Lets get this out of the way now, it's not an open world sandbox like Guerrilla. The game gives you a piss poor reason why it's not at the start of the game. You play as Darius Mason, grandson of Alec Mason from Guerrilla. Darius and the Red faction are trying to stop Adam Hale (cult leader) from destroying Terraformer, with out this sand storms will pop up and will make it impossible to live on the surface. Darius and the Red faction fail and fast forward to years later where Darius gets a job to open a hole. After opening the hole finds out that aliens (yes they call them aliens, aliens on mars) have now taking over the caves of mars and Darius and the Red faction must stop it.
Game play is similar to the Red faction one and two. You are you equipped with a reconstructor (a device that repairs broken structures) instead of having it take up a weapon slot like in Guerrilla. At a few points you get to use a big spider mech and destroy small buildings and towards with it. There is also a small mech suit in a few levels, both mechs have unlimited ammo and make the levels easy to play through. You also get to drive a small UFO style air craft, it controls very well and don't have to worry about crashing. There are power ups in the game you can buy with in game money, doesn't change the game to much the game felt the same with all the upgrades. After beating the game you unlock new game plus which lets you play the game again but save all the upgrades and money from your last game and also lets you use cheats that you buy. Besides letting you use cheats this shouldn't be a new mode, it should just carry over if the game wants to do that.
For multiplayer there is just Infestation. Depending on what of map you are on there are two modes one that which is horde from Gears of war 2, wave of enemies you kill them and repeat. Or a defined mode where its horde but now you have to make sure this build or generators are not destroy. This is fun for a while but gets boring at the end. There are 30 waves and with each wave from 1-10 the enemies number grow and the type of enemies grow. It would have been nice to fight a boss from the single player at wave 30. A other "multiplayer" mode is Ruin. The reason I said it like that is that it's a local multiplayer, one player takes turns in a round by round game where they have to destroy buildings and rack up points, high score wins. This mode was in Guerrilla and it is the same, this mode would be great for a vs mode online but again no online. There is no Vs mode, that can be found in Red Faction: Battlegrounds which been out since April and never heard of it until I entered the name of this game on giantbomb.
This game amazes me on the look, cut scene look fantastic and the best part is this replaces the loading screen. This make the whole game smooth with no load times, unless you skip the cut scene. The graphs for play look more cleaner from Guerrilla. All the males are bald in the game, does this mean they couldn't make hair look good? Why is everyone bald?
For a full price retail game I cant say go buy this, at $30 I say it is a pick up if your a Red faction fan. The story is good, beside the start and ending of the game. Multiplayer is fun but doesn't hold up longer than ten hours. The game is short, you will get all the enjoyment from this game from a weekend. If you are not a fan or if you feel that you don't need it in your collection then rent it.