We recently had an opportunity to go hands-on with the upcoming Red Faction: Guerrilla and get some significant time with the game. We brought you our multiplayer impressions a few days ago, and wanted to finish off our two part series with a taste of the deep single player campaign featured in the game.

The original Red Faction debut in 2001, and was based on Mars. It told the story of Parker, a man who incited a rebellion against the evil ULTOR Corporation responsible for mining operations on the planet. A distress call eventually goes out to the Earth Defense Force, the antagonist in the latest rendition of the series. This was the first game to take advantage of Volition's Geo-Mod technology, an engine that is designed to support destruction of the environment. Albeit primitive compared to what the team has done with the latest incarnation of the series, it was what got the ball rolling and has evolved into a very different game.

Red Faction: Guerrilla, the third entry in the series, brings us back to Mars. Over the last fifty years, the Earth Defense Force has become an empire that's sold its soul, a military overseer that's willing to do whatever needs to be done to earn a buck. Even if that means ignoring basic human rights and killing anyone who opposes them. You play as Alec, a miner dragged into the resistance fight after the death of his brother by the hands of the EDT. An expert in explosives and demolition, you're a useful fighter in the resistance as there's a lot of stuff that needs to be blown up.

The single player world is an open sandbox, divided down into six sectors, each with their own style. I had a chance to take the campaign into Parker, Dust, the Badlands, and Oasis. As you progress through the story, you'll eventually have to make it through the Free Fire Zone without getting bombarded by the EDF, and into exclusive EOS sector, the outermost community reserved for the most wealthy and powerful colonists. The mission structure is quite innovative, each of the sectors contains a wealth of EDF owned properties, as you destroy those properties you'll slowly loosen their control on the sector. On the map you'll also find larger more lucrative targets, medium and high impact facilities that come heavily guarded. As you destroy these structures, eventually the EDF's control meter on the sector will hit zero, and it'll become liberated. This is required before the final mission in each sector will unlock to progress the campaign.

As well as the standard missions, you'll find a wealth of "Guerrilla Actions" available. These are optional side missions that will increase your support within each sector from the civilian population. There's a wide variety of objectives, a few examples being rescuing captured hostages, providing security escorts, intercepting an EDF messenger, or destroying enemy convoys. As your support in each sector increases, the likelihood of the locals coming to your aid in battle does as well. This can be a real difference maker in some of the longer missions.

I briefly covered the Geo-Mod technology in our multiplayer preview, but I need to re-iterate how it really is the heart of Red Faction: Guerrilla. The game focuses on destruction, it essentially hands you a box of loaded mines and tells you to go nuts. Nearly every structure in the world can be destroyed; you can meticulously pound away with a servo-powered sledgehammer and knock out its supporting walls of a building, or simply strap on a few singularity bombs and watch it crumble. The Geo-Mod 2 engine features destructive capabilities unlike anything I've ever seen in a game, not only is it a lot of fun to watch but it never gets old. I put almost ten hours into the campaign, and could barely put the controller down when my time ran up. Whether you're taking out a power plant, a heavily defended town hall, or a massive bridge, the destruction plays a huge role and is easily biggest selling point of the game.

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