs. But let's all kiss and make up. I'll be doing that especially to Dan, natch.

I'm a massive fan of this - 9 personally.

The more I play this, the better it gets.

I'd call it an 8/9 now. Most fun I've had in any game this year by a mile.

A 9/10 from me too. Another one of those examples of the demo being a bad reflection of the full title.

@muscleblade - "@Darren

This is a multiplayer focused game. If you dont like multiplayer like you so often mention this game is probably not for you."

Huh? Last time I checked the game has both single and multiplayer so I don't see why this wouldn't be for me anymore than Gears of War and Gears of Wars 2 were, neither of which I played online either. Besides I'm getting the game for the PC at a fraction of the price of the console versions so it'll probably prove to be a worthwhile purpose. I *did* enjoy the single player demo, you know! ;)

EG's 7s are quickly becoming the REAL kind of endorsement, seeing how thoroughly enjoyable Dead Space, Bionic Commando, Infamous, Nuts & Bolts, Resident Evil 5 and Ninja Blade have been. 10s however are reserved for the more pretentious excercises in boredom like Fable 2, which I suppose you have to have some kind of special, finely tuned senses to truly see the extra 3 points of.

Really, the only thing that throws off the measurement is the mind numbingly dull Assassin's Creed which we're now supposed to bunch in with Dead Space on the accomplishment scale. :O

Asked a couple of friends about this over live last night. Favouite response was "this is a 7 in the way that Chromehounds was a 3".

So I bought it. Fingers crossed...

@ SimonM7

Surely though, all those games are reviewed by different people, so you couldn't really say "EG's 7's are a good endorsement", as, the point I was trying to make last week here was that some reviewers value certain aspects of a game less than others or yourself, so the review score and general outlook may differ depending on the reviewer.

I'm still in favour of the old Edge-style 'no scores on reviews - just words'.

For this one, I, and it would seem, a good few other people are turning to the demo and friends to get an idea if they'd this game or not.

I'd say to you to SimonM7, to ignore the numbered scores completely, and think about the impressions you had of this or any other game, before reading a review - and if the review doesn't address the things that you had thought about beforehand, find a review that does, or try a demo or get a friend's opinion.

For example, in this review, I had wanted to know how good the multiplayer was, but this review didn't focus on MP that much, so I tried the demo and read some other reviews.

I think I made the right choice - loving this game! 11/10!!!! (intentional irony). Seriously though - this game rocks bells.

More games need system link these days. There's a reason I own multiple 360s and widescreen TVs....

Finnished this game now . The enemy AI is super agressive and the core missions are mostly just dreadfull . you are under almost constant accurate hostile fire for the entire mission from all sides . and some mission have you driving the lenth of the map for no good reason . on the plus side , destroying stuff is just so much fun in this game . its worth buying just for the physics engine alone .( if you like destruction).

@ dirk_aircool

I'm a good bit in, playin on hard, the Ai is pretty tough, I wish you could lose the alert level a bit easier in enemy territory. i.e. if you're out and about (not near a base or enemy stronghold), it goes green again fairly quick when you escape, but if you are in a base or town, and you get away from the guards and hide, even if no one can see you, it NEVER goes green until you leave the area.

It's annoyin when I'm trying to stealthily plan out the blowing up of the blue star buildings, I got it almost perfect but one guy seen me and the yellow alert wouldn't go away after I took care of him, patrols just kept coming after that but they never found me. I waited ages but they kept wandering about lookin for me, when I made a break for it the alert went to orane and all hell broke loose.

Maybe a patch to make yellow alert go away if you're not spotted for a while?

After having the game for about a week now I have to say It's a lot of fun. Like some, at first I was a bit put off by the sort of run and gun nature of the action. However now after playing for a bit I see why the developers chose to design the game this way. The focus of the game is on destructible/explosive environments and the only way to truly enjoy this is to force gamers to incorporate it into the fighting.

In other words BLOW S*** UP ...if you get pinned down by EDF look for something flammable to point your rifle at, or plant a remote charge on (The buildings are planned out with support structures like power generators, propane tanks etc). Need to take out a couple of guys on a bridge...plant some remote charges and blow up the damn bridge. Doing so will buy you enough time to do what you need to do (and the explosions are awesome to look at). I haven't gotten far enough to get some of the more advance weapons but that should make all of this even easier.

In that sense the game does in fact force you to be creative and strategize, just more in a more fly by the seat of your pants sort of way, and it's good for a change of pace. It's not pure run/gun/suicide IF you keep your head and understand what your doing. I would have preferred a way to launch more complete-suprise type attacks (the convoy is one example), but overall I'm having a lot of fun with it. While the gun play is solid AND essential it's not like gears, or COD, in that you can't play it that way.

It's sort of like Rambo meets McGyver.