Red Faction Guerilla: Re-Mars-tered Xbox One review — Good looking but disappointing

Red Faction Guerilla got a remaster treatment, but it's underwhelming.

By Brendan Lowry
last updated

Red Faction Guerilla didn't have the best of luck when it launched in 2009. Released prior to E3, it was almost completely overshadowed by all of the new game announcements at the show.

This remaster, then, is an opportunity to bring the title to the masses — but I'm not sure they'll enjoy it. Red Faction Guerilla Re-Mars-tered is a carbon copy of the original, aside from updated visuals.

Make Mars free

In Red Faction Guerilla Re-Mars-tered, you join and work for a massive insurgency network on Mars, attempting to destabilize the iron fist that the government and military of Earth currently rules the planet with. This means you'll be causing as much havoc as possible with your weapons and abilities, Just Cause-style. This is achieved through the title's high-quality destructible environments.

It's incredibly satisfying to run around Guerilla's open world, using your destructive power to accomplish well-made side missions and other activities, but the game falls flat on its face when it comes to things like shooting. Aiming your weapons is woefully clunky, and while most of the time you can opt for other styles of play, there's a large handful of moments that demand you to make use of firearms. These segments are excruciating.

Another issue is that the artificial intelligence is rather unfair to fight sometimes. I always welcome a good challenge in a game, but here, the speed at which foes train their weapons on you and peg you with precision firepower is absurd.

Polished look, crippled feel

When it comes to look and feel, Red Faction Guerilla Re-Mars-tered is both excellent and terrible. The excellence of the remaster shines when admiring the visuals. The added detail and improvement to the color palette help make the game's environment feel more immersive.

However, where Guerilla hits a wall is with the performance. Part of a remaster should be to fix up as many of the original game's bugs as possible, and that clearly didn't happen with this project. Just like back in 2009, frame-rate drops, crashes tothe dashboard, and game freezes are all occurrences you're likely to experience at least once per play session. If you can look past these issues then this won't be a problem for you, but I find it unacceptable.

Final thoughts on Red Faction Guerilla Re-Mars-tered

While this remaster succeeds in bringing the positive aspects of Guerilla's gameplay to a modern-looking experience, it also brought the negative ones as well. When you factor in the unacceptable performance flaws, it's disappointing. The game is decent, and if you have nothing else to play I recommend buying, but it could have been so much better.

Pros:

  • Lots of things to do.
  • Excellent visuals.
  • Amazing destruction mechanics.

Cons:

  • Clunky gunplay.
  • Lackluster performance.
  • Borderline unfair AI.

Red Faction Guerilla Re-Mars-tered is available now on Xbox One for $29.99.

This review was conducted on an Xbox One, using a copy provided by the publisher.

Brendan Lowry
Brendan Lowry

Brendan Lowry is a Windows Central writer and Oakland University graduate with a burning passion for video games, of which he's been an avid fan since childhood. You'll find him doing reviews, editorials, and general coverage on everything Xbox and PC. Follow him on Twitter.

3 Comments
  • Wow With all due respect BRENDAN LOWKY your review is disappointing. Red faction guerrilla was and still is ahead of its time, no game offers the level of dedication to gameplay and innovation that this (if I may) "Mars-terpiece" is bringing to the table. "Just Cause-style" was this a joke? Red faction is the only game offering fully destructive environments, you can't compare it to other games with semi-destructible environments. Red faction guerrilla is the early John Woo of video game destruction. These guys want to bring more red faction and possibly relieve the franchise and we got you trying to sh** all over it so stop nip picking and go review your horrible opinion for this amazing game. Pros: true innovation in gameplay.
    Challenging.
    Your actions effect the world around you unlike like other open world games. (Looking at you GTA) Con: SDK was never released for PC gamers. Red Faction Guerrilla 4.5 out of 5
  • So... I'm guessing you enjoyed the game then?
  • Sorry you don't agree with my opinion, but I'm not going to hold back honest criticism that I have. That only makes the games better in the future. If a game crashes all the time, feels uncomfortable to play because of the clunkiness, and is a little too high difficulty wise, then I'm going to say so.