By Jim Rossignol on March 24th, 2009 at 10:32 am.
“We’re ahead of everybody by five to ten years in terms of destruction,” Red Faction Guerilla lead designer James Hague tells Eurogamer. “…we wanted to go toward fully-dynamic for everything. It’s a very different technical direction from where other people are going.” Judging by the insane super-hammer trailer that Volition have just released, he might just be right. I’ve been quietly sceptical about this, and I’m still rather expecting it to mess up, but that hammer… colour me interested. More varied destruction – presented by some dude I think might be from that program about big men breaking stuff – beyond the jump.
24/03/2009 at 10:35 Okami says:
This guy is freaking me out..
24/03/2009 at 10:43 MetalCircus says:
Hahaha, my god, that guy… LOL!
24/03/2009 at 10:44 MetalCircus says:
That said, it does look quite fun.
24/03/2009 at 10:45 schizoslayer says:
I want to take that hammer to Mack.
24/03/2009 at 10:50 gulag says:
Sold! Anyone who loves gun porn knows Mack. That guy is kinky for auto-fire.
I think hammer-plus-jetpack may just be my new favourite weapon combo, narrowly edging out shank-grenade.
24/03/2009 at 10:51 Optimaximal says:
Firstly, isn’t RF: Guerrilla console only?
Secondly, five to ten years ahead of everyone in destruction? If the original Red Faction games were anything to go by, I wish they’d only be 1-2 years ahead of everyone in destruction and use the remaining years to catch up with everyone else regarding story-telling, characterisation and general game design.
Not a single Volition release has touched the quality of FreeSpace.
24/03/2009 at 10:51 Optimaximal says:
or more too the point, FreeSpace 2…
24/03/2009 at 10:53 cliffski says:
to be fair, freespace 2 was jaw droppingly awesome in every possible way imaginable when it was released.
24/03/2009 at 10:56 Ian says:
Assault rifles?
In a VIDEO GAME?
Today we have seen the true meaning of innovation.
24/03/2009 at 10:58 PC Monster says:
Having been lured into the original Red Faction with the kinky-sex that was the rocket launcher/mine combo to create your own paths through the levels, then being cruelly robbed of that facility after the first level…I have very little love left for this franchise. I don’t think it ever made enough use of the Martian setting, either, restricting you to corporate corridors and brown tunnels: nothing I’ve seen of the gameplay in the videos suggest this has changed, although the destruction does seem to have gone up a notch or two.
I’ll keep a half-eye on it, but I refuse to get excited until gamers get their hands on it and proclaim joyness.
24/03/2009 at 10:59 Jim Rossignol says:
RF:G says GAMES FOR WINDOWS on the website and all relevant press releases.
24/03/2009 at 11:01 Tworak says:
1024-bit browness
24/03/2009 at 11:02 Idle Threats & Bad Poetry says:
This game really makes me want to destroy things (in a virtual environment). I don’t know if the game will be any good, and I really couldn’t afford it anyway even if my computer could run it, but the idea of it is exciting.
It seriously needs gibs, though. It seems a little ridiculous that you can bash concrete with the hammer but leave behind an intact rag doll when you hit someone with it. And the vehicles burst into bits, but it seems the rag dolls fly out of them? What?
And that Mack fellow is from a Discovery Channel weapons show.
24/03/2009 at 11:04 Heliocentric says:
Its red damn it!
But more seriously, that hammer better lack limited ammo. I find it worrying the AI didnt noticed the mines. Sure, hide the mine on the underside, but just slap it on the floor?
24/03/2009 at 11:07 simonkaye says:
Imagine a Freespace 3 with this kind of destructible-everything technology. Beam weapons that actually carve cap-ships in two.
Bring down a starship’s shields then blast your way into the hanger and the guts of the ship to take out some kind of wacky alien reactor core. Freespace with the Descent mixed back in.
Make it, please.
24/03/2009 at 11:10 meeper says:
no terrain deformation? :(
24/03/2009 at 11:13 Heliocentric says:
Hell, things like a a boarding crew blast wielding themselves into the ship but evacuating the atmosphere inside the ship and boarding in space suits. And it being handled procedurally rather than in a scripted manner. the ship could close off bulkheads etc. Thats to me, less Freespace and more Homeworld, but i’d love if you could be a pilot, a boarding member and a commander as you wish. Yea… instead we get a reddy brown FPS, with a cool hammer.
24/03/2009 at 11:14 PC Monster says:
@simonkaye: I second that emotion. :)
24/03/2009 at 11:17 Okami says:
I had a chance to play an early build of this at Leipzig last year. I had ten minutes of stupid, mindless fun, running around and hammering everything in sight. The amount of destruction you can cause reall is impressive and attaching mines to passing vehicles never gets old.
I also tried to never ever sidestep any obstacle or jump over it, instead destroying everything in my path with the hammer. And tell you what: I never once had to sidestep anything. Good times.
