After Playing Red Faction: Guerilla I wanted to go back and try out some of Volitin's other stuff. The world of Stillwater is very realized and "alive", to the point where I consider Red Faction to be a step back. The game really drew me into the world and let me have a ton of fun either playing the story or just blowing shit up.
The graphics are average with some weird texture effects on glass and hair. The art style is very consistent and a bit cartoony which really lends itself to the gameplay which as you would expect is way over the top. almost every stereotype is in the game and pretty exagerated as well. The humor is a little cheesy but works. "bitches buns are the best" is an example from a billboard for a wendy's knock off called "freckle bitches".
The game really benefits from its sound design. The radio station's all have a decent mix and the commericials and talk radio really help to add that certain something to draw you into the world. The game also does a neat thing by having the player do side jobs to earn respect and then use the respect to play "story" missions. I thought this was a clever way to encorage the player to try everything the game has to offer.
The game has three rival gangs for you to take down and thus, three seperate story lines which I found to all be fairly good. The voice acting was particularly good and really helped you to connect with the characters.
The worst part about this game is hands down the save system. the game will not save after checkpoints in a mission. This leads to the worst type of gameplay by making the gamer frustrated. A mission may have three parts to it and right before you finish the third part you die either fairly or cheaply and boom, all the way back to the beginning. One part in particular for me was at the end of the "las carnales" story line where you have to shoot people while your being driven in a car. There are guys everywhere with RPG's and two hits and your done. Every time I died I had to start the mission over which meant i had to drive for about five minutes just to get to the "action". This type of game design baffles me, especially when they got so many other things right.
There is no doubt that this is a full rip-off of Grand Theft Auto, but thats not a bad thing. Considering how popular and profitable GTA is, I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen more.
FINAL VERDICT: GO BACK AND PLAY IT IF YOU MISSED IT
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