Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I half worry that my 1999 self would be disappointed. We’re living in the last of the great sci-fi-sounding years, and he’d have been hoping I’d be playing some kind of ludicrously intricate immersive-sim derivative. But if he asked, I’d be forced to confess that I’m playing Starcraft and Freespace. He’d have been disappointed. But fuck him. He always was a snot. I’m back with two of the best games of the late 90s. And what interests me is that in two games that were relatively contemporary with one another can walk such radically opposing paths and still end up in the same place…
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Quick one! LewieP, official RPS MASTER OF PRICES, notes that Saint’s Row 2 is now available for £2.50 from THQ’s own shop, and you can (apparently) add the serial number to Steam for convenience. He’s not sure whether the offer will last until the weekend and the Bargain Bucket. He thought you should know ASAP. We thought you should know ASAP. ASAP, I tell you, ASAP.

EDIT: Oh noes! Not ASAP enough. Offer over. The basts!

We’ve been following the development of Volition’s Sci-fi open-world terrorist freedom-fighter game for a while. But now, finally out on the PC, we can review say wot I think…
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The first mission in Red Faction: Guerrilla is to destroy a building with a super-powered sledgehammer, and it just sort of gets better from there. The PC version is out this week, and will include the DLC released for the console versions for free. If you want to wait for a detailed verdict on the game then we’ll have one for you next week, but in short: BIFF!

Meanwhile, you can check out the trailered explodaction below. Hammertime, etc.

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Sitting down to play an early version of Red Faction on an almost-sunny London day, I do get a moment’s cognitive dissonance when I think of myself here, at a corporate event, playing a multi-million dollar product of capitalism designed to simulate the thrill of armed insurrection, when I could just head across town and get involved in the real thing. Except if I did that, I’d probably get in more trouble when I hit someone with a sledgehammer. And I wouldn’t get to play with nanite-disolverers. Or, at least, I don’t think I would. Man!

So – Red Faction then.
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“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.

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Saints Row 2 is out now on PC in the US, both at retail and on Steam. It doesn’t reach Europe until the 30th January. The delay is apparently due to localisation, which seems odd for a months old console game. I’ve had a copy for a while now, and below is Wot I Think of the single player game. We’ll take a look at the multiplayer once the game arrives in Europe.

It had me with the shit-spraying. Of the very many non-story tasks available in the sandbox world, the one that made me realise I love this revolting game was the septic tank challenge. I was tasked to reduce the property prices of an area for a corrupt real estate agent by coating the buildings, the cars and the people in gallons of faeces. The police keep coming, and I kept splattering them in the brown stuff until their cars careered of the road, and the officers lay drowned in the crap. Enough damage racked up, the challenge was complete, and offered me level 2. Then 3, 4, 5 and 6.

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As conoisseurs of The Explosion we are keen to sample both new blends and vintage detonations. Red Faction: Guerrilla is a fresh formulation of popular a traditional recipe, and it’s looking no less delicious for that. The footage that follows shows off RFG’s multiplayer action, where many explosions occur, thanks to the trademark destructible scenery, the giant guns, and men with excellent jetpacks. Any series of explosions that can be topped off with a dude escaping the blast on a jetpack is okay by us.

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Destructo-scenery specialists Volition have been talking about their new game, the third Red Faction title, including an explanation of their reasons for pulling the camera into third-person. Apparently it makes seeing all that destruction a little more satisfying. What we know so far is that it’s going to be an “open-world shooter” set on Mars, so there’s a little less linearity to your smashing of glass, shattering of concrete, and other Martian geo-mod guerrilla behaviour.

That footage beyond the click.

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This always feels a little like “Publisher Announced Sequel To Commercially Successful Game” shocka, but – yes – THQ have confirmed that there’s going to be a Red Faction 3. We knew there was going to be a further Red Faction game since last year, but we’re now sure that it’s a proper “III”. Also, Volition will be back on coding duties and it’ll be out (er) in the coming financial years, it seems. Which basically means any time from April until March 2009. Other details are a tad loose. We live in hope they get the modern take on the GeoMod to actually do something nifty. Or that Volition somehow trick THQ, making them think they’re developing Red Faction III, when in fact they’re developing Freespace 3 (“See, THQ Suit Guy – it’s got a “III” in it. And it’s Sci-Fi. Same game, honest”).

[Thanks for Chris Evans of Evo-gamer' nod at Kotaku's nod.]