24/03/2009 at 11:22 rob says:
HI MAC TELL ME ABOUT VIDEOGAMES
24/03/2009 at 11:22 Down Rodeo says:
I think the problem with previous videos seen of RF:G-ToD (I just wanted to see how that looked) was that it looked generic and not very fun. However that hammer looks very fun.
Idle threats: Seems like a fair point. Did the original two have gibs? I seem to remember the railgun causing a serious mess but never having owned it, only played it, I can’t remember.
Simon: Your idea makes me wet. Honestly.
24/03/2009 at 11:23 MetalCircus says:
Bumwash! They made Saints Row 2 which is a great game. Saints Row was a bit wobbly, though, and, okay, the red factions games haven’t been too good. But this could be the exception, I really hope it is, I love games with big ‘splosions in them. I hope it’s vaguely open world rather than linear though.
24/03/2009 at 11:24 DeliriumWartner says:
Sure, they might be years ahead of everyone else, but did you see those explosions. The smoke-stack in the first vid look like it popped into flat sheets of card, like a box in Deus Ex.
And the structures at the end of the second vid – an explosion, even a building destroying one, does not instantly dissolve the joints of a structure so it tumbles down like mechano.
Watch a clip of a tower-block being demolished. It can take a good 30 seconds for the last bricks to hit the ground, smoke plumes and the ground shakes. Noone, especially Red Faction, has come close to this IMO.
24/03/2009 at 11:24 DBeaver says:
3rd person??
24/03/2009 at 11:24 Nihohit says:
I’m sure that if the destruction was so varied and freeform, they wouldn’t need to re-use the same shots twice and thrice during the trailer.
24/03/2009 at 11:29 MetalCircus says:
Jesus Delirium, you picked the most OBSCURE thing to have a problem with the game about!
24/03/2009 at 11:50 StalinsGhost says:
Holy shit! MACK! From Future Weapons!
Now that’s power.
24/03/2009 at 11:54 dsmart says:
When you see a game touting wanton acts of destruction as a USP instead of, you know, talking about the game, you know something’s wrong.
If RF2 fails, I think it would be curtains for THQ. No question about it.
24/03/2009 at 11:57 clive dunn says:
HAMMER PORN!!! FUCK YEAH!!!
This is one of the more absurd trailers i’ve seen.
And absolutly zero sign of the proverbial tongue-in-cheek.
And that guy reminds me of Locke from Lost.
@delerium. Fred Dibnah is spinning in his grave.
24/03/2009 at 12:10 Magrippinho says:
This is the second most radical remake of Donkey Kong I’ve ever seen.
24/03/2009 at 12:10 Heliocentric says:
I’m going to give a cookie to the first person who makes a mod which at random intervals declares “hammer time” and disables other weapons.
24/03/2009 at 12:25 Chaz says:
I don’t care how shallow the game might turn out to be, as that looks like bloody good fun to me.
24/03/2009 at 12:26 Bobsy says:
Take out all the fighting with people and make the game purely about beating up buildings with a hammer, and I’m totally there.
And yes: Freespace with this sort of thing would be amazing. Sigh, eh?
24/03/2009 at 12:36 Optimaximal says:
RF2 already did the failing thing. Keep up Derek :)
24/03/2009 at 12:40 TariqOne says:
Having experienced Volition/THQ’s excellent take on cooperative sandbox gameplay in Saint’s Row 2, it makes me very angry that RF:G will not feature any cooperative gameplay, excellent or otherwise.
It makes me want to smash things. Or not buy this and not smash things, as it were.
24/03/2009 at 12:54 Torgen says:
I was about to warn Heliocentric that if he kept talking like that, he’d summon Derek Smart, and by God if it didn’t happen before I could warn him! ;)
24/03/2009 at 13:27 hydra9 says:
Anyone who owned a ZX Spectrum in ancient times might be amused by this:
An authentically Spectrum-styled ‘demake’ of Red Faction, called Rock Boshers.
24/03/2009 at 13:30 Jetsetlemming says:
No gibs? No terrain destruction?
:(
24/03/2009 at 13:38 dsmart says:
lol! Yeah, I meant RFG. But think about this, even though RF2 failed, they still thought it was a good idea to make RFG. So as far as they are concerned, it probably did OK and didn’t really fail.
24/03/2009 at 13:45 Tei says:
I would love to see a Operation Flashpoint with this weapons, destructibility and graphics :-) (but maybe Is only me, and no one else).
24/03/2009 at 13:53 Five says:
Bridge Commander had deformable space ship combat
Oh and fingers crossed for Red Faction
24/03/2009 at 13:54 Pani says:
@Ian Seconded
The hammer sounded fab, the assault rifle however… hmmmm.
There’s no way you can make an assault rifle sound that good unless it was the first game in which it had ever been featured.
