The world of Mars is a hostile territory. An insurgent group is rebelling against a controlling and powerful foe and you're caught right in the middle. It's a story we've heard time and time again, but it isn't the story in Red Faction: Guerrilla that will have you coming back time and time again. It's the fact that the game offers one of the most advanced and jaw dropping destruction engines ever created, and a very solid campaign to make it shine.

Developed by Volition and published by THQ, Red Faction: Guerrilla is the third title in the Red Faction series; the first in nearly seven years. With an emphasis on pure carnage, the big selling point of RF:G is the plethora of means you have of destroying the game world. A third-person shooter, you play as Alec Mason, an explosives expert dragged into the conflict by the assassination of your brother at the hands of the Earth Defense Force. At the conclusion of the first two games, you've managed to crush the evil ULTOR Corporation, but your former ally in the Earth Defence Force has become a bitter foe over the past fifty years. They have occupied Mars with a controlling hand, using brutal tactics to achieve their goals, no matter the cost to civilian lives. Red Faction is about to change that.

In your corner is a talent for high explosives and you'll get plenty of use out of it in this game. Imagine this - a massive bridge across a gorge, you run across it placing strategic charges on the support pillars and deck, and blow it to pieces as an enemy convoy approaches. Or a massive tower brought down into a pile of rubble after being imploded by explosive charges. Buildings crumble and debris flies into the air in a cloud of smoke. Rocks and concrete chunks hurl across the terrain and car bombs tear through a fortified base, demonstrating just a handful of the guerrilla tactics. Using the powerful Geo-Mod 2 engine, the game takes advantage of its highly destructive world as most missions in the game focus on demolition in some form or another. It's one of the key elements that really make the game both unique and so much fun.

Red Faction: Guerrilla is an open-world game, divided into six sectors: Parker, Dust, Badlands, Oasis, the Free Fire Zone, and EOS. Each sector has a distinctly different feel, the color palette changes drastically, and you'll find a different variety of vehicles and structures based on the inhabitants. Parker and Dust are primarily mining communities, wherein Oasis and EOS are more swanky upscale living communities. They all have one thing in common - they're occupied territories of the EDF.

As you progress through the campaign, you'll be required to liberate each sector, by destroying EDF installments and completing missions. As you cruise around the terraformed Mars landscape, high importance targets are flagged on your minimap. Destroying these targets is essential in liberating the sector from EDF control, each target carries a set number of control points and when destroyed the EDF's control in that sector drops. Once you've brought their control over the sector to zero, you'll be able to play the final mission and liberate the sector.

In your travels, you'll come across large variety of Guerrilla Actions, which are essentially side missions to complete in each sector, earning you salvage, control points, and boosting civilian morale. From training missions which teach you valuable destructive techniques, to raids on EDF property, messenger interception, and rescuing hostages held captive by EDF soldiers, you'll find a good variety of side missions that offer both a challenge and lasting experience. Not to mention the enjoyment you'll get out of riding shotgun with Jenkins, a crazy ole son' bitch with a massive turret mounted on the back of his vehicle and a hate-on for everything EDF.

Assisting you in the fight, each sector also has civilian morale. As innocent civilians are killed, morale drops. On the other hand, by completing Guerrilla Actions and destroying EDF propaganda, you'll raise the morale. The higher the civilian morale, the more likely they are to stand alongside you in a fight. With so many EDF soldiers to take on, any ally is a good ally.

As you destroy EDF structures, you'll collect salvage, the currency in the game. This salvage can then be used for upgrades and new weapons in your rebel safehouse. As you progress through the campaign and meet certain objectives, or play through the various guerrilla missions, you'll unlock a wide variety of weaponry to make your job much easier. In a game with an emphasis on destruction, you'll find a explosive-packed arsenal including remote charges (that stick to everything, including unsuspecting enemies), proximity mines, singularity bombs, rocket launchers, and later the thermobaric rocket launcher which packs a serious amount of firepower. You've also got the standard fare of guns: a pistol, and assault rifle, and a Nano rifle, which can disintegrate matter (both human and structural) from a distance. You'll also find a variety of more improvised weapons like an arc welder and grinder. Yet, if you want to get down and dirty, you've always got your servo-powered sledgehammer to annihilate an unsuspecting foe, or take out critical support columns in a building. A versatile weapon that you'll always have by your side, and let's just say it packs a punch.