24/03/2009 at 14:22 Ian says:
Next we need a game with shotguns.
How amazing would that be?
24/03/2009 at 14:24 Griffinheart says:
That the terrain didn’t deform worried me as well, but, even if you can only blow up a little of the world, I’ll buy it. Can’t tell you how many hours I spent just carving off rock in the multiplayer Red Faction maps just to see how big of a chunk I could get to fall.
24/03/2009 at 14:25 lumpi says:
Love that stuff!
Remember the original RF which let you destroy your environment, dig tunnels and holes in walls dynamically in real-time in ONLINE MULTIPLAYER back in 2001(!). Fantastic tech.
24/03/2009 at 14:37 Pags says:
Needz moar gibz. If a sledgehammer is capable of shattering 2-foot thick concrete walls then I would expect it to do more to someone’s body than just make it ragdoll wildly.
I haven’t forgotten how disappointing and just plain rubbish the first two Red Factions were respectively, so this is still going to have to do a lot more if it wants to win my affections.
24/03/2009 at 14:39 paddytehpyro says:
Im quite excited by this actually. I’ve loved RF1 and 2 and its way of thinking. Mini-gun in the corridor. Well I could dodge in and out lobbing nades at it. Or just blast a hole through the walls and carry on my merry way. The lack of terrain deformation doesnt really matter. I can see no real use for it in this. And anyways, there looks to be plenty to blow-up already :)
Also, love Mack.
24/03/2009 at 14:40 Pags says:
The most fun I actually had with a Red Faction game was the original game’s demo where I spent ages in the tech demo room. Blew a hole so far out that I lost sight of the original room I was in.
24/03/2009 at 14:59 Legionary says:
Good grief, which PR executive thought having Grant Mitchell smugging away at the camera was a good way to sell games?
24/03/2009 at 15:16 Jeremy says:
That guy is a creep. The game looks really fun though.
24/03/2009 at 16:36 Fumarole says:
Mack is the worst thing about Futureweapons.
24/03/2009 at 17:02 hydra9 says:
Can we throw Mack at enemies and watch him chew on their ears?
24/03/2009 at 17:57 Stuk says:
Is anyone else thinking of an jungle dwelling creature that’s trying to divide numbers? Possibly involved in an unfortunate accident with some Dulux paint? And then discovering the answer to Maths and building some kind of explosive using rocks and body hair?
No?… Oh.
24/03/2009 at 17:58 Mathew Jensterle says:
Despite Mack the presenter being hammy, I do like the concept of the videos; using an existing tv show framework (Future Weapons?) to introduce elements of a game. Although I do get the feeling it’s been done before, but I’ll be damned if I can remember when and for what.
24/03/2009 at 18:08 Blather Blob says:
For centuries the miners of mars have been forced to use sledgehammers to dig their tunnels? I think the guerrillas could probably be assuaged with the introduction of shovels and pickaxes.
24/03/2009 at 19:03 phuzz says:
Hmm, I thought this was set on Mars? The gravity still looks like 1g. Easy enough to fix though I guess (and I can imagine it might just look odd set on a realistic setting so they decided to go for a more ‘normal’ setting)
24/03/2009 at 20:52 Stromko says:
I have to second the idea that the buildings look a little /too/ flimsy when they explode. House of cards, exactly. No real sense of weight or structure from what I see in the video.
Also, yes, Freespace 2 with fully deformable environments and ships would be absolutely killer. Though I’ve yet to see a designer that’s put deformable vehicles into play.
Sure the things can break apart when they’re dead, but can you bust down the back door of an APC so you can shoot out the back of it while it’s driving around? Could you have the turret blown off entirely but have a member of the crew pop up there with a rocket launcher to make up for it? Can you weld off the armor plating and most of the hull, but leave the engine and controls working fine to turn it into a turbo-sled?
At least we’ve reached the point where these things seem possible and manageable. If someone had shipped a game with fully destructible everything (ala Voxelstein 3D), physical vehicles (like, for example, Half-Life 2), and real-time physics gluing it all together, maybe PhysX cards wouldn’t have been such a flop.
24/03/2009 at 21:23 ACardboardRobot says:
The buildings falling that quickly could be the realism they have for Mars’ gravity?
And maybe the people can just jump that high and stuff because they’ve evolved to become small stocky dwarf jumping rabbity martians
24/03/2009 at 21:49 drewski says:
Wouldn’t buildings fall a lot slower on Mars, given there’s considerably lower gravity?
I briefly toyed with the first Red Faction. Once you got over the fact you could destroy stuff, it was rubbish.
25/03/2009 at 15:08 mrrobsa says:
At least it looks like they kept the hilarious ‘HELP I HAVE A MINE STUCK TO MY FACE’ animation where the AI runs about in an exceedingly camp fashion with its arms up and its wrists limp.
Good times!